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At 7 the next morning we were all up, into our foul weather gear and ready to rumble. Spirits, much to my amazement, were high. At 8 we pulled away from the dock and headed into the Bay with gray skies, a light drizzle and fluky winds. An hour later we stopped for last minute fuel and propane, then set off for the Pacific.

Exiting the bay with the incoming tide took all the energy Jangada’s twin 27hp diesels could muster but soon the wind came up, we hoisted the sails and off we went on a broad reach in 20 knots of wind and 6’ seas, passing the Mexican border and out past the Coronado Islands.

My original plan was to stop our first night in Ensenada to regroup and take a breath. But with the bad weather (and the forecast for more of it) we decided to high-tail it south (hopefully into warmer and friendlier conditions) as fast as we could. That afternoon the winds started gusting to 25 knots and the seas grew larger as we headed further off the coast. By nightfall the winds were a steady 25, gusting to 30, with icy squalls whipping the tops off the 12-15’ waves off our stern. We set watches of two crew for 3 hours and I turned in to get some badly needed rest.

My watch was for 3am but I didn’t make it that far. At 2am one of the girls woke me to say that the winds were gusting over 35 knots and she thought we needed to reduce sail. I scrambled into my rain gear, PFD and safety harness as I felt Jangada climbing up over huge swells, her rigging groaning as the massive waves first boosted her forward then stopped her cold as her bows dug deep into the backs of the next set.

The night was ink black and the wind howled with a sense of dark power. Three of us struggled to take a second reef in the mainsail as the spray poured over the bows and doused us with torrents of icy salt water. This was living and I was having the time of my life. Luckily for me, everyone else shared my enthusiasm, or at least they pretended to, and that was good enough for me. I was reminded of being a kid in a haunted house:
“You scared?”
“Not me! Are you?”
“No way. I ain’t scared of nothing!”
“Yeah, well neither am I!”
Meanwhile we’re all scared shitless. Woohoo!!!

After fighting with the sails for a half-hour I was fully awake. I took the wheel and told the girls to go to bed as my buddy Rod and I took over early. The stupendous roar of the wind and crashing waves, not to mention the fact I couldn’t even see the front of the boat in the blackness, made steering Jangada a fiercely intense experience. Eight tons of metal, fiberglass and sailcloth thundering along through the night in 30 knots of wind, powering up over massive black swells which you can’t even see until you feel the wallop of their crest as they slam into the bows and a wall of white spray appears in your face, is about the most fun I can think of. But that’s just me, you understand.

People (non-sailors) always seem to think that sailing a boat must be a very boring experience. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, can be further from the truth. My three-hour watch went by before I had a chance to pick my nose. Every moment I am checking something: the sail trim, the winches, the GPS, the charts, the apparent wind speed, the current, the drift, our course, the compass, the barometer, the wind angle and strength, the rigging, the waves, the depth, the true wind speed, the jib telltales, our VMG, ETE, ETA, XTE, COG, radar, power consumption, buoys and markers and a hundred more things. The minute I get through, I start all over again. Sleep? I don’t THINK so!

Suddenly it was 6am, there was a faint glow on the eastern horizon and the adrenaline was pumping through my system so hard that my eyeballs hurt. The wind had increased to 40 knots, also known as a gale. Our WeatherFAX said, indeed, GALE right across our path. And out in the Pacific on my second day at sea in my new boat, GALE was one thing I was not looking forward to seeing on my computer screen. The swells were getting huge. We watched as one twenty-footer steamed up on our stern and Jangada slowly pitched forward as if being shoved off a steep ski slope. Instantly her speed climbed. 12 knots…13….14….

Matt was driving when I heard him cry out, “New world record! 16.3 knots!!!” That was it: the gauntlet had been thrown down.

An hour later the sun began to peak through the black clouds as cold squalls closed in around us. We could see them coming and sometimes they passed by just 100 yards to one side or the other. Ha! Cheated death again! Suckers!!!

I took the helm and immediately began searching for more speed. 14.5….. 15.1….. 16!!! The exhilaration and power of a big cat racing down a massive wave is something you have to experience to be able to understand. The sheer mass of all the forces involved makes it seem inevitable that something will break. That there is not a catastrophic failure of some part of the boat seemingly defies the nature of the situation. But nothing breaks, so far.

16.8……16.9…A new world record! The cheers erupt. 17.4…18!!!! Everyone sits stunned. How fast can we go? Something has to break. This is, after all, just a cruising cat, not some 30-knot highbred racing machine. Hell, we’ve got pillows and a BBQ and an expresso machine on board! 18.3….. 18.6!!!

We are flying along; the twin wakes of the stern look like a waterski boat has made them. In two hours we travel over 30 miles, ripping down the coast, dodging squalls and angry seas. The sailing is exhilarating and Jangada is holding together. So far, so good.

In the late afternoon we head for shore to anchor for the night and get some badly needed rest after 165 miles of hard sailing. We pulled into a small, poorly sheltered cove at Punta Baja, surrounded by steep, rocky cliffs, and I decided to set two anchors, not wanting my very first anchorage to also be my last. It wasn’t quite as easy as I had anticipated.

The idea was to drop one anchor, drift back to set it, then motor back up at 90 degrees to the first anchor and drop the second one. Piece of cake. We set the main anchor—a 45’# Delta—in 25’ of water with 4:1 scope, drifted back, and proceeded to motor off to drop the second. That’s when we discovered that we really had no idea where that first anchor was. It was only when we had drifted back again that we discovered we had dropped the second anchor right on top of the first one. DOH!

So we hauled it back in and tried again, with only marginally better success. That’s when I had the grandiose idea of tying a plastic bottle to the first anchor so we’d know where the hell it was. They always make this stuff sound so easy in the books.

We finally got securely anchored (secure as in: ready for a hurricane) and sat down to a huge dinner of grilled chicken, broccoli, salad and roasted red potatoes, washed down with lots of cold beers and finished off with strawberry shortcake.

For this warnt no down home cruise, I’ll a tell ya! We were living large, having fun, and ready to rumble. Tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep.

The boat swayed and yanked and lurched in the swells all night long but since she was a cat we all slept like logs. Had we been in a monohull we would probably have had several knockdowns during the night, and probably a dismasting as well. I think that everyone should have to spend a night in a rough anchorage on both a monohull and cat to really see the difference. It’s like comparing a heavy-metal head-banger rock concert to a cello concerto. To each his own….

We were up early and well out to sea by 10am. Our crew had settled into a routine which consisted mainly of sleeping, eating and being on watch. Mostly sleeping and eating. I took the time to do boat projects (never ending), trying to stay topside in the heaving seas as much as possible. For some reason I tend to get a little woozy when I spend more than 20 minutes with my head stuck deep down into the toilet bilge trying to tighten some obscure hose clamp as the boat bashes into 12’ seas. I’m just strange that way. Whimp.

Our next stop was Punta San Carlos, a legendary and very remote windsurfing spot. I had visions of a short day at sea, sneaking into a protected anchorage, rigging my windsurfing gear and having a great afternoon session in the waves.

So much for plans. We didn’t arrive until 4:30, and it was not a pretty sight. The huge rollers that had amused us so at sea were pounding the coast with 15’ wave faces and the wind was still howling. We messed around trying to find a comfortable anchorage in the large bay but the swell was so big that it simply wrapped around the point, producing large smooth swells that kept us in a lively position as we tried to anchor. Too far out and we’d have a very uncomfortable night; too far in and some sneaky swell might actually break outside and deal us a nasty blow. Windsurfing was out of the question, but at least I was mollified by the fact that although there were at least twenty cars and campers parked along the bluff, no one was out in the waves. Whimps.

From San Carlos we headed far out to sea to skirt the big northern bight to the east of Isla Cedros and head into Bahia Tortugas (Turtle Bay), a well known and very protected bay 300 miles from San Diego.

The days drifted by. Sometimes we’d stop for the night, sometimes we’d sail right on through. I don’t remember some of the stops, nor many of the nights. Life on board a boat at sea becomes simplified. The days are all the same yet all very different. After a few night watches there ceases to be a real difference between day and night. We watched frolicking schools of dolphins riding our bow wakes and nearby groups of whales heading north, splashing their enormous tails to produce plumes of spray.

While there are endless projects to keep one busy 20 hours a day, living on a boat out on the ocean frees up a tremendous amount of time that is otherwise spent doing mundane chores on land. There are no phones, email, faxes, pagers or mail to answer; there is no UPS, FedEx or other deliveries to wait for; there’s no junk mail to wade through and no Jehovah’s Witnesses magically appearing at your door; no answering machines, no interminable waits for internet web pages, no cell phones playing Beethoven’s 5th tones.

Best of all, there’s no TV. While at sea I totally missed the Iraq war. Completely. Didn’t have a clue, didn’t care, didn’t want to know. Whenever someone mentioned it we would make jokes: “I wonder what the score is?” “I heard we’re leading 8 to 3…” “I’m bummed we’ll miss the half-time show. I heard Michael Jackson is boxing Madonna.” “Don’t blame ME – I didn’t vote for EITHER of them!” “I hear that NBC just bought the rights to the next five wars through 2008!” What if there was a war and everyone was out sailing???

Anchored in Turtle Bay in the late afternoon, Matt decided that the seven of us should pile into our 4-person dinghy and motor across the bay, then hike across a low pass to a hidden beach where he had heard there was lots of flotsam and jetsam and other nautical messes piled high on the beach since it was so inaccessible. It’s only a mile across, he assured us. I thought it looked more like 4 miles.

We loaded in and began our tour. Half way across the wind picked up. Within minutes it was blowing 20 knots and building. And this was no warm, tropical breeze; in cotton t-shirts and shorts we were all soon drenched and freezing.

A few hundred yards from shore we hit the sand. Matt jumped out and tried to convince us that the murky trudge to shore would be short and easy and well worthwhile. Everyone balked. “Let’s get the hell out of here… if we can…” was the sentiment. By now the wind was whipping up the bay into a froth of cold, ugly chop and we suddenly realized that there was no way we were going to be able to make it back across.

I headed the dinghy for a small fish camp a half mile away, heading straight into the wind and waves as water poured into the dinghy, threatening to swamp us at any moment. Everyone was shivering and I was quickly going hypothermic. Oh great… just great.

We pulled into the fish camp just as a heavy wooden ponga pulled in, thank god. We scrambled ashore and took refuge in a squalid tin shack that was, of course, Trump Plaza to us. I noticed a filthy pile of old rubber rain jackets in a corner, eagerly put one on and went back outside, much to the amusement of the fishermen.

Matt explained our “situation” to the men and they agreed to shuttle us back across the bay, including the dinghy which they proposed to load on top of their dilapidated boat. Not wanting to see my new $5,000 boat and motor trashed I declined and I made Matt accompany me back across.

Everyone else loaded into the ponga and off they went. At first we tried to follow in their wake but even that was too rough. When I took off to the outside we went totally airborne several times. It was quite a frightening journey; go slow and we’d get swamped in the waves; go fast and we’d careen off a wave and flip.

Half an hour later we made it back just at dark and we scrambled back on board, happy to be safe. What a bunch of hosers: 20’ seas and 40 knots—no problem. Dinghy across a benign looking bay—big problem. We gave the fishermen a bunch of t-shirts, fishing lures and beer and thanked them profusely for saving our lives…. well, at least our evening. We hauled the dinghy up and tied it with 100’ of rope so that we’d think twice about ever doing something so stupid again. Enough adventure for one night.

The following day we decide to take a day off and explore the village of Bahia Tortugas, along with long hot showers and great tacos that Steve assures us we’ll find. Sure enough, we rent two rooms in a tiny hotel for $5 each and take showers. I would gladly pay $50 NOT to have to stay in one of these rooms for the night, but the hot water from the rooftop tanks is plentiful and we even get to watch a tiny black and white TV in the bright pink room while waiting our turn to shower.

After tacos and a quick tour of the town (both buildings….) we head back to the boat to nap and read and, for me, do more boat projects. Woohoo!!!