The Baja Ha-Ha — It’s Filled With Friends You Haven’t Met Yet
Husband and wife John Walsh and Liz Newkirk each made their own way down to San Diego for the 2025 Baja Ha-Ha. In January we shared John’s story of his preparation and solo sail from Mendocino to San Diego, where he reunited with Liz. We also shared Liz’s story, in which she shared her perspective of the lead up to and the subsequent sail to Mexico. This month we hear from the couple again as John reflects on the good times had with all the new friends they made during and after the Baja Ha-Ha, proving that you don’t need to know anyone to have a fun time of it; you just need to go!
Ondina, our wonderful 1978 Cal 29-2, made an incredible journey as the smallest boat in the 2025 Baja Ha-Ha. The pre-departure plan, such as it was, consisted of my saying, “Well, if I make it to San Diego; and if my lovely wife Liz meets me there; and if we make it to Cabo — well, we’re probably not going to just turn around and head back home!”
As it turns out, I did make it singlehanded from San Francisco to San Diego the last two weeks of October; Liz did meet me there; we did make it to Cabo; and we didn’t stop there. From Cabo, we headed to San Jose, La Paz, and finally up to Puerto Escondido, which has become the new temporary home of our beloved vessel. Plenty of wonderful adventures continued to unfold over the following months.
After getting into PE back in December, we felt it was a good place to leave the boat and go home for the holidays. That ended my two-and-a-half-month stretch of living aboard, two months of which I shared with Liz in the limited space of our 29-ft boat. Boy, did we learn some things about relationships! Luckily, we also met some wonderful people along the way, and of course spent plenty of time in new-to-us amazing anchorages.
First, we met Maxim of Pearl from Washington. He did the Ha-Ha with his partner Maxi, though we did not cross paths until La Paz. Quickly known to us as “the Maxes,” they shared time with us in various places at various times, and as recently as a couple of weeks ago. They are a wonderful young couple whom we are grateful to have met and look forward to seeing again.
Another great couple were Steve and Julie on Brother Wind. We first crossed paths with them in San Evaristo. It was fairly windy when we pulled in there, and our first pass at anchoring brought us fairly close to their boat. Because sweet Julie, in her perfect UK accent, just said, “Why, hullo there!” while waving, we made a point to dinghy over after we got settled to say hello. And good thing we did, because they are a riot. And thankfully so, as we ended up being “weather locked” in San Evaristo for three or four days. Along with the wind came rain — like real, proper rain — day after day. This was also where our lack of refrigeration really caught up with us. Up until that point, we had done OK (barely), but in San Evaristo, there was only one little tienda, with no ice. Fortunately, the little restaurant on the beach had cold beers and would sell them with food orders as well as for takeaway. Needless to say, we went there for lunch every day!
While there, we also met Dan and Eric on Jangler for the first time. Now, the only thing I can say about meeting them and running into them many more times up to and including PE is that it would take about two or three installments to even start to convey all of the tomfoolery we got up to together. Very, very good times.
Continue here to read about more friends and frivolity.
