The Profligate Baja Bash

When you live the life of the Wanderer and Doña de Mallorca, just about every minute counts. Thus our 1,000-mile Bash from Vallarta to California — actually only to Ensenada so far — with Profligate was all about getting the job done as quickly as possible. Thanks to 56-hp Yanmar diesels #1 and #2, the trip was completed in five days and three hours, with the only stop being one hour for fuel at Turtle Bay. As you may have deduced, we didn’t have any really bad weather, just some late-afternoon to mid-evening chop/slop so the hulls could get in a little pounding.

It would have been nice to have had some additional crew, as three-on/three-off for five days can get a little tiresome, particularly just before dawn. The problem with getting crew is delays caused by multiple schedules. As they say, ‘He who travels fastest, travels alone’. With speed being paramount, the Wanderer and de Mallorca took off without crew.

When traveling 1,000 miles mostly north, a lot of variety in weather was to be expected. We departed La Cruz at 5 p.m. on Thursday. It was hot and humid with rain and lots of lightning. That night there was so much lightning it was like a flashback to the light show at The Who concert at the Fillmore Auditorium in the early ’70s. It was clear and calm when we passed Cabo about midnight on the second night. Pass up rockin’ Cabo on a Friday night? It was hard, but we did it. Falso was as calm as we’ve seen it. We swept through Bahia Santa Maria on the third night to pick up some weather info from Banda Ancha, then continued north. We arrived at Turtle Bay at dawn of the fourth day and, after about an hour, were able to rouse some folks at Gordo’s for fuel. The fourth night was spent scraping Sacramento Reef. To our mind the worst part of most Bashes is the jump from the north end of Isla Cedros to Sacto Reef, as the current is against you and pushes you toward shore. Old-timers will remember Sacto Reef as the one that claimed the great 161-ft schooner Goodwill many years ago, as well as the lives of 11 crew. We arrived at Cruiseport Marina in Ensenada a little bushed as the sun set at the very beginning of what would have been the fifth day at sea. Not a bad trip at all.

About the first two people we saw there were David Crowe and his sweetheart Barbara of the M&M 70 catamaran Humu-Humu. Crowe says they sailed the offshore route from Mazatlan to Ensenada. "One tack out and one tack back in in seven days." Motoring up the coast of Baja isn’t that good an option for the big cat, as she’s powered by outboards.

Did we learn anything on our trip north? Yes. Thanks to incredible powers of observation, we learned that once you get north of the tropics — technically just south of Mag Bay but nominally just north of Mag Bay — you run into three unpleasant things: fog, seaweed and cold water. Yeech! Makes us glad that we’ll be heading back to the tropics as part of the 20th Baja Ha-Ha in late October.