Ha-Ha Transcended All Obstacles

It’s a credit to the inherent adventurous and beautiful nature of the Baja Ha-Ha, and the perseverance of its more than 500 participants, that this year’s cruising rally was such a big success despite an unprecedented number of challenges. "I’ve administered the Ha-Ha for all 21 years, and sailed in 20 of them, and never have there been anywhere near so many problems and obstacles," said the Grand Poobah. "Let me list just a few."

1. The multiple difficulties with Mexican paperwork websites prior to the start of the event and the great uncertainty of how these problems would be resolved.
2. A beach party at Turtle Bay where the sandy beach had been washed away.
3. Hurricane Vance, an unusually late season hurricane, the mere threat of which resulted in the fleet’s splitting up for Leg 2 before rejoining for Leg 3.
4. Losing two days of the event to the potential threat of Vance, throwing off the schedule and programs at both Bahia Santa Maria and Cabo San Lucas.
5. Arriving in Cabo to find that 35% of the slips had been destroyed. (It would have been nice to be informed of that in advance.)
6. A Cabo beach party that had to share the venue with a drinking- and sex-games program, an extremely raunchy program that had the Poobah — and three quarters of the fleet — swearing off sex and drinking for at least a month.
7. And, above all, very little sailing wind in the first and third legs.

The many obstacles were overcome by the following:

1. The second leg’s being one of the two windiest in the 63-leg history of the Ha-Ha. Many boats sailed the entire second leg, often at hull speed, and Jim and Kent Milski’s Schionning 49 Sea Level hit 21.7 knots with a chicken chute. Despite wind gusting to 35 knots on the beam, there were just two broken booms, a snapped carbon pole, and a couple of torn sails.
2. Vance not being a problem after all.
3. No serious paperwork problems in Mexico.
4. A nonetheless fine sandless beach party in Turtle Bay, with an unusual amount of fun surfing.
5. Spectacular Bahia Santa Maria. If you’ve been there during Ha-Ha dates, you know what we mean. Lots of fun surfing there, too.
6. Despite the lack of slips at Cabo, getting all the boats whose skippers wanted to be there into the marina.
7. A calm anchorage at Cabo.
8. Owning Squid Roe, where more than 400 Ha-Ha participants group-danced like a crazy mob — without being irresponsible idiots. You had to have been there.
9. And, most of all, a really great group of understanding and supportive Ha-Ha participants. The Grand Poobah felt the love throughout, and can’t recall a Ha-Ha in which so many participants promised to be back for another.

Details on Ha-Ha XXI will be forthcoming in the December issue of Latitude 38. By the way, except for a couple of damaged areas of the Cabo San Lucas Marina, Cabo looked almost the same as always. The only thing different was the striking lack of tourists.