Ha-Ha: Leg 2

Leg two started off with the most beautiful sunrise.  Everyone was sailing out of the anchorage under their spinnakers, so the warm glow of the sun was really making all the spinnakers shine out on the water. Really, really breathtaking.

 

Right away all the other Ha-Ha-ers were reporting on the radio that they were catching squid and fish (dorados mostly) and seeing whales and dolphins.  We did not catch or see anything. I wasn’t bitter or anything.  :-p

This time we were able to keep up with most of the fleet for the first day, but by morning we were once again “alone” with hardly any other sails on the horizon.  We could hear everyone on the radio though, so we figured we weren’t too far behind.

Because of the generator issue that we discovered at the end of leg one, we had to conserve power much more on leg two.  We didn’t want to run the engine, so we hooked up our monitor wind vane steering (Windy) instead of using power to run the below-deck auto pilot (Robbie) and we turned off the chart plotter and depth sounder and anything else that we didn’t need for sailing.  No XM Radio either, so we broke out our solar-powered/wind-up generated radio, which worked well with my ipod.  Good thing I have all those playlists and party CDs from my work’s annual Tahoe trip.  They kept us pretty entertained and in a good mood while we sat with the monotony of the sea.  Not that we weren’t having a great time, but by leg two, the novelty of sailing on the ocean was wearing away and we were just trying to find whatever we could to entertain ourselves.  Multiple games of Uno and gin rummy ensued.

A little birdie hitched a ride upon our wind vane during leg two. Gave us about 20 minutes of entertainment.

Michele and I had a joint night watch every night from 11pm to 3am.  Let’s just say, I think I may know Michele better than I know Dave now. LOL.  Good times, and again, feeling so lucky that we had such an awesome crew.

Just like at the end of Leg one, we pulled into Bahia Santa Maria anchorage after sundown. There wasn’t supposed to be anything at this anchorage…just land, no town, but all we could see as we rounded the point were hundreds of lights.  It ended up just being all the other boats in the fleet plus some Mexican fishing boats, but it definitely threw us for a loop while we were coming in to anchor. 

Once again, we sailed the whole way for Leg 2, which we found out only two other boats in our division had done, so we were pretty proud of ourselves.  We all passed out early again to get some much needed rest before the Leg two BBQ the next afternoon.

Bahia Santa Maria is a completely uninhabited bay along the Baja Sur coast.  It’s pretty rocky and desert-like on the shore, but the waters are so blue and clear and warm and calm.  I love calm water. I’m not a fan of waves and surf and breaking water, so this was my favorite spot along the trip.  We were heading up to the Ha-Ha BBQ party up on a the cliffside when we were tipped off by another Ha-Ha-er that the $15 USD plates weren’t all that great at the BBQ but there was a local taco stand set up on the beach with amazing tacos and tamales.  We didn’t need to be told twice.  For $4 each, we filled up on fish tacos and tamales and happily sat along the beach talking with other Ha-Ha-ers and watching the local dogs frolic in the water. 

  

Dave and I attempted to take our dinghy along the shoreline towards the mangroves, but there were so many sand beds between the beach party and the mangroves that we eventually gave up and just beached the dinghy and walked for a little while along one of the larger sand beds.  It was pretty funny. Just imagine us taking off at full dinghy motoring speed only to hit sand just a few yards away. We’d get out, drag the dinghy over the bed to “deeper” water (only about two feet deep) and take off only to hit another bed a few feet away.  We couldn’t figure out HOW the pongas were doing it! (We eventually went up onto a cliff once we returned to the party and saw that there was one deep path that we’d totally missed from our viewpoint in the water. Oh well).

  

Giving up on getting the dinghy anywhere (L) and trying to get my footing in the deep sand (R).

The sandbed was pretty interesting…like quicksand. Our feet would go down so far that it was pretty comical trying to walk. I tried walking in Dave’s footsteps, but he caught on and started talking huge steps on purpose so I’d have to jump.  The shells in this area were pretty amazing too…full sand dollars and clam shells.  I usually let nature be, but we couldn’t resist taking a couple of sand dollars and one clam shell. We hung the sand dollars in the cabin and I’ll have to figure out what to do with the clam shell. I think it would make a good jewelry box, but I need to find a way to keep the muscle from breaking that keeps the two shells together.  Crafty people…suggestions??

We were able to get some help with our generator issue from Tim on s/v Talion who is a diesel mechanic.  The boys figured out how to bypass the relay on the generator so we could start it up and have more power on board.  Thanks Tim for being so awesome and helpful!!

With the generator issue fixed for now, we got a good nights rest to prepare for the next morning’s 7am departure of leg three!