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Surfing the Baja Ha-Ha Aboard ‘Sweetheart’

The Santa Cruz 52 Sweetheart is on the cover of our December issue reaching south in a nice breeze and with a beautiful asymmetrical spinnaker. But her crew did more than just sail. In our current issue, crew members Jeremy Snyder and Maddie Zug (who are planning to do the Ha-Ha on their own boat) wrote about finding the surf in Turtle Bay and Bahia Santa Maria.

Jeremy Snyder catching a wave off Bahia Santa Maria.
© 2025 Maddie Zug

The story starts, “In addition to the 30th annual Baja Ha-Ha being the year of fishing and spinnakers, we did our best to make it the year of surfing.

Mike Johnson, Jeremy Snyder, and Michael Aldridge hold up a 65lb yellowfin that took them an hour to reel in and fed the crew of Sweetheart for the rest of the trip!
Mike Johnson, Jeremy Snyder, and Michael Aldridge hold up a 65-lb yellowfin that took them an hour to reel in. It fed the crew of Sweetheart for the rest of the trip!
© 2025 Jeremy Snyder

“Our journey began in the San Diego airport trying to convince an Uber driver that, yes, an 8-foot board would definitely fit in the back of his car. We were thrilled to be crewing the Ha-Ha on Sweetheart, a Santa Cruz 52 skippered by Sally and Michael Aldridge. Their partnership with Al Ramadan, known as Crystal Voyager Expeditions, had a distinguished history of surf exploration across the Pacific. We were eager to contribute to this legacy. When we asked them about flying a board out from Berkeley for the journey, their reaction was immediate: “Bring it!”

That’s a good start to any sailing, surfing, fishing story. Read the rest of the story here.

Sailing

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