The 2001 "Baja HaHa" Begins Cassiopeia is off on another HaHa. Baja HaHa 2001, this years 800 mile ocean race from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, started on Tuesday, Oct. 30th, on a beautiful clear day which had been forecast for rain. We weren't sorry to see the weather guessers call that forecast wrong and I don't think any of the 100 or so boats in the race with us were either. We know it'll be warm and sunny in Mexico but freezing our butts off on rainy night watches to get there is not something we'd prefer to do. As we were leaving San Diego harbor to get out to the starting line for the race virtually everything the U.S. Navy owns was also leaving. Maybe it was a carrier battle group deploying to the middle east or maybe they had some sort of terrorist threat...we don't know...but we saw a carrier and at least a half dozen destroyers and missile frigates leaving and the sky was full of jets and helicopters heading somewhere out to sea all morning. As Cassiopeia was in the channel we saw the carrier coming up behind us a couple of miles or so and pulled over to the side to let it pass. These big Navy ships are always preceded by a couple of Navy or Marine high speed 25' inflatable gun boats who make sure that all the recreational vessels like us stay well clear....but they don't usually have the gun mounted and manned....today they did. In any case, we don't have to have a gun boat come after us to know enough to get out of the way of an aircraft carrier so the gun boat guys just gave us a friendly wave when they zoomed by. We gave them a thumbs up. At 11:00 AM the starting gun was fired and Cassiopeia was off to Mexico along with about 100 other boats containing probably 400 crew members. Our crew for the race is Anne and me, Dave, a good friend of ours who, along with his wife Char, sails with us frequently and Cindy, who has crewed with us before and is building up sea time to get a U.S. Coast Guard Captain's license. Cindy has spent the last two summers working on a 96' luxury crewed charter boat in southeast Alaska and has done numerous boat deliveries up and down the Pacific coast of the U.S. and Mexico. She has all sorts of Alaska adventure stories including a near sinking this summer when the skipper of her boat hit an uncharted Alaskan rock and we kid her that she's "pre-disastered." The race is run in 3 legs with the first leg from San Diego to Turtle Bay which is about 350 miles away or a little less than half way to Cabo. Our strategy is get as far offshore as possible, as quickly as possible, in order to try to find the heaviest wind. Cassiopeia is 65' long, displaces 80,000 pounds and is designed for round-the-world heavy air racing....if it turns out to be a light air race, a lot of other boats will have a distinct advantage. And, in fact, the forecast is for a light air race with some heavier winds inshore as the land heats up and pulls in air off the ocean during the daytime. We're skeptical about this forecast and decide to look for wind 80 to 100 miles offshore. Our major competition is a Swan 53 named Mistress. We know Tom, the owner, and he has a distinct advantage on this leg of the race even though Cassiopeia is a little bit bigger boat. He has a spinnaker and we're having problems with ours. A spinnaker is a huge colorful sail that looks like a parachute ballooning out in front of the boat when you're sailing downwind...it's the ideal sail for most of this race and we hope to have ours in operation for leg 2....but we won't have it for leg 1. Night watch; the first night. We're 60 miles offshore and we've found our wind. We've got a steady 18-22 knot wind tonight with occasional half hour periods of 25 knots or so and we're on a broad reach. These are just about ideal conditions for Cassiopeia and we're reeling off the miles in surprisingly flat seas...swells are only three feet or so. Mexico here we come. Tonight is Dave's first offshore night watch and he appears to be loving it...in fact, he's loving everyone's night watch. After his 9 PM to midnight watch he stays around to visit with me for awhile on my midnight to 3 AM watch and then, early in the morning, he's up to visit with Anne on her 3 AM to 6 AM watch. We may have to take him on as a permanent crew member...it's looking like we might not be able to get rid of him. Our heading is straight south although Turtle Bay is 350 miles away well to the south east. This means that as the land falls away to the southeast we get farther and farther offshore and into better wind until, by the second night, we're about 100 miles offshore. At about 30 degrees north latitude we jibe over to a southeast heading directly toward Turtle Bay and pole out our big genoa on port and set our main boom to starboard. This makes Cassiopeia look like she has wings on both sides of the boat and, in fact, sailing like this is called "sailing wing & wing". It's not as efficient as a spinnaker but, with almost 2200 square feet of sail polled out like this it's almost as efficient. By day two of the race we realize that most of the boats in the fleet have followed the weather forecast and stayed inshore. This far offshore we've only seen two other boats and both of them eventually decide to head inshore on day two. We continue on, wing & wing, with perfect wind and a heading directly toward Turtle Bay for the next 19 hours until a wind shift to the north makes wing & wing inefficient. We drop the pole and, 6 hours later, scream across the finish line at 9 knots on a port tack broad reach. Turtle Bay Finish Line: Cassiopeia's time for this leg is 49 hours, 2 minutes....and just as importantly, our major competition pulls in over an hour later! He's not flying his spinnaker so he might have, also, had some problems with it...we'll find out at the party tonight. Then, of course, there's the beach party tomorrow. Besides the perfect winds, that's one of the nice things about racing down the coast of the Baja peninsula on the Baja HaHa...partys after every leg of the race. Turtle Bay To Cabo San Lucas Turtle Bay is a great anchorage and a nice choice for the first stop on this years HaHa. We anchor in 25 feet of water with sand bottom that holds securely and spend a half hour getting our dinghy off the fore deck and into the water. We carry the outboard for the dinghy mounted on the stern rail and this takes 20 minutes of careful effort to lower onto the dinghy with a block and tackle. In the evening we cruise into the beach for the party at the Vera Cruz restaurant. It's great to be in Turtle Bay but this is not your regular Mexican resort town like Cancun or Puerto Vallarta. All the streets are dirt and the houses are not luxurious but the people, and especially the kids, are warm and friendly and we hand out Halloween candy to each one we meet as we walk through town. Several of the kids ask us to sign notebooks and try out their grade school English on us...we decide the notebook thing is a school assignment to get them to interface with all of us gringos from a foreign culture but we never find out, for sure, if this is the case....the kids' English is pretty limited...but a lot better than our Spanish. The times for the first leg come in and we find we beat the Swan 53 by over 100 minutes...but we got stomped by a boat named Blacksilver and by a Nelson Merrick 56 named Lear Jet that's in our class, and also by Raven, a Sundeer 64. We vow to beat them on the the next leg but we know that they're using Spinnakers... and we're not...and the chances are slim. We also beat almost all of the catamarans, most of whom were using spinnakers, and this makes Rennie very happy even though they're in a different class in the race. Day two in Turtle Bay is the beach party and this year the Fishing Co-Op from the town has put together a lobster barbecue for $7.00 per person...and it's great. We take the dinghy over to the beach and surf it ashore with NO PROBLEMA. This is sort of important to us because in the 1999 HaHa (with one of our crew members driving) we got caught in a wave, flipped the dinghy, and all four adults and two dogs went swimming. Worse, at the awards party at the end of the 1999 race we were given the humorous "Dinghy Submariners" award for our spectacular crash...so we were happy to get lucky this year and end up landing the dinghy through the surf line looking like pros. Leg two of the race is 230 miles from Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria and the forecast is the same as for the first leg. Light air building in strength close to shore as the sun heats the Baja coast and the rising hot air sucks in air from the ocean. Again, we're skeptical because it's just not that hot yet, and we tack offshore at the start to hunt for stronger winds on the open ocean. We quickly find them no more than 20 miles offshore but we continue straight south as the land falls away to the southeast until we're 60 miles or so offshore with steady 20-22 knot winds and, unfortunately, very confused seas. There are obviously two sets of wave patterns out here tonight and the result is a very rolly leg two. The wind is coming from directly upwind of our course to Bahia Santa Maria...and we don't have our Spinnaker in operation which would be ideal...and the rolling makes poling out the genoa "wing & wing" impractical. We try it anyway for awhile until the pole chafes through the the jib sheet (the line that goes to the sail) and then we take down the pole and fall off our course onto a broad reach. We're going to have to tack downwind on this leg and we decide to do just one tack out, jibe for the finish line, and take one tack in. This works fairly well for us and after a very rough and rolly leg two with 6 to 8 foot confused seas we cross the finish line JUST ahead of a Marquises 56 catamaran and almost an hour ahead of the Swan 53. The catamaran crew on "Dolce Vita" gives us a cheer over the radio as we cross the finish line a couple of minutes ahead of them and we give them a round of "Huzzahs" as they cross. Of course we, once again, got stomped by Lear Jet and Blacksilver and Falcon...but we console ourselves that tactics and, of course, a little luck, can beat their spinnakers any day. We need that day on leg 3. Bahia Santa Maria is a gorgeous anchorage, sheltered by a ridge of desert mountains with good holding in 25 feet of water and a sand bottom. There's no town of any kind here...just a Baja desert bay that's a well protected anchorage. We cross the finish line just at dusk and set the anchor a little after dark. Normally we don't like entering an anchorage after dark but this one is large and we're one of the first boats in so we have few obstructions to look out for and lots of room. The next day is the famous lobster fest party put on by a Mexican guy who is actually named Kojac and his crew from La Paz which is 100 miles or so away. Each year they put a whole restaurant, and a band, and a generator, and ice, and beer, and fish, and lobster for 400 HaHa people on a truck in La Paz and bring it all to Bahia Santa Maria. They charge $10US per person and the party and food is excellent. You park your dinghy on the beach and hike about 100 yards up hill to a ridge overlooking the anchorage where they've set up the whole restaurant and band and dance floor. It's an awesome setting for a great party and we become good friends with the whole Mistress crew (the Swan 53) as well as a couple of power boaters from a boat named Mikelali which is in the, humorously named, "No Comprende" class. Leg 3, at about 160 miles, is the shortest leg of the HaHa and it starts early so that the slower boats only have to do one full night at sea before getting to the finish line at Cabo San Lucas. We're up at 4 AM rigging the boat for the race...out of the anchorage at 5 Am and the start gun goes off at 6 AM. And it's hot. We're finally far enough south that we're getting tropical weather and the temperature at the 6 AM start is 80 degrees. Incredibly, the forecast is for light winds everywhere with some breeze offshore. We believe the last part of the forecast but it seems to us that, with the heat this morning, that the land will heat up and suck up some wind if we stay in shore...just as they erroneously forecast on the first two legs. So we sail down the coast about half a mile offshore and watch Mistress, Falcon and a few of the other faster boats from other classes tack offshore. Five hours later we're sailing nicely and the competition that tacked offshore early are sitting dead in the water. Falcon, the Sundeer 64, eventually drops out and motors to the finish line disqualifying themselves from their first place for the race.... and we beat Mistress again. Unfortunately Lear Jet and Blacksilver also sailed down the beach with us and, with spinnakers flying, beat us over the line the next day. Dolce Vita, the Marquises 56 catamaran, once again showed up close to us at the finish and we match-raced them to the line, crossing about 3 minutes ahead of them....with matching "Huzzahs" for each others crew on the radio as we crossed. We think Dolce Vita should get the "good sportsmanship" award if there is one. Clearly, we have to get our spinnaker in operation...but we're pretty happy with our performance and Cassiopeia's non-spinnaker speed...and it's time for the grand finale party in Cabo. After we set the anchor in the bay at Cabo, we bag up all our laundry, get together our grocery list, put together our papers for checking in and head into town. Dave's wife Charlene has flown into Cabo and we meet her right on time at a restaurant by the Cabo dinghy dock. Everyone has a job to do and we go our separate ways until we meet back at the boat in the afternoon for a much needed swim in the relatively cool 80 degree ocean water. Cabo is hot....almost 100...and we're still acclimated to the coolness of southern California and the open ocean. Tom, the owner on Mistress, calls us on the radio and invites us all out to dinner and, in the cool of the evening, we meet at Mi Casa, a great little restaurant by the old town square. Tom and his brother Ray and several other members of the Mistress crew have become friends of ours and it's fun to trade stories about the race. And then there's Squid Roe...which is THE almost indescribable, three level, dance bar in Cabo. This keeps us busy until after midnight and we collapse, exhausted, into our bunks back on board Cassiopeia. The next day is the HaHa beach party in Cabo and if it sounds like this whole thing is an exhausting round of racing and parties...it is. We're all exhausted from the night watches and the heat and the last thing we want to do is go to another party. But our new friends on Taka have given us several pounds of fresh Mahi-mahi that they caught and our new friends on Mikelali have given us several pounds of Ahi tuna that they caught and everyone wants to meet at the beach party. And it is a VERY good time. Richard, the publisher of the sailing magazine Latitude 38 which manages the race puts on a great beach barbecue for everyone and we finally get off the beach and back on the boat by late evening. Our HaHa 2001 is over...tomorrow we launch off for a central Mexico town named Barra de Navidad...370 miles and 2 and 1/2 days away...with no racing and no parties and plenty of time to slow down and relax. The Bar Of Christmas At 8 o'clock in the morning the anchorage at Cabo San Lucas is bright and sunny and hot...and there's not a breath of wind. It's already over 80 and several of the Cassiopeia crew take one last swim before the swim ladder gets pulled up and stowed away as we get ready to leave. Anne's job is to raise the anchor and she takes her position on the bow by the anchor windlass. Our anchor weighs 90 pounds and the half inch chain that connects it to the boat weighs over 3 pounds per foot. In calm weather we usually put out a length of chain equal to about 5 times the depth so, since we're anchored in 30 feet of water, we have about 150 feet of chain out that needs to be pulled aboard. We carry a total of 575 feet of chain. Anne starts the windlass and a few minutes later the anchor clatters into it's mount and we're on our way to Barra de Navidad. We raise the main sail even though there's no wind. The ocean always has a little roll to it even in calm conditions like these and raising the main helps lessen the roll and stabilize the boat as we motor along. Plus, just having it up makes us think that maybe we will get some wind. But we don't. By noon the temperature inside the cabin shows 92 degrees and 86% humidity and even the off-watch crew is on deck "soaking up the shade". Like many boats, if not all, our crew gave up wearing clothes on leg 3 of the HaHa when the temperature and humidity got tropical. Anything you try to wear in temperatures like this gets soaked with perspiration within minutes and smelly within hours. Birthday suits are a lot more practical and comfortable and they quickly become the Cassiopeia crew uniform of the day. We have a pump that takes in ocean water and pumps it to an outlet on the bow for hosing off the deck. We hook up the hose so everyone can go up and hose off whenever they want. The ocean water is 83 degrees so it provides a little relief from the heat and we put a couple of sail bags and some deck chairs in the shade of the mainsail for lounging or sleeping on. The cockpit is shaded by a Bimini top, a frame made out of aluminum tubing which is covered with fabric. All this allows everyone including the on-watch crew to be out of the sun. Someone is on watch at all times when we're underway and, with 5 people on board now, we set up a watch schedule of 2 hours on and 8 hours off. This is a pretty nice schedule...when Anne and I are sailing by ourselves we usually do 3 hours on watch and 3 hours off. But you start to get pretty tired after a couple days of that. It's unusual for us to have this many people on board for a 2 1/2 day passage and we quickly realize that having 8 hours off between your watches is great. Of course we have to modify that a little because Dave's wife Char, who joined us in Cabo, has never stood a night watch and needs to learn how to use the radar and what to look for and when to call the skipper. Dave and Rennie schedule themselves to alternate along with Char for her night watches and the boat settles down for two and half days of sailing...or motoring...to Barra. The land smells wonderful. It's early morning on the third day of our passage and I come on deck for my watch just at sunrise. It's already 80 degrees or so but the morning haze has yet to burn off. I can't see the Mexican mainland off to the east yet...just a huge maroon red sun sitting in the haze on the horizon...but I can smell it. It smells like cut grass, like jungle, like an incredible fresh greenness. We'll be in Barra by early afternoon today and, after we close the land, the morning will be spent cruising down one of the most beautiful stretches of coast anywhere...at least in our humble opinions. I take a quick tour around the deck looking for anything that might have gone ahoo during the night...chafed lines, loose equipment, etc. We still haven't gotten any wind and we've been motoring for 45 hours now so the deck is pretty well organized and everything's OK. I find a couple of small squid and a flying fish that came aboard during the night and, after the usual jokes about "free range calamari" and "suicidal sushi on the hoof", we toss them overboard. This coast is where the mountains meet the sea. The haze clears and we see jungle covered mountains stepping down toward us and breaking into the sea in craggy cliffs and off lying rocks. Some of these rocks are as big as skyscrapers and we know that not all of them break above the surface of the ocean. We've cruised along this coast several times and we think we know where most of the hazards are but we stay a couple miles offshore to avoid any that we might have missed when we reviewed the chart. But that's still close enough to take in the smells of the jungle and the sights of the mountains and cliffs and bays along this stunning stretch of coast. Our guidebook says: "Bar of Christmas was named by Mexico's first Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza when he arrived on this sand bar on December 25, 1540, to put down a bloody rebellion". Reading between the lines, we believe the "rebellion" part....those indians probably tried to do something really radical like avoid Spanish slavery or even elect their own leaders....but we suspect the "bloody" part didn't happen until the arrival of ol' Don Antonio his self. The history of the Conquistadors in the New World is not a story of gentle, quiet exploration. Still, we always think it's pretty interesting to be cruising where Spanish galleons anchored and to look around and realize that it didn't look much different then than it does now. As we enter the bay at Barra the old Spanish galleon anchorage is off on our left in an area now called Melaque. To our right the south edge of the bay is formed by a large, high sandbar that is perhaps 2 miles long and a couple of hundred yards wide and 30 feet above sea level. The town is built on this sandbar. Barra, obviously, means Bar or sandbar and it is this feature of the bay that suggested the name to ol' Don Antonio. Behind it is a huge tidal lagoon that is still filled with fish traps just as it probably was in 1540. The anchorage at Melaque, like most anchorages along this Mexican coast, is also still used by sailors like us today for the same reasons the Galleon Captains used it...it's protected from the ocean swells and the prevailing winds and the holding is good with a sand bottom. And they had a good reason to be here...by the late 1500's Barra was the center of Spanish Galleon shipbuilding on the Pacific coast due to the huge hardwood forests, now gone, in the mountains above the bay. We pass up the anchorage this time and head toward the channel that goes into the lagoon. This time our Barra de Navidad anchorage is the fabulous Grand Bay Marina and Hotel and we're stunned to be given a slip on "D" dock which is right up close to the multilevel swimming pool, bars and restaurants of the resort. In the past when we've been here the marina has been full and we've always gotten a slip on "A" or "B" dock with a looonnng walk to the pool. The marina is almost empty. There are only 4 large boats and another half dozen or so smaller cruising boats in the whole 200 slip marina. And the hotel turns out to almost empty also. This is one of the most spectacular resort hotels in Mexico with rooms built up the side of a cliff and multi-level swimming pools with slides between them and in-the-water palapa pool bars. And it's empty. The tourists haven't been coming since September 11th and the story is the same in the town on the Bar of Christmas. What was a thriving market town with shops and restaurants packed to the gills and a lively street scene with music and outdoor jewelry stalls is mostly quiet and shuttered. Each evening we eat at a different one of our favorite restaurants that are still open and go by our favorite Barra bar, La Azotea, (the Roof) which is a thatched roof palapa bar with a pool table and a great sound system on the roof of a building. Part of the bar is outdoors and the constellation of the Southern Cross blazes in the sky and Carlos Santana's "Smooth" blasts out of the speakers and we drink our beers and look down on the now quiet but once lively street scene below. The story here is the same as in Cabo where even Squid Row is only doing 10% of it's normal business...the tourists aren't coming. Arturo, the owner of La Azotea, tells us that he usually does $400 a night worth of business at this time of year and that now he's only doing 10% of that. His english is good...he worked in restaurants and bars in Reno for 4 years before he built La Azotea. He hopes the tourists will start coming during the American Thanksgiving holiday beginning next week...but he's just hopeful...and a little worried...not sure. We talk about the families of all the shopkeepers that are out of business in towns like Barra de Navidad and we think of all the people who were at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th of this year and we wonder, maybe like the those Indians here in Barra in 1540, how violent men from far to the east can have so much impact on the economic and personal lives of innocents in the name of a religion that teaches peace and the golden rule. And later, back at the Grand Bay hotel bar, we watch American war planes destroying Al Quaida and Taliban positions on CNN and talk about whether...or not...the golden rule can be about paybacks. Tenecatita Bay and Cabo Corrientes Bahia Tenacatita is a beautiful little bay just a couple of hours north of Barra de Navidad. It's mostly wilderness and, after fueling up the boat at Barra's new fuel dock, we head north to Tenacatita. The last time we were here was for New Years 1999 and there were 40 other boats in the anchorage along with us. Today we round the point into the anchorage and see just one other boat. One is better. We anchor in 25 feet of water with a sand bottom just offshore from where a small river flows out of the jungle and into the ocean. A long white sand beach stretches away to the east for a mile or so and the only sign of civilization is a hotel at the far end of the beach. The closest town is a tiny little village several miles away across the bay. It takes us a half an hour or so to get the dinghy unlashed from it's place on the fore deck, launch it and use the mizzen boom, with a block and tackle attached, to lower the engine onto the dinghy's transom. A block is what would be called a pulley anywhere except on a boat and we have a few older ones that we don't trust to hold up to heavy loads but that work just fine for jobs like lowering our 120 lb dinghy engine into place. Unfortunately, we shouldn't have trusted this block even for this job. The blocks' frame snaps when the engine is suspended out over the water and pieces clatter onto the deck. Luckily, the pulley stays attached to the boom and we're able to lower the engine onto the dinghy without losing it in the ocean. I pick up one of the pieces, offer it to the crew and ask: "Anyone want a chip off the old block"? I'm met with groans and people begin to throw stuff at me and I'm reminded, once again, of how easy it is to spark a mutiny with an offhand comment when you're dealing with a crew like this scurvy lot. Exploring the jungle river at Tenactita is a lot like exploring the one at Disneyland. In fact, it's so similar that you almost expect to have the Hippo come up up out of the water or even see ol' Walt his self around the next bend. We load our cameras and a few beers into our 12' inflatable dinghy and head for the river's mouth. The tricky part is getting into the river from the bay...the river's small and there's a sandbar that makes the entry shallow...but today we're going in at high tide and we make it after just touching the sand bottom once. The river widens out into a pool that's maybe 30' wide and it stays like this for half a mile or so as we move upstream. Mangroves line both sides of the river and the only noise is the smooth rumble of our quiet little four stroke engine. We see egrets everywhere and then several blue heron and even an osprey. At one point someone yells "There, there, there" excitedly and we see a 4' long iguana basking in the sun on a log. I turn the dinghy around and we come back for a photo op and the iguana poses nicely. He's not particularly pretty and we don't want him to come visiting in the dinghy so we turn and head again upstream into the jungle. A caiman is a reptile that's indigenous to the area and that looks similar to a small alligator. We assign Char be on "caiman watch." We tell her that you don't see them until they shoot up out of the water and into the dinghy and then it will be her job to grab them and flip them back into the water. She looks uncertain and we try not to giggle...the last time we were here we put my daughter Stephanie on "caiman watch" and got the same look. We made this up, of course, but a couple of days later we actually see a couple of caiman several miles from here on the other side of the bay and suddenly "caiman watch" seems like a very practical thing to do. The mangroves narrow in rapidly as we continue up the river. Now there is only room for the 5' width of the dinghy with about a foot of open water on each side. And they close in over head. We're moving thru a tunnel of green with the long mangrove roots hanging down on each side of the dinghy. There are no more birds or any animals in this area of the river...at least that we see. The river winds on for several miles like this and then begins to clear overhead and widen out...of course it's just the mangroves widening out...the river has been 30-50 feet wide or so the whole way. Finally we come out into a lake and the river continues on into the jungle on the far right end of the lake. We turn left, beach the dinghy on a sand bar about a quarter mile away and hike over a small hill to a beach on the ocean. The rivers' course has taken us, first, inland and then toward this beach on the open ocean several miles from our anchorage at Tenacatita Bay. There are palapa restaurants on the beach and we stake out a table in the shade at our favorite one, Gloria's, look out at the ocean and have a great lunch of the specialty de palapa, fish rolls, while we talk about our adventures on the jungle river. Back aboard Cassiopeia, at night, we watch the bioluminescence sparkle and paint the water around the boat. Very tiny animals in the water of this bay produce light in a manner similar to a firefly. When the fish that hide under our boat move they stimulate this bioluminescence and leave a light trail. Other little creatures light up as just a small, bright point of light and then fade over 2 or 3 seconds in every few cubic inches of water so there is a spectacular light show all over the bay. We all stand by the rigging, looking into the water, mesmerized. There's no light pollution since there are no towns around this area of the coast...and no moon tonight...and we have another light show in the millions of stars and shooting stars overhead. Tenacatita is just an awesome little anchorage. It's morning and smells of coffee and breakfast are coming up from the galley and out of the main companionway and drifting across the deck. We've been at Tenacatita for several days now and this morning it's time to head north toward Puerto Vallarta. Dolphin have come to visit us as we drink our coffee. There are four of them and one is a calf. They surface and dive right by Cassiopeia's side as they breakfast on the hundreds of fish hiding under the boat. The one that appears to stay by the young one has a notch taken out of her dorsal fin and we name her stubby...and another seems to have an unusually large number of barnacles along the sides of it's upper back...we call it crusty. The amazingly cool thing that everyone who has close encounters with dolphin experiences is that they frequently will roll on their sides and look right at you when they surface to breathe. These guys are no exceptions and we get the feeling that they're as curious about us as we are about them. One or two of them actually slide down along our anchor chain as they dive and we wonder if it's a way for them to get a nice morning backscratch or even to remove some of the barnacles. We raise the anchor, eventually, and get under way and they follow us for a quarter of a mile or so, as if to say "goodbye", or even "don't leave yet"....or maybe just to collect the last of the fish that are losing their hiding place as we leave Bahia Tenacatita. Cabo Corrientes. Cape of Currents. Mexico's Point Conception...Mexico's Cape Horn. This is where the prevailing northwest winds and southeasterly currents run up against the 7000' Sierra Madre mountains of the central coast and it's where the weather on this coast is the most unpredictable. We're 25 miles south of the Cape, motoring, on this hot windless day when we get the first hint of a breeze that we've had since we sailed into Cabo at the end of the HaHa several weeks ago. The wind goes from 2 knots to 12 knots in 10 minutes and Rennie goes on deck to help the on-watch crew put up almost 2000 square feet of sail. Finally. We're sailing again. Woo-hoo! 10 minutes later the wind speed has climbed to 25 knots and we're reefing and getting sail down as fast as we put it up just a few minutes ago. 20 minutes more and the wind is now gusting over 30 and rarely falling below 28 knots and the seas are building rapidly. Cassiopeia was designed and built for racing around the world and around Cape Horn so 30 knots of wind and 6 to 8 foot seas are not dangerous for us...but beating into them is not fun either. Cindy brings harnesses on deck for everyone and we all put them on and hook on to attach points. On the way south on the HaHa we had similar conditions often but we were broad reaching with the wind and seas...now we have to beat into them for 25 miles to get around Cabo Corrientes and into Banderas Bay and Puerto Vallarto. We tack hoping to be able to lay the cape which means to sail a straight line to it. Our jib is reefed and this leaves a roll of the unused sail ahead of the part that is drawing...and this is very inefficient. We need a sharp blade of a small jib up there to be able to sail into the wind efficiently and we don't have it. We're a cruising boat now, not a racing boat, and our large roller furling jib is the only one we carry anymore. We will need to do several tacks back and forth this afternoon before we can get past Corrientes. We're motorsailing...motoring with reefed sails up to help us point into the wind better and get around this cape a little earlier...and trying to clean up some of the mess below that happened when we tacked with a coffee pot on the stove that went flying into all the books that launched off our bookshelves. The seas are building further and I'm wondering if the wind will continue to build to 40 or 50 or higher...or worse...if something will break. Our alternate, or out, if this happens is always to just admit that the Cape has defeated us this time and turn downwind toward the anchorage at Chemela, 30 miles south...and try again tomorrow. The sailing would be smooth and easy going downwind but this is not an attractive thought when we can actually see the point of land up ahead that is Cabo Corrientes itself. On the other hand...this not fun. There is a precise nautical term for each part of a ship and for everything you do with a ship. The precise nautical term for what we're doing now is called: "Getting the Snot Pounded Out of You". But we make it...6 hours later we're past Cabo Corrientes and into Banderas Bay...the Bay of Flags...and we finally anchor at the La Cruz anchorage just after one o'clock in the morning with no more damage than the spilled coffee below...but with an exhausted crew. We sleep till late morning, clean up the boat and motor a few miles to the entrance to Paradise Marina at Puerto Vallarta...Cassiopeia's home for the winter. The Banderas Bay Regatta Bahia de Banderas or Banderas Bay was given it's name in 1524 by the Conquistadors who conquered the local Aztecs in the valley. The Spanish had flags and religious banners (banderas) flying from their ships anchored in the bay as well as from the battle staffs of the troops ashore. According to one of the Friars who chronicled the battle, the Aztecs surrendered as soon as they saw the Catholic banners. We think it's more likely that they surrendered when they saw the effect of Spanish cannon...but in any case, the banners flying from all the ships and must have been truly impressive. It takes little imagination to see it today when you look out at Banderas Bay. The Spanish used the bay and valley as a source of fresh food, water and wood for shipbuilding during their early explorations of Mexico. In the late 1500's an old English sea dog named Thomas Cavendish who was a contemporary of Hawkins and Drake attacked and burned the place to take the pearls which were plentiful in the area. Then, the next major historical event in the area was when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton filmed "Night of the Iguana" here in 1963...and the very next historically interesting event in the area was Cassiopeia's entry in the 2002 Banderas Bay Regatta. A regatta is a series of races and this year's 10th annual Banderas Bay Regatta took place over March 15, 16 and 17 and featured about 70 boats racing a 9.5 mile course every day. As we've mentioned before, we're cruisers, not racers...but this regatta is set up to be a race for cruisers and it includes parties each night for all the racing crews...so we couldn't resist entering with the goal of being the boat that has the most fun. Besides, it seemed like an excellent chance to give our brand new spinnaker sock a good work out and get to know exactly how to use it most effectively. (For our friends who aren't sailors, a spinnaker is the colorful 2200 square foot sail that balloons out in front of a boat like a parachute when the boat's going downwind. A sock is a long narrow fabric tube that slides up and down on the spinnaker to launch it by letting it expand into the wind or to douse it by pulling the sock over the spinnaker at the end of the downwind leg...or at least it's supposed to. Ours was an adventure.) CASSIOPEIA'S COMPETITION Cassiopeia is one of the biggest boats in the regatta...just like in the HaHa...but not necessarily one of the fastest. The competition in our class includes Lear Jet, a pure race boat who won our class in the HaHa, and Raven, a fast cruising Sundeer 64 whom we beat in the HaHa even though they used a spinnaker and we didn't. Also in our class are Elysium, an Andrews/Perry 72 that is rumored to be very fast; a J44 named Sabrosa that IS very fast and Kiapa, a Santa Cruz 52 that is also VERY fast. In short...we don't have a chance against any of these race boats except Raven...and, of course, Rennie always enjoys trying to beat the 50 & 60 foot catamarans like Profligate, Little Wing and Capricorn Cat who are much faster than us downwind but can't sail as well going upwind. The cats aren't in the same division we are...Rennie just likes racing against them. We know the owners of all these machines and they're the boats and people we'll be watching all around the race course. CASSIOPEIA'S CREW Our crew for all three days of the regatta will be Rennie & Anne, with Anne running the port jib sheet winch and Rennie rotating between steering and working the fore deck when it's time to put up or take down the spinnaker. Mark & Sandy from their 40 foot boat Kuuipo will crew with us with Sandy working the starboard jib sheet winch and Mark alternating with Rennie on steering and fore deck. Mark is a sailing instructor from the San Francisco Bay area and Sandy has an MBA and has worked extensively for the Air Transport Association. Mark, also, is a free lance writer who is covering the Regatta with article writing assignments from Sail Magazine and Sailing Magazine. Greg & Cherie from their 41 foot boat Scirocco will crew with us with Greg working fore deck and managing the new spinnaker sock and Cherie working the mizzen sheet and rotating to the fore deck. Greg is a former internet wizard and before that an Army diesel mechanic. Cherie is a valedictorian graduate of UCLA who ran an automobile dealership before giving up the working life for sailing. We first met Cherie when she crewed on the Swan 53 Mistress during the HaHa. Annette is a professional chef who works on large motor yachts and has crewed on Cassiopeia numerous times and been mentioned in past Chronicles. Annette will work main sheet during the race plus she puts in at least an hour and a half early each morning making DELICIOUS sandwiches for everyone. And last, but far from least, John and Ben from Santa Cruz, Ca. These guys are working John's boat north toward Santa Cruz and John, a building contractor, has experience racing on big boats in Santa Cruz. Ben, another silicon valley success, has virtually no sailing experience but he is a HUGE guy with a heart of gold...he even goes over to talk to the baby tigers in the zoo next to the marina after every race. We instantly sign them on for the race when we meet them and they quickly become a force majure on Cassiopeia's fore deck with both of them rotating back to the cockpit to grind the genoa sheet winches on the upwind legs. RACE #1 Our course for all 3 race days will be a triangle with the first leg of the triangle going directly upwind. When we complete the triangle we then sail the upwind leg again, make a 180 degree turn and sail directly downwind to the finish line. This makes the course 5 legs equal to 9.5 miles. Of course, no sailboat can sail directly upwind so on leg 1 and leg 4 we have to tack to get upwind to the mark. This lengthens the course by a few more miles. We get a good clean start on starboard tack in a parallel line with all the boats in our class. We quickly flop over onto port tack because we know the right side of the course has heavier wind and everybody in our class follows us except Raven...who drives off on their own toward the center of the course. I calculate a lay line to the windward buoy and Mark, who is driving for this race, tacks on it. And when we get there...Raven is far behind. Of course, the pure race boats in our division like Lear Jet are way ahead of us....but we're happy to be ahead of Raven again. The next leg is a reach with the apparent wind a little forward of the beam and the third leg is the 2.4 mile spinnaker leg on a broad reach. Our spinnaker is in a brand new sock built by ATN that we just got from North Sails and it begins giving us trouble. It sticks and won't go up...but Greg and the fore deck crew eventually get it going. Raven has a better spinnaker set but is still well behind us and we look pretty good sailing the downwind leg. At the mark...the sock sticks again when we try to get the spinnaker down and this costs us several minutes...but eventually we're sailing to windward again with Raven well behind and not pointing as well as Cassiopeia. Then we lose our lead. At the windward mark the damn spinnaker sock REALLY jams when we try to launch the spinnaker and it takes us most of the two miles to the finish line to finally get it flying. Raven sails right past us while we're all wrestling with the sock on the fore deck and we end up with 6th place. Oh well, we say. We'll organize this new spinnaker sock at the dock and smoke 'em tomorrow. RACE #2 Saturday dawns clear and windy and we leave the dock early after hoisting the spinnaker sock and making sure nothing inside is twisted. We sail out to the race course and try a spinnaker set in the 20-22 knot winds over on the windy side of the course...and it's a mess. The end of the sock is an oval piece of fiberglass called the "bell" that's supposed to slide freely up and down the spinnaker. For some reason it always tilts and the spinnaker cloth jams. It not only doesn't go up the spinnaker easily...when we finally get it up, we can't get it down. Eventually we do get it down and we decide not to use it in today's heavier winds. The course is the same as yesterday and once again we're ahead of Raven when we cross tacks on the windward leg. Our problem this race is that we decide to use a handheld GPS to find the windward mark instead of the primary GPS track plotter that's built into the nav station. The handheld doesn't work and we're left guessing where the windward mark and the layline are...and this costs us several extra time consuming tacks. Plus, of course, not having the spinnaker sock working well enough to launch it in this much wind is another problem. We rig the genoa out on the pole and sail wing & wing on both of the downwind legs but it's not enough to keep Raven or all the large catamarans behind us. They all power by us on the downwind legs...but...we beat the super-fast J44 Sabrosa because their problems cost them more time than our problems cost us in this race. That's racing...we get a 5th place for race number 2 and pull into the dock with the crew laughing, high-fiving and chanting loudly: "Second to Last, Second to Last, Second to Last." Then, at the dock, we start a crew party that ends up with everybody having the letters of "Cassiopeia" written on their chest in shaving cream...and we march, in letter order, down to Profligate, which is owned by the publisher of Latitude 38 sailing magazine, to have our picture taken. It's now on their website at: http//www.latitude38.com Click on the flashing box that says "Lectronic Latitude" and then click on March 20th. RACE #3 This was our race and everything went our way from the first windward mark...all the way to the finish line...where disaster struck just after we crossed. We tacked on our lay lines. We trimmed Cassiopeia well and got her in the groove on the windward legs...and we rounded the buoy going into the last downwind leg with all 3 of the big catamarans plus Raven and the Andrews 72 Elysium all well behind us...and Rennie has the photo! At the finish line we were only 4 minutes behind Lear Jet, we beat Raven by 14 seconds and the Andrews 72, Elysium, by a minute and a half. Plus...we beat the 62 foot catamaran Profligate by 7 minutes, the Perry 52 cat Little Wing by 6 and a half minutes and the overall winner of the catamarans, Capricorn Cat, by almost 11 minutes! We were ecstatic. The spinnaker sock jammed again but had gone up and down on the first downwind leg with a lot of work...at least we got it flying. Putting it up at the beginning of the last downwind leg took longer and was even harder. After we crossed the finish line, however, it was a different story. We could NOT get the spinnaker down. Then the fiberglass bell of the spinnaker sock jammed. Then it broke in half! This ripped the top 3 feet of the spinnaker to shreds and virtually tied the shreds of the spinnaker to the bell of the sock only a few feet below the top of the mast. Even worse...the finish line had been set only a few hundred yards off the beach so that the tourists on shore had a nice view of all the boats starting and finishing the race. This gave Rennie, at the helm, only about 200 yards of downwind sailing after the finish line before he was in only 15 feet of water that was shoaling fast...and had no choice but to turn across the wind with the spinnaker sock shredded and jammed at the top. When that happened, virtually every line on the boat started flailing in the wind and wrapping themselves, tightly, around the end of the spinnaker pole. What a mess. We started the engine because we were so close to the rocks at the harbor entrance with this problem but we recognized that we couldn't put it in gear without risking wrapping a line around the prop and making a bad situation even worse. We had, long before, released all the lines going to the spinnaker but they were so tangled from turning across the wind that nothing ran free and our spinnaker was blowing out to leeward in a tangled mess. Then, the spinnaker went in the water and pulled aft on the pole which, with the fore guy released, promptly bent when it hit a lower main shroud. At this point the fore deck crew just disconnected the bent pole from the mast and dropped the whole mess, pole, sail and all, in the water. Then, with everything out of the wind, and the boat stopped, they slowly pulled line after line, spinnaker-handful after spinnaker-handful and finally the pole, up on to the deck. Greg and John and the rest of the foredeck crew did an outstanding job in a bad situation caused by a faulty spinnaker sock and Anne and I are REALLY happy they were crewing with us. What a race. Not only had we sailed a great race and gotten a 4th...we had even provided unmatched entertainment for at least 15 minutes for the crews of all 70 boats in the race as well as hundreds of tourists just a couple of hundred yards away on the beach. We're cruisers...not racers...but does racing get any better than this? THE GRAND FINALE PARTY Coming into the harbor after the 3rd race, crews from all the boats are cheering us and back at the dock a couple of dozen crew members from every boat in our division and several others come by to hear the story. Richard, from Profligate brings by a case of beer and ice and hands it out to all the Cassiopeia crew...a photo op I missed, unfortunately. Annette and Sandy from our crew put the bent spinnaker pole on the dock along with the shredded spinnaker and sock. And, with blue tape they print: "Got Viagra?" on the pole just before the bend...with a little frowny face just after the bend. Then it's time to get cleaned up and head for the Grand Finale Party. All dressed up, the whole Cassiopeia crew picks up our spinnaker pole and marches to the party to a chant started by Cherie, our UCLA valedictorian. Left....Left....Left, Right, Left.... My boots are heavy, My belt is tight. My balls are swinging, from left to right. Left....Left....Left, Right, Left.... We have a Cassiopeia crew table reserved front and center by the swimming pool overlooking the ocean and we place the pole on display near our table. Crew members from other boats come by all evening to take a look and, when the party REALLY gets going, our crew picks up the pole and marches into the shallow end of the swimming pool for a photo op for the 400 or so crew members from the 70 boats. And finally, when Raven's crew gets mentioned by the Master of Ceremonies we chant: RAY-VEN...RAY-VEN...RAY-VEN...to applause for Raven from all the other boats. Jan, the owner, has a really well put together and organized boat and we have immensely enjoyed trying to stay ahead of them in the HaHa and this years Banderas Bay Regatta. --- --- --- --- --- --- We got a 6th, a 5th and a 4th place in our division plus we beat all the big catamarans on the third day and we're not even racers. We set out to be the boat that had the most fun and the race fleet was calling us "The Fun Boat" by the end of the regatta. We got some great pictures for the Cassiopeia website that we'll be building this summer, we broke some easily repaired equipment, we had no injuries and we made a lot of new friends. We had a ball and we'd do the Banderas Bay Regatta again at the drop of a spinnaker... But now it's time to head up into the Sea of Cortez to decompress and spend some time....just cruising.