November 2nd, 2011

Today was a rude awakening. I was shaken by Mike at some point; all I knew was that it was still dark outside. Of course I was completely disoriented and all I knew was that I was on the boat and it was dark outside. I did not put all the pieces together and remember that we were at anchor. Needless to say, I woke with a jolt and thought something was amiss. Mike then asked me if I needed to go to the bathroom before we started and at that point I was sure that I was still in a dream. I had no idea how all of this was supposed to make any sense. Soon enough I was informed that this was not a dream and it was actually 2:30 in the morning. When living with older men I have realized that they wake up at all hours of the night to go to the bathroom. Joe woke up to go on deck and in doing so he woke Mike up. They decided that since there was a bit of a breeze at that moment that we should all wake up and set sail. Talk about a rude awakening, especially when I had gone to bed at midnight the night before. And now I am about to go up on watch, not yet having the opportunity to catch a couple of zzz’s.

It turns out that the tactical decision to leave that early was ill-founded. Winds stayed up in the 14 knot range only for the first three hours and then it was back to light and variable winds. This seems to be the nature of the beast for this year’s Baja Ha-Ha. We made the most of the wind for as long as it lasted. El Capitan decided that we might as well sail quickly to nowhere than sail slowly or motor to somewhere. We reached off the wind and that worked for another couple of hours. It was hard going as we tacked back and forth down the rhum line toward Cabo. Eventually we had enough and centered the main, took in the jib, and turned on the engine. The winds continued to die and became so variable that the main was quickly dropped and the Whistle Wing became an empty stick, bobbing back and forth like a cork without any stabilization. We just motored south.

The day was uneventful. Our autopilot continued to give us problems so we had to hand steer for another 30 hours. Because we were motoring however, the boat was making its own wind. There was enough for the wind vane to at least steady out the steering and during watch I was able to get away from the helm enough to do my typical watch work out. Mike and I decided that we would keep track of the number of push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and dips that we do for this entire trip. It is a fun game to see who did the most strenuous workout during watch. You have to do something to keep your sanity and it also helps get the blood flowing and stay awake.