First the Pacific Puddle Jump — Then College Graduation
In 2024, three college friends and I quit our jobs and poured our savings into a sailboat with the goal of crossing the Pacific Ocean. Ranging from age 22 to 26, Jack, Lauren, Teddy, and I found Open Range, a 1989 Beneteau, and restored her in Santa Cruz over the winter. We rewired electronics, overhauled the plumbing and engine, fine-tuned the rigging, and installed a few new offshore gadgets. What had started as a shared dream during college turned into a serious commitment.
From the start we’d agreed that the California and Baja coasts would be our main shakedown sail. California proved to be a good training ground, and Baja taught us valuable lessons in coastal cruising. Sailing from San Diego to Cabo was a great shakedown and felt like our own private Baja Ha-Ha.
At our first stop in Ensenada we were greeted by a nice community of cruisers. Fellow Puddle Jumpers Curtis and Julie of SV Manna, who connected with Lauren on NOFOREIGNLAND (an app connecting cruisers), were waiting to catch our dock lines. We spent one night in Ensenada provisioning and treating ourselves to tacos as a reward for finally fleeing the United States. Between Ensenada and Cabo, we saw just one other sailboat in the rolly anchorages; Jack and Lauren used the lee cloth in the forward cabin to avoid getting thrown out of bed. We took the bad anchorages in stride, knowing there were many more to come, and that challenging seas lay ahead.
It was already late March, and sailing to La Paz or Puerto Vallarta would have eaten up time that could be spent on boat projects, of which there were many. Sailing down the Baja coast had checked all our shakedown-sail boxes, and we wanted to start the crossing as soon as possible to enjoy our time in the South Pacific before cyclone season. Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo had most of the boat parts we needed, and anything else was ordered online and brought in by family members who had come to send us off. We spent two nights docked in San Jose del Cabo to complete tasks that required flat water, like adding Spartite to better secure the mast to the deck. The slip also made it easier to load up, organize, and strip down the packaging from a mountain of provisions from the Cabo Costco. Lauren did an excellent job of categorizing and tracking every single morsel of food to ensure we would have more than enough nutrients for the entire offshore passage. The exorbitant slip fees discouraged us from staying any longer, so we spent the next few nights in Palmilla Bay, a lovely, quiet anchorage with beautiful, warm water and lively reefs.
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