Off to Sea the Wizard: Bahia Santa Maria

Nov 7...

4:45am Leaving Bahia Santa Maria in the dark morning for final stop Cabo San Lucas carefully passing through the sleeping anchored boats.

11:30am... gliding through smooth silky blue-black waters with not a hint of wind...

We havent seen any dolphins today, but saw a huge sea turtle swimming by and a bill fish that jumped completely out of the water, a couple of seals and lots of frigate birds or tiretas as they are call because their wings are split and sizzor-like.

It's been so hot today with no wind, we sit on the shade side of the boat under the sail...whew...we coofloff with a shower hoes on deck.

4:30pm...we get a little breeze, enough to turn down the motor, but still maintain a cruising speed of 5.5 knots. We need to keep this speed to arrive in Cabo before tomorrow night. The noise from motoring 24 hrs a day wears me out and I can hardly have any conversations, let alone sleep...but somehow it becomes background .

Thanks to our cruising friends, Dot and Larry who caught and shared some yellowfin tunas, I made fish tacos with rice drizzled in soy/ginger dressing for dinner. Yumm! a welcome break from beans and rice! Dot is over the top...she got two yellowfins while flying a spinnaker, cleaned and filleted them then made dinner all while sailing 8 knots!

We listen to the Baha fleet all day chattering back and forth on the VHF radio. I can see at least 15 boasts all around us across the horizon marching to the finish line! Most boats are motoring with a small sail up , just in case the wind picks up. This year the sail is definitely a motor sail. Some other years the rally has sailed most of the 700 miles to Cabo.

As night falls, i can only see the red (port) or green(starboard) running lights of the boats and a white light atop the mast if under power, called the steaming light which notifies that a vessel is under power. Thank goodness for the radar screen which shows distances of each boat away from our boat...sometimes another boat won't have transmitting equipment for sending this information so the running lights are a boat's only means of communication direction at night.