Cabo update

It's been a busy few days since our last post. We had a great 2 day passage from Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas. Mix of motoring and sailing, but a mellow trip. Arrival in Cabo was a real culture shock after working our way down the remote west coast of the Baja. Yikes, the place is like sailing into an amusement park...jet skis, para sailors, ultra lights, cruise ships (3 anchored in the bay at one time!), pangas, sport fisherman, etc. The only things missing were cruising sailors like us. And we quickly found out the reason: the place is EXPENSIVE! As an example, we often figure on paying $1.00/foot for a guest slip in a marina. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. That works out to around 50 bucks/night for Bravo. At the marina in Cabo, it was $186, and that's US dollars, not pesos!!! Reputed to be the most expensive marina in North America, if not the world!!! We did it for our first night, as we needed access to the port captain office and immigration to check into Mexico. The other 2 nights we anchored out. (Even then, as we were getting ready to leave Cabo, an official looking panga w/ 5 uniformed folks pulled up to us with our bill for ANCHORING!!! $11 USD!!! Unbelievable.

Cabo itself was exceedingly tourist oriented, especially for the hours when the cruise ships disgorged their hordes. From kids hawking chiclets, to guys offering their iguanas up for photo ops, it really had pretty little appeal. You get the picture.

A couple of events stood out. First, do you remember that our recent attempt at a beach landing of our dinghy resulted in a swamping?? Well, we seem to have perfected our technique...we now know how to do a complete flip!!! Yup, we hit the beach near our anchorage, and a little wave combined with extremely steep beach created a monster undertow. Flipped us like an I-Hop buttermilk cake!!! Damage report: one soggy cell phone (now deceased), one pair prescription sunglasses (probably look better on the next wearer than me, but he'll have nasty headaches!!), and one very water cooled outboard motor. Happily 2 pangas were passing by and their crews jumped into the surf to help us flip the dink back over, and tow us back out to Bravo. We pulled the sparkplugs out, emptied the cylinders of their salty juices, and got it fired back up. An hour or 2 of lubing and cleaning, and hopefully we'll be good as new.

We also said our goodbyes to our wonderful crew, friend Emily Hawken, who had to fly back to the soggy Pacific NW. The night before she left, she was looking for her visa, and noted it missing. So we retraced our steps to the port captain's office, who had them last. He only had kept bank receipts showing payment for the visas, so we had to trek back to immigration. Turns out the guy there remembered us (after a 2 hour wait), and had our visas waiting for us...he had evidently forgotten to give them to us 2 days prior. We've since learned that this dance is common, and typically known as the "immigration shuffle".

Left Cabo yesterday morning. Sunny skies, 80 degrees, and even a bit of breeze. Sailed for much of the day before the wind died for most of the night. Came up this morning, right on the beam, so we're on a delightful broad reach aiming right at Puerto Vallarta, still around 130 miles to the SE.

Fishing report: Hasn't been too hot, though not due to lack of trying. Caught one skipjack tuna (pretty nasty, dark red meat), and got a beautiful 3' yellowtail tuna to the boat before it threw the hook while we were trying to gaff it. I did manage to pick up a "fighting belt" in Cabo, handy to anchor the butt end of the rod while fighting these fish...should do wonders to protect the fisherman's cojones.

Again, sorry for the lack of photos these days. These posts are all coming through the ham radio link, and it can only handle texts. We bought a "Banda Ancha" card in Cabo. It's a broadband cell internet card for the laptop. Unfortunately, after a 2 hour wait while they "discussed with Tijuana", they said due to a "network problem" the card will remain kaput for a couple of days...whatever!!! Photos are coming...

All in all, feels fantastic to be in Mexico at last!!!