The Baja Peninsula Part 1 - Onboard Lifestyle ep.181

Previously on Onboard Lifestyle, we leave San Diego early to make the 65 nautical mile run to Ensenada, Mexico. The crew is screened by the health department before we can leave the boat to check in with Lynn finally gets her wish, and the crew feasts on various street tacos with no complaints. Emma saves an injured bird that nearly drowned, and we make the final connections to our autopilot in preparation to make the long journey down the outside of the Baja Peninsula. The girls head into town to re-provision basic, Emma finally finds a full-size violin, and we depart Ensenada and set the autopilot to take the helm as we sail to our next destination. Baja California is a rugged 840 mile long peninsula that extends southeast from California. Once you leave San Diego, there are only two ports that have marinas. Your first stop, Ensenada, and your last, Cabo San Lucas. Most everything in between is a series of roadstead anchorages on the protected side of a point or a barren island. There are very few all-weather anchorages, so this keeps most sailors moving swiftly and making big strides when the weather is in their favor. The first leg from San Diego to Ensenada was covered in our last video, so we will be picking up from there. Well, all nighter. It wasn't so bad, it was just so uneventful. I know, it's just like, it's doldrums around here at night. It's glass smooth out here, but the bonus? Who's your new best friend? My audio book. No, your autopilot! We've been running the autopilot, it's our first real test. It's been running now for... It's been working flawlessly, actually. 20 hours. I think that's also because we've had very, very calm conditions. Yeah, well if it was rough, I would be using it, but... Okay, we're 10 miles from heading our way around a volcano. Adorming. Come on. Just erratic. And then probably 20 miles from setting the hook in San Quintin. Daylight should be about 40 minutes away. Here we are on the approach to San Quintin. This little bit of mountain top here in the background. We hook around that into a massive bay. Once we round the point, it's about three miles to get into the bay. The bay's got to be, I don't know, five miles across. Plenty of room. It's supposed to be a little bit of wind tonight, so it'll be a good place to hide out. Wish we had a little bit of wind right now, but we don't. It's how it is around here. Boy, it just seems to die off in the middle of the night. Okay, right here, that's the extinct volcano Isla de Martín. We're gonna cut right through there. We're probably 15 miles away now. Just a few hours. But boy, nice to have the sun up. It was a dark night. It is our last night here. It's kind of disappointing because we were really hoping to explore this area a little bit, but it's been so windy that we were kind of stuck inside doing some chores, taking care of some business. Yeah, just kind of getting caught up on everything. But we did have a really nice meal last night because Teal caught that bonito on the way in. It was this big. He was like, oh come on, give me a little credit. So Lynn has the easy part. I fought this sucker. All she has to do is kill it, clean it, and cook it. Look at this. Look at these nice fillets. Man, beautiful. Now I'll make a fish stew out of the head. Not bad, some waste, but... No, let me use it. I want to catch a halibut with some of this. Really? Yeah, cut me off a couple of those chunks. Not gonna say no. It was enough food that we fed ourselves. We gorged on this fish last night, and it was enough to share with other boats in the anchorage. Yes, so we want to pay it forward because we've had so much luck with having all these generous fishermen give us a portion of their bounty that we decided to share ours as well. There's two boats right now at anchor with us. There is Mengsi, who we shared it with, and then another boat that came in and we didn't get a chance to meet up with them, but yeah. Maybe next stop. We're actually trying to give Compass a little bit of extra love because we are so bad. It turns out we missed his birthday a couple days ago, but in our defense, we were underway. Oh, in our defense, we miss it every year. Not every year. Well, I think we missed it last year. No, we did that. I'm not sure. Anyway, he'll get a little extra treat in his kibble. Well, one more extra kibble. One more extra kibble. Happy birthday to you. So we're just kind of taking it in tonight before we set off again tomorrow. It's going to be a hundred and... About 135 miles straight shot from San Quintin to the north anchorage of Cedros Island. Isla Cedros. So that should be fun. And it's going to be a nice night, right? Yeah, it should be. The moons get a little brighter. As long as we don't have the fog. We woke up to big fog this morning. Didn't burn off till noon. So hopefully we'll wake up tomorrow morning. It'll be just clear and we'll be ready to go. And beautiful. And I'm looking for some warmer temps, guys, because this is ridiculous. Chasing the sun. I'm chasing the sun. We all are. Good morning and it is departure day again. This is already starting out to be a beautiful day. A little bright, but no fog. And it's going to be 135 nautical miles down to Isla Cedros. So we are all pumped and ready and excited. The passage from Quintin to Cedros was mild with very little wind. Our choice was to wait for more favorable conditions at anchor for four more days or just make the run to Cedros. We decided to make the passage under sail with one of our two Yanmar engines running to keep BASIC moving efficiently towards the island. At 2000 RPMs, we can push through the water at around four knots, burning less than 0.5 gallons per hour. We alternate the engines every six hours over the course of the next 33 hours. Fuel is hard to get and expensive along this coast. So conservation is important. Okay, we're coming across the Bahia Sebastian Vizcano. We're about 45, 50 miles offshore right now. Heading over to Isla Cedros. Another hour and seven knots. Yeah, getting close to making it through the night again. We've been kind of switching off and on ships two to three hours each, kind of working our way through the night. And it's been good. We're without the wind. The sails are up, but they're just flopping. So we're in no rush. The daylight's still an hour away and we're only 27 miles to Cedros. Yay. Okay, make some coffee. We need it. As the sun rose, it was a welcome sight to see Isla Cedros appearing so close. But this is a large island that seemed to creep towards us at a glacial pace. Okay, something happened. We thought this was going to be a very pleasant passage. And we were in the home stretch until we heard a noise. Just all of a sudden... It sounded like a gasket to me. Lynn was inside. I was at the helm and this engine just started free spinning or something. Just an unusual noise. We don't know. Sounded like the propeller fell off. We are literally about 10 miles from the anchorage off of Cedros Island. So we just shut everything down. I'm going to poke a camera down there and see what's going on. We are 750 miles from a haul-out facility at this point. Hey, don't go to worst case scenario. I know. Fingers crossed, crew. Fingers crossed. I don't see your fingers crossed. You ready for this? I'm ready. Okay. Boy, the water's clear, I can tell you that. Should we just get in the water? Not yet. Let me see what this shows. And then you'll reassess? We'll know in a second here. Let me fly it back right here. That was a big sigh. Come on, come on. Look at that. It's a blade? We hit seaweed. A big patch of seaweed is on it. That's it? That's it. Huge clump. Yes. That's what it is. It sounded worse. That's it. I told you don't, don't leap to the worst case scenario. Okay, let's go. I'll fix that when we get in. Okay, so we're back at it. Honestly, this is, uh, we love this area and we hate this area. This, the last time we were here, the last time we came through, we actually, we hit a whale and it put an eight foot crack in our trimaran. So that was, you know what? We actually anchored right off of here. Right there. That's where we had to anchor it to assess and get the water out of the hull. And then we had to go into Turtle Bay to do the repairs. Remember that? I do remember it. I think we have some pictures of that. So pretty here, but let's get out of here before something else happens. I know. All right, let's get out of here. It was still early enough in the day and our plan to anchor on Isla Cedros North Anchorage changed. A light breeze had come up from the Northeast. So it was an easy call to keep pushing another 20 miles to anchor on the south side of the Cedros Village breakwater. This anchorage would be much calmer for me to dive on that fouled prop. Besides, the crew was looking to rest and take it easy before the next leg to Bahia Tortuga. What's the depth? 17 and a half. Okay, I'm just dropping it right here. So much work to get all for two minutes in the water. Oh my goodness. Much warmer? No, it's cold. Oh my gosh. So was it just how the kelp was tangled in the sail drive? Yeah, it was just like a long rope strand of kelp and it just had wound way up on it. Thank you. No, thank you. Okay, I think it's time to relax. I'm not saying anything. You look cute. Graceful. I absolutely loved that anchorage last night. That anchorage? This anchorage? I mean, we drifted six feet on our anchor. It was just flat, calm. I wish we could stay a little bit longer. I know, we would stay another day, but this is a port of entry and if we did, we would have to go into town and check in with the port captain. We called him by VHF radio and he said not a problem. Spend the night and go in the morning, but any longer now, we'd have to fill off some paperwork. So you guys ready to hit Bahia Tortuga? Emma's anxious to jump in the water for the first time. The water is clear, you guys. I can actually get in now without being scared. We're anchored in 17 feet of water and you can lean over and look at the bottom. What do you think? Awesome. Do you notice how Teal's voice gets higher the more excited he gets? It's not that high. I'm so excited to swim. I know. You want to jump in before we go? Thanks for watching this week's episode of Onboard Lifestyle. If you liked our video, don't forget to give us a like and subscribe to our channel. These videos are made possible by the support of our amazing patrons. Join the crew if you can. This is the first few legs of our journey down the Baja coast and we are loving what this beautiful rugged coast has to offer. Come back next week to see another awesome new video. See you then.