Bahia Stupid
Motoring is, fine. You’re going the exact direction you hope to, at least usually, and it usually means its calm out. Wind makes waves see, and if there’s wind, you’re sailing. If there’s no wind, you sometimes have to motor, but no wind means hopefully no waves. Motoring is loud, sailing yachts have their refit tractor engines inside, down below, usually in some box, vibrating and chugging away letting the fish below know a repurposed cultivator is passing above. It is a bit of a contrast to the usual serenity and silence that comes along with sailing where the only sound is water moving past the hull and that strange whistle sound standing rigging makes. Well, the sound of water, the whistle, and the sound of Mr. Murphy chattering away to himself back there as he steers Karma in our case.
Motoring away from San Quintin one paddleboard lighter had us wondering why we were doing this in place of waiting for wind which we knew would be coming in the evening for a few days. Turtle Bay being some 100 plus nautical miles away is already an overnight trip, lets just pull into the next little bay this evening, sleep the night, and leave with wind early in the morning. Once again, dusk approaches and we are still 3 or so miles out. We approach what we have taken to calling “Bahia Stupid”, as the real name isn’t worth remembering, right as it gets dark enough that the fish nets and buoys sitting and waiting to foul ones propeller only show up when they’re 30 feet in front. Its a harrowing entrance. We zig and zag and turn and, oh I didn’t mention, for some reason there is a huge swell rolling in here which makes it hard to steer at the Yanmar cultivator’s tickover speed we are forced to go in order to not run straight through what must be about a million fish traps in this bay. Somehow we don’t wrap the prop in the maze of booby traps and find there is another sailboat hidden in here. Fog has set in now also so our depth of field is totally out of whack and we can tell we are close to this boat but are afraid to go any further as pressing our luck driving around this mine field seems foolish having escaped harm thus far. “That poor yacht” I think to myself after the anchor is down and Karma is rolling hugely from side to side, “they must have come in here just like us and haven’t been able to find their way out of this labyrinth. They’ve probably been here years!”
The wind kicks up overnight, always good when motoring to have the wind kick up, but not always good when you’re tucked in Pan’s Labyrinth in the fog bouncing around on anchor. I guess we sleep technically, but we are up early once there is a hint of light in hopes of escaping. Thankfully we can see now 60 feet in front of us, and with our skills learned dodging with 30 foot visibility last night this seems easy. I didn’t catch the other boat’s name, but I sure hope they’ve escaped. If someone knows their name let us know, I’ll send our breadcrumb track out of the maze for them.
It sure is a relief to be out of Bahia Stupid and have it fading behind us. As we pass the point the waves really pick up and as it turns out, the westerly wind forecast is more of a south-westerly forecast, meaning, we are to be sailing right on the wind. Now, I’m not exactly sure how this is possible, but as I recall this to write for you, dear reader, it seems to me that it was just continually night. We pulled out of the bay early in the morning straight into night time, fog, wind on the nose and therefore big bouncy Pacific sized waves on the nose, and to top it all off rain. All the reefs in Karma is heeled hard over bouncing and slamming into the waves while everything below is squeaking and banging and falling over. Mr Murphy during my shift decides to stop steering as well, he also hates these conditions apparently, and now we are having to hand steer through the night without the ability to leave the tiller. Gah I hate that bay.
We switch and I relay the bad news to Co-Captain Berg that Murphy is on strike and we are steering. At least we are heading roughly the right direction. We plan to go right into Turtle Bay which is pretty much a bomb proof anchorage for all conditions, just it was a 24 hour sail away. Down below I lay in one of Karma’s aft beds and join the dance of everything inside and bounce and slam around myself. “Is the boat even up to this? Am I even up to this? This seems silly and maybe even a bit dangerous” I’m thinking as I fall asleep.
Like everything when sailing though, it always changes to the complete opposite pretty soon after. It feels like that went on for a week but the fact that 2023 has the same pages in this calendar as 2024 does makes me think that part is imaginary. The following day was sunny, wind coming over our stern quarter, and Karma is happily sailing and surfing along on her favorite point of sail. We are still hand steering but its fun when the conditions are like this. Good times though of course fly by and the next thing I remember is the wind is gone as we are approaching Bahia Tortugas. No worries, crank up the cultivator, but of course its once again pitch black and 2am. Looking at the charts and reading the cruising guides for the area make this seem pretty straight forward. This is one of the most visited anchorages on this coast and therefore has tons of info about the depths, channel, entrance, everything and its flat calm out. What made it a little harrowing is the knowledge that during the Baja Haja a few months prior, a rally that goes down the west coast for first time cruisers to go down together in a flotilla, a boat had straight up crashed and sunk when entering the bay… At night.
With this on our minds we were paying extra attention, but it was an easy entrance. Since this we’ve learned more about the boat which sank, and boy oh boy is that a story which is not mine to tell but lets just say it was more a case of IQs matching shoe sizes and egos matching normal IQ numbers. Once in the bay its really calm and the lights of the small town show on the north end of the horizon. There appears to
