Author Archives: K7CBO Ham Radio

**Updated with pictures**

This post has been two years in the making.

It all started back in November 2011. Tawn and I flew down to La Paz to hangout with our friends Dawn & Peaboy on their boat Deep Playa. Which they had just sailed down from Seattle. Same trip we have just done.

During the 2 weeks we were here with them one of the places they took us was to an anchorage called Bahia San Gabriel on Isla Espiritu del Santo.

Which is where we are anchored at the time of this posting. Check it out here if you haven’t already: http://shared.delorme.com/kevinmidkiff

While here with Dawn and Pea we had gone to shore for a hike across the island. Before leaving the boat that morning for the hike, I had written a note to a future version of Tawn and Myself. I folded the note and stuffed it inside three ziplock sandwich bags along with a 500 peso note, (approx. $40 USD).

On the hike back to the boat, I slowed up and hung back abit. I found a good hiding spot in a crack in a boulder. Crammed the little package into the crack, covered it up, and caught up the the group. Nobody had a clue what I had done.

The note read:
****
Thanksgiving 2011

To:
Future Palarran Crew Members

Dropped this note off for you to find. And left some money for you to get a celebratory beer and a taco or two.

Congrats!!

After all these years of dreaming & planning you finally made it.

CB…
*****

I didn’t have a GPS with me at the time so I sorta took a couple mental snap shots and called it good.

Back at work in Seattle I would wonder from time to time if the note and money would survive two years in the harsh sun and weather of the Sea of Cortez. I also spent a fair amount of time on Google maps trying to spot the boulder….I shit you not.

We pulled into the anchorage yesterday (Nov. 18) after making an overnight passage from Bahia Los Muertos. I was tired, but it felt like Xmas morning. I could not wait to get to shore and look for our little personal geocache.

As we hit the beach Tawn ask if I thought I could find it. I said, “Sure, it’s under a boulder right below two cactus”.

As I’m saying that I realize that that could be anywere between here and fucking northern Arizona!

I dug around two or three boulders with no luck, and got the shit throughly scared out of me by what I would not say was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen (close), but most certainly one of the meanest/hungriest looking.

I do not like spiders. Remember how Indian Jones hates snakes? I’m like that with spiders,….and snakes, and to a lesser degree brussel sprouts. Before you say it. I’ve tried them as an adult. And fuck you, you do not have a way to make them, that will make them delicious. Just stop.

I feel I should digress.

After circumnavigating the spider, I spotted the cactus I’d used as a reference and saw the boulder. I look into a crack in the top of the boulder and there it is! Covered with the small rocks I had placed over it. The sandwich bags with the note and money! SUCCESS!! I was stoked!

Money

Teehee!!

Last night was such a nice warm night. 12-15 knots on the beam, with a nice mellow following sea. I was up on watch. Tawn was down below sleeping. The windvane was dialed in and the boat was sailing along perfectly. Stars everywhere, both the stationary (relatively) and shooting variety.

So I thought, “What a perfect time to write a blog post”.

I grabbed the laptop, fired it up, dimmed the screen. Tucked myself into a corner of the cockpit and started to type.

Usually when I write blog post I just start typing furiously. No real game plan or outline. I just let what comes out, come out. Then I go back and add stuff, and/or take stuff out….alot of stuff comes out (mostly commas, I’m not sure why, but I love to pepper those little bastards everywhere), and usually what I end up with is never very close to what I started out with.

Unfortunetly, I am suseptible to mal de mer (sea sickness). About 3/4 of the way through the post I started to get a little woozy and staring at that dim lit screen in the complete darkness of the cockpit did me in.

I “finished” typing, hit Save and shut down the laptop. With the plan to edit the post later when I felt better. One small problem, the app I was using, saves it to the outbox of my HAM radio email program.

An hour later, I fired up the radio to grab some weather and send a few emails, forgetting of course all about that half baked blog post, and the email was sent out and posted automagically to the blog. I guess it was not too bad, but looking back over it. It just seems……not ready.

Anyway……

One of the things I had planned to mention, but didn’t was that on the way to Turtle Bay we caught so much Yellow Fin tuna that Tawn will not let us fish anymore until we eat some of the tuna that is in the freezer. We have no more room.

At the time of writing this post, we are anchored in Bahia Santa Maria. Which, so far, is AWESOME!

The water is warm. 79 degrees. We went swimming as soon as the anchor was set the morning we got here. Been here two or three days, plan on staying another two or three.

Took the dinghy to shore after watching our friends on s/v Loukia totally eat shit attempting to land thier dinghy in the surf. For the record, we did not eat shit. USA 1 CANADA 0. :-)

We went surfing this morning and hitting it again tomorrow (there is a semi reasonable shore break here), Bocce ball (Thanks Hello World), and beach grill outs. Hikes out to a light house and a mountain peak. Went spear fishing yesterday and came back with a delicious dinner.

We’ve had a good times since leaving Washington working our way down the coast. But this anchorage finally feels like we are “Here”.

*****11 commas were removed in the editing of this post.*****

As I’m sure everyone is aware, we left San Diego and got to Ensenada just fine.

We had two reasons to stop in Ensenada. The first was paperwork. We had to officially clear Mexican customs and get our 6 month tourist visas, and some paperwork that allows us to bring in parts for our boat without having to pay a huge import fee.

We got all that done very easily. Ensendada has everything in one small building. No need to run all over town, taking all day to do it. We were done in thirty minutes or so. Maybe a little longer.

The other reason we stopped in Ensenada was to get a new bottom job done on Palarran. Which I think I mentioned in a previous post.

All the work was completed under the estimate and 3 days faster than they had planned. That included a day and half rain days too.

While we were in the yard, the owner of the boat next to us was a man from Panama. His name is Jeff. We called him “The most interesting Man in the world”.

This guy works for the University of Panama. I never found out if he was from Panama or Brasil. Either way, he was on his way back to Panama on his boat that he had bought up in L.A. It was a steel hulled sailboat.

He is heading back to Panama to pick up crew and heading down to Antartica. The crew he is picking up is University of Panama Maritime students.

I could do 50 blog post on some of the stories and places Jeff told us about.

He was waiting there at the marina for a crew member to show up to help him get the boat to Panama. Of course when the guy showes up, he is a one armed Panamaian named Octavio. Of course he only has one arm. The most interesting man in the world does not need a crew member with two arms.

After leaving Ensenda we headed to Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay), 295 miles way. This would be our first multiday passage with just the two of us. Sleep wise, the first 24 hours were the roughest, but after that you get into the rythm of it. By the time we pulled into Turtle bay 3 days later. I could have just kept going.

As we were pulling into Turtle bay, the Baja HaHa fleet was leaving. It’s pretty cool to see 150 boats all sailing out of a bay.

We talked with our friends Paul & Carol on s/v Unleashed over the radio briefly and also spoke with our buddy Erlin on s/v Ventured as he was pulling up anchor to leave.

We dropped the hook near some other friends of ours Brad & Joanne on s/v Loukia that we’ve been traveling with and hung out in the small town of Turtle bay for a few days. Not much really happening there, but is was nice and warm and felt good to stop moving and not be working on the boat for a few days.

At the time of writing this was are underway from Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria. Should be there sometime tomorrow afternoon.

We have sailed close to 300 miles total so far and not turned on the engine but a few times to run the water maker, and motor for a few windless hours the other morning.

I had to make a few small adjustments to my HAM radio settings and wanted to test to make sure I was still able to update the blog via radio.

Might as well give a small update while i’m at it.

We left Ensenada Mexico Wednesday afternoon around 2pm. Headed for Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay). From point to point the trip ends up being 288 miles, so it should take us roughly 3 days if the wind cooperates.

So far it has. At the time of writing this it is 10:30am on Friday. We have just about 90 some odd miles to go. And other than a windless couple of hours yesterday morning, we have sailed almost all of it.

Great sailing too. Warm (not so much at night), wind on the stern quarter, no real waves to speak of. The windvane is doing all the work, so we have just been going about our time relaxing, sleeping and reading.

We shortened sail to slow us down abit so as to time our arrival at Turtle Bay sometime after sun up. Neither one of us like coming into new anchorages in the dark. And right now, the entire Baja HAHA fleet (165 boats) is anchored in the bay. Which could make it a little crowded. Day light is a much better time to go in. I believe they are to leave at 8am. So we might get to see a few of our friends as they are leaving.