Los Muertos

Traveling Alone and a Day Without Gifts

I was seriously dragging my feet about leaving. There were good reasons for not wanting to leave Cabo San Lucas. Our generator is still not working, it will never work and we are waiting for our friends Gary and Odie to arrive with our new generator. (We love you guys! Can’t wait to see you!) They will not be arriving until the beginning of February so it is ridiculous to wait here for them. But without our generator we can’t make water and we can’t run the refrigerator. This means that we are tied to civilization: a supply of ice is enough to keep food cold for only two days, three at the most. We are also alone. With only the two of us to do a proper watch we will be restricted to three hours of sleep at a time. I am not looking forward to nights with little or no sleep. But it is undeniable that it is time to leave and so with some degree of trepidation we are moving on. We checked the weather. We provisioned the boat with ice. We did laundry. We were as ready as were going to be and it was time to go.

It is about fifty miles from Cabo to Frailes. Strong Northerlies are common for this time of year and that is the direction that we were going in but the weather looked like it was going to be mild, so even though we were going into the wind we should be able to tack out and back with relative comfort. The ride should not be bad but the circuitous rout that we had to take would mean that our actual sea miles would be much greater than the distance “as the crow flies.” So fifty miles becomes seventy and with a max hull speed of seven knots per hour we were looking at a minimum of ten hours, probably more in the realm of fourteen hours since we will not be going our maximum speed while beating into the mild wind. So we had to decide: we can’t come into an unfamiliar anchorage in the dark and we know we have to give ourselves fourteen hours, with a cushion for light winds. With the weather and miles taken into account we decided to leave in the morning, give ourselves a mellow day at sea and not rush things. Have a proper night watch and come into Frailes in the morning.

We left to a light breeze from the SOUTH, despite the weather forecast and were pleased. This would be a much more pleasant run than we had anticipated! With gentle winds pushing us we put up the light-wind asymmetrical sail and coasted dreamily along. The winds were coming slow and gentle and we were more than comfortable. At 6pm Brett went below to nap for his 9pm watch and I sat up and read my book, keeping a close eye on radar, wind and position. By the end of my watch the wind had come around and was howling out of the North to the point that both of us thought we had better put the storm jib up and reef the main. The wind soon had the seas blowing as well and we were pounding into the waves. I went below at 9pm and tried to berate myself into sleep, I knew it was only three hours until my watch and I would need to be rested but it was this exact thought (and the howling wind) that kept me tossing in the bed. I slept for about one and one half hours below and it was midnight, time to rise and take the helm again. I blearily went topside and battled through the night. I crashed into the waves for the next three hours. The stars were out and the phosphorescence was startlingly bright but there was no comfort in these things with the wind whipping up to thirty knots. At 3am I was back below and we had made such good distance it seemed that we might arrive early and have to stand off shore. With the boat banging and such it seemed like a good idea to hold off and let her rest, I may have gotten two hours of precious sleep between the hours of 3am and 6am, I asked Brett if I could take another hour since I had such a pitiful night and he gave me an extra half hour before the howling wind and slapping canvas were making him queasy. Back on watch I made way the best I could. The wind had moved over to the west a smidge, exactly in the direction we were going. Our neat little plan to tack out and back was being flummoxed at every turn as the wind kept shifting, inching further West the further North we got. So no matter where we were coming from we needed to go directly into the wind. Exhausted and with the sun rising we were so close to our destination (eighteen miles) but we could not travel in that direction. The sea was frothing at a lively four to five feet, not what you want your bow slamming on even with the motor on.

It was about 1pm when we arrived a Frailes. It had taken us over 24 hours to travel the fifty miles. We limped in and went to sleep. We had come to Frailes because of Pulmo, the only reef in The Sea of Cortez. This reef is well protected by the local authorities and there is no anchoring or fishing within three miles of the reef so despite the fact that we travel with all of our own SCUBA gear we were going to have to book a dive boat to get to the reef. Our anchorage was about four miles away. We were also out of ice, and all of our food was going to spoil if we did not get ice in the fridge so we headed out the next morning in search of diving accommodations and ice. We got to the beach and started talking to some fishermen. There were no taxis so we got a local to give us a ride to the town and help us search for a dive shop (there were only two) and ice (there were no stores with ice so we were going to have to beg it off of a restaurant). We found a restaurant that was willing to sell us ice but it would not be delivered until tomorrow. Since the dive boat was going right past Fearless on the way to the dive site they would bring the ice and pick us up for the dive. For a small tip, of course.

In the morning Brett told me that all he wanted to see was a sea turtle. There were four others on the boat with us and the dive master. The first dive was nice but the visibility was only about twenty feet. There were beautiful tropical fish and we saw a few very pretty rays, some of them obviously pregnant, but the water was cold and I was definitely ready to get out of the water when the time came. On the second dive three of the four were either too cold or sea sick to go so they stayed in the boat and we had a much smaller crew. It was a nicer dive and Brett got his turtle. The little guy lazily paddled around us even though all three of us were crowded around him for a closer look. I saw the direction he was headed in and positioned myself there. He glided within two feet of my mask and I looked deeply into his eyes. Beautiful. He reminded me of an bird when I was close to his face. The beak was curved down like a parrot. He was so unconcerned with us that we stayed with him a good five minutes. Not hunting, he seemed to be out on a Sunday stroll through the neighborhood.

The next day was Brett’s birthday and I really wanted to bake him a cake or something but realized that I had no butter. This was a tragedy. What is a birthday without either gifts of cake? We started the day with a trip up the steep ridge that separated us from the Pulmo Reef bay and scrambled up giant boulders and through cacti until we came to the top of the ridge where both the Frailes and Pulmo Bays were visible and our boat was a tiny dot out in the middle of deep blue. The mountain was ruggedly beautiful, there were cacti in all varieties and all the tiny delicate flowers that are only visible when you are on top of them. The tide was coming in and we had beached the dinghy so we did not have much time at the top. We scrambled down and got water from the well to wash the boat. (While pounding into the waves water had splashed clear over the boat and everything was crusted with a fine film of salt.) I went up to a community of RV’rs and spoke to a woman and her husband (Betty and Lock) who were camped there and when I told them my predicament with the butter and it being Brett’s birthday they were beyond generous and not only gave me a stick of butter but also a bottle of home made Cabernet, birthday candles and a frozen portion of lobster prepared with wild crafted mushrooms. (Since she is over 60 years old and still alive I can assume that she knows which ones she can eat and she also assured me she had taken a class on the wild crafting of mushrooms.) Thanks to Betty and Lock, Brett had fresh baked chocolate chip cookies on his birthday.

It was strange for me to have a birthday pass without giving gifts. But our budget is tight and Brett (unlike me) is satisfied with what he has and is in no need of things. So I spent the day giving him my love, affection, a back rub and cookies. I guess that is the spirit behind a gift, to show that you care and thought of the person. We did not intend to have another dive, however, so there was no prospect for getting ice and we decided to move on again. Our next stop was Muertos. We checked the weather and decided on a different strategy. We would go to bed early. Get up at midnight and scoot on out of there. It was another sixty miles to Muertos but we had Southerlies in the forecast so if that held up we should be okay, especially since we were going North-West. (You never want the wind either directly in front or behind you.) And this time we would change the watch schedule. Brett would take the first watch and go as long as he could and then I would take the next and go as long as I could. This way we might be able to get some decent sleep. With this in mind on the night of his 38th birthday Brett went to bed at around 7pm.

At midnight we both got up and got the boat out of the bay and I went to sleep. I had a hard time sleeping with the motor running but there was nothing to be done for it: there was not a breath of wind and we could bob like a cork or power on, so we raised “the iron sail” and made some good ground at maximum hull speed. I finally slept and it was 7am by the time that Brett woke me, he had gallantly taken the night and I was well rested and ready to take on the world. The wind had died and I drifted in the 3-7 knot winds on glass smooth water, this could not be any different from our last trip. Tranquil.

Muertos is an open Bay with nothing but one restaurant to speak of but they have ice and internet so we are as happy as clams. There is no snorkeling here and it is a little cold but the beach is lovely and the mountains fade away in layers of mist. We spent today doing boat chores: Brett disassembled, cleaned and greased the winches and I worked on sewing some rain flaps for the canvas dodger. (There are four very conspicuous holes that drip water into the cockpit when it rains.) We will both be occupied with the same chores tomorrow and will spend our time here catching up on boat things before heading to the bustling metropolis of La Paz.