Race 2 - Bahia De Tortugas to Bahia Santa Margarita

When we left Marina Del Rey, the race committee had assigned us a handicap of 127 - which is computed by some formula to take into account the fact that our boat is slower than the others on the race. Captain Tarr thought we should have had an even higher handicap, but we had to race one leg to prove it. Well, we did - and the race committee then gave us a new handicap of 145. This is probably about right, as you'll read below.

Turtle Bay

We got to Turtle Bay after dark and anchored with the fleet. There's a very very small town there, and we were all pretty tired so we skipped the going-ashore. When we're at anchor, we can all sleep through the night, and I was particularly grateful not to pull my usual 11:30-2:00 and 6:30-10:30 watches!

The start at Turtle Bay

The next morning, we had another race start and took off south for Bahia Santa Margarita and the possibility of whales outside of Bahia Magdalena. This time, we made a calculated tactical risk - that we'd get better wind and more sail-time (versus engine time) if we went farther out into the ocean. Well, we went, but the wind wasn't there waiting for us. We motored on.

All around Turtle Bay, however, there are drift nets and lobster pots galore. So we had to keep two people up in front of the boat scanning for obstructions. A net would get wrapped around our keel and propeller and could seriously damage the boat, so it was slow and careful going until we got about 10 miles offshore.

Our world for 8 days

Eventually, we had to turn back in towards the second finish line, and finally we got some wind. Of course, with the wind came swells, but they were still very mild. And instead of tailing off, the wind became more intense as we pulled into Bahia Santa Margarita for the night. BSM is just a fishing camp in a partially-protected bay just north of Magdalena. By the time we dropped anchor, the wind was getting up towards 30 knots and the weather reports called for 30+ by the end of the next day and accordingly high seas.

Bahia Santa Margarita

So we made the right decision and chose to beat feet out of Santa Margarita and buy ourselves an extra day in San Jose Del Cabo. And the best news is that with our new handicap, we were very close to beating our nearest competition (G-Rated - a nice new sloop).

More later about the ride down to Cabo.