We are eight or nine hours from Cabo San Lucas, motorsailing at 6 kts. The moon is full and will set off the starboard quarter in two or three hours. Another of the Baha Ha-ha fleet is slowly crossing my wake a few hundred yards back, just on the edge of the pewter luster the moon is casting on the water. I have him on radar, but I prefer to watch his red mast light, which tells me I’m watching his port side. His 20-point white light, halfway up the mast, shows that, like us, he is motor sailing. The wind is Force 2 and there is a small following swell. All in all, one of the more comfortable and magic moments of this remarkable voyage.

I don’t mind at all the comforting sound of the diesel rumbling in the engine room. It gave us some fits in Santa Cruz, when it refused to run for a week, but the problem turned out to be a fuel filter I’d installed wrong, adding a gasket where none was required, blocking the ports the filtered fuel flowed from. So we can hardly blame the hardy Perkins. We have been running her at 1400-1500 rpm, and it pushes us along at 6 kts or so, at about 1.1 gallons per hour. If we were making the long passage to Polynesia, or some other long passage, we would not run the engine in such conditions, but since August 17, when we cast off the lines at Svendson’s Boat Yard in Alameda, often the decision has been to fire up the engine for three or four hours and make a safe anchorage or harbor for the night, instead of bobbing, sails flogging through a night watch. That’s been an easy call each and every time, and I expect it will be so for the next few months of cruising coastal Mexico.

We departed San Diego with Charlie and his nephew, Johnny. I suspected they would be good crew and they exceeded my expectations, quickly learning the controls for the chart plotter, radar, engine controls and other systems. Charlie’s aviation background and the US Sailing courses he’s taken gave him a real leg up, and Johnny’s bright and eager to learn and stepped up whenever he was needed. Cybele and I sat night watches the first night out, three hours on, three hours off, with Charlie and Johnny doing the same, toggling in 90 minutes after Cybele and I switched, so we each spent time with each of them. The next day we all felt comfortable letting Charlie and Johnny sit watch alone and the next two days and nights passed with each of us six hours off and two hours on. A far, far cry from pro-captain Tim’s schedule of four hours on and two hours off for our passage from San Francisco to Brookings a few years ago. However, the weather has been much more benign on this voyage and Charlie and Johnny doubled up so they were both in the cockpit for their watches. It’s been so beautiful at night with many boats of the Ha-ha lit up making similar tracks. Since I began this note, the sailboat showing the red port light has moved slowly across the moon’s polished wedge and is overtaking me to starboard. They must have the motor cranked cause I’m making 6.3 kts and she’s a smaller boat; a graceful little cutter, reefed main, no head or stay sail.

Now, the sun is rising, and with it, the silhouette of the cape appears, just off the port bow. We are dead on our rumb line for a waypoint a few miles off shore.

On our second day out from San Diego Charlie and Johnny got the fishing gear out and began trolling. I’d been in Catalina Island’s Isthmus Harbor over a weekend that coincided with an annual cruiser’s rally, and I attended a seminar on ocean fishing while under sail. From what I learned at that seminar, I bought a good stout rod and reel and appropriate lures, and it was not long before the reel sang out and Charlie brought up to the stern a fat tuna. Alas, one thing the fishing seminar did not cover was how to get a big fish over the freeboard. I’d looked at gaffs from time to time in the various chandleries we’d browsed as we prepared for our trip. Maybe, in the back of my mind, I did not expect to catch anything, so I vacillated and ultimately not provisioned a gaff. Charlie’s tuna came off as he tried to hoist it aboard. A couple hours later, a fine dorado made a similar escape. The second dorado was not so lucky. After losing the tuna and dorado, we decided to send Johnny down the swim ladder and hoist the fish out of the water by the tail. Charlie worked the rod, Johnny went down the swim ladder, I held onto his harness so he could lean out and grab the fish. Success! A 39-inch dorado in the cockpit. What I did learn in the fishing seminar was how to handle a fish without making mess. He went head first into a bucket, where we squirted some tequila on his gills (vodka was recommended but we only had gin or tequila and I was not giving up the gin) then cut the gills and let him bleed out in the bucket. I was a meat cutter for a period of time, and an avid fisher of catfish, crappie, bass and bluegill, so I know my way around a sharp knife and a fish’s anatomy. In fact, I’d brought my diamond whetstone and boning knife, and I put a good edge on it while the dorado was head down in the bucket. We covered the steering station with a plastic garbage bag and it took me 10 minutes or so to make a couple of fine dorado fillets. We cut up the carcass and, when a gull appeared, tossed him a scrap. Soon there were two gulls, then four, then eight. We attracted a dozen or more as we broke down the remains of the dorado and tossed them to the birds. After rinsing the area with a couple buckets of water pulled from the sea, there was no evidence of the crime, except the perfect dorado fillets in the fridge.

Cybele somehow made a fresh mango, tomato and onion chutney (yes, she provisioned all that) and I got the gas BBQ, mounted on the stern pulpit, going. We grilled one fillet and sat around the cockpit table for the best dorado tacos I’ve ever had. A good beer or a crisp Sauvignon Blanc would have been perfect, but we run a dry boat when at sea so fresh water goes down easily. (A few days later, Johnny made cerviche with the remaining fillet for a beach party potluck, adding only fresh lime juice, red onion and some salt and pepper. I can’t recall I’ve ever had a better cerviche, either.)

We spent three nights at sea, then dropped anchor in Turtle Bay, a sweet little town in a lovely bay south of Punta Eugenia. We spent two extra days in Bahia de las Tortugas, as hurricane Vance was spinning around off the coast of Acapulco and forecasters said it could, then it could not, but then again it could, make it as far north as Cabo. No matter. It was such a lovely spot, I could have stayed longer still. In the middle of the town’s dusty streets is a modern, Astroturfed baseball park; covered stadium seating, pitcher’s mound, bags for bases, a real home plate, the works. The Baha Ha-ha fleet has an annual free-for-all baseball game there (I think I counted 20 players on the field at some point, and a line 50 long to take a turn at bat. The Grand Poobah, as Richard, the publisher of Latitude 38, and organizer of the Ha-ha, likes to be known, organizes the game, and one of his rules is batters have to be male, female, adult, child on a regular rotation, so Cybele and the few other women batters, and many kids from town, were frequently moved to the front of the line. Cybele got a hit and got on base, then collided with one of the many fielders on her way to second and went down hard, thankfully not breaking anything. The next day, we wandered over to the ball park and watched a middle school game. We heard the locals kids were the regional champs and they beat the visitors in both games of a double header. It was great baseball. Very few runs scored, very few errors. The kids had all the right moves fielding, throwing and hitting.

We left Turtle Bay with winds forecast from the northeast at 15-20, and it was grand sailing for two days and nights. We had had a sailmaker add a third storm reef in the main, and it was the first time we’d used it, reefing well down on the main and jib for the night, giving up some speed for a more comfortable and easy ride. The autohelm has been working great, so we set the sails and watched the wind howl around us, feeding just enough power into the scraps of canvas to roll us down course on a broad reach at 5 kts. That was the first night. The second day the wind powered down. We shook out the reefs and, when a broad reach was pulling us too far off shore, set up the whisker pole on the genoa and went wing on wing, the main pushed out and a preventer set up avoid an accidental jibe. We rolled along effortlessly at 6, 7, 8, even 9 kts, and as the sun set, with winds forecast to diminish, left the rig rolling as the sun fell from view and the stars came up ahead of a waxing moon. But the wind did not diminish. It steadily freshened throughout the night and while I enjoyed the sleigh ride, as the wind pushed past 20 kts and gusted higher I was reminded that if you are thinking you should reef, it’s too late. Still the boat was cruising well, still making 8 knots down course to our destination. I sat longer watches both because I could not sleep hearing the roaring of the wind and waves and luffing of the sails when the swell tossed the mast and boom off the wind, and so that I could be on deck and alert if we needed to modify the rig quickly. After waiting some time, and hoping the wind would pipe down, neither Cybele nor I were comfortable with the power we were pulling from the wind, the boom occasionally banging when the main was backed and the sail slapped and snapped forward against the preventer. Sometime after midnight it was clear we had to reduce sail. C took the helm and I went forward with a headlamp and wrestled the pole down, furled the genoa, then reefed the main. By the time we’d finished, the wind had piped down and switched direction, so we were now sailing on a close reach and making only 4 or 5 kts. An hour or two later I had to start the engine to keep rolling to our destination, Bahia de Santa Maria, where lights from dozens of fishing boats made it look more like Long Beach, California. It was difficult to see the Baja Ha-ha fleet in the anchorage with all the fishing activity. We made a wide slow arc through the bay, avoiding the fishing fleet and found our way to the anchorage, anchored in the dark and rolled into our bunk at 4 a.m. In the light of day the fishing fleet was gone; what had been the end of a long couple of days for us was the beginning of the lobstermen’s day. After breakfast I went back to bed and slept until noon, having slept only four hours or so during the previous 24.

As planned, we made Cabo San Lucas and are enjoying the last day of the Baja Ha-ha, before we set out on our own, or in a loose federation with other cruisers, to explore coastal Mexico. We have a final beach party and awards ceremony to attend, and while we may not win any awards for our sailing speed, we expect to dominate the culminating event, the annual surf-washed From Here to Eternity Kissing Contest.