Just the way you like to start a long passage, we had a mellow start with light winds and nearly no swell a great way to find the rhythms of non-stop motion.
This passage would be about 300 nautical miles and ultimately took 51.85 hours with an average speed of 5.75 knots. We did pick up winds enroute but still depended on our engines for 53% of this leg. However, we were happy to have these conditions over what the Baja Haha fleet experienced a few weeks later with 35 knot winds and 16 foot seas.
Janis is all smiles as we depart Ensenada
Vicki enjoying the dolphin show
Our escorts into the open ocean
Sunset of night one
The timing worked out for moonless nights. It was shocking looking around the boat once in the open ocean with no light. It reminded me of my childhood when one a tour of an abandoned mine they turned out all of the lights. Thankfully no one dropped an old steel wheel into a mine car to scare the heck out of me.
Still smiling and having fun on the morning of day two
The first sashimi of the trip, learned to clean fish on the sugarscopes after this guy made a mess of the cockpit…
A typical scene while on passage
Ah, sunrise on day three
Since Janis was new to sailing, Vicki and I took all the watches for this leg. The three hour shifts worked out well for us (I had 12-3 and 6-9, while Vicki has 3-6 and 9-12) and we both felt pretty well rested (considering…) getting 3-5 hours of sleep per night. I settled into a routine of playing games on my phone for the midnight to 3:00am shift and then switching to podcasts for the 6:00am – 9:00am shifts. The morning shift flew by, with the mix of cooking breakfast and the watching sunrise along with my podcasts. Vicki definitely gave me a gift let me take the sunrise and sunset shifts. A big thank you shout out to her!
Coming up on the entrance to Turtle Bay!
Never cut the corner…one of the Haha fleet ran aground while trying to save a little time. No one was hurt but their boat sank. This was only the second boat to sink during the Haha (after 23 years), the first hitting a sleeping whale and losing their rudder many years ago.
Safely at anchor, woohoo.
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