Baja HaHa 2009 Leg 1

It's a rally, not a race.

All the Baja HaHa is divided into three parts: San Diego to Turtle Bay, Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria, and finally Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas. For typical boats that do the HaHa the first leg requires three overnight sails, the second leg requires two, and the last one. The total distance covered is about 750 miles, so even though there are several parties for the participants most of the time is spent actually covering the miles. The boats are divided into classes so there can be some meaningful competition. There is a starting line and a finish line usually 10 to 15 miles from the actual end point of the leg. The event is billed as a rally not a race, but each participating boat is required to turn in statistics for each of the three legs showing the total time for the leg and the amount of that time motoring. There is a penalty for any time spent motoring, but on legs with too little wind there is a rolling start meaning that boats are allowed to motor slowly without incurring penalties. At the final awards ceremony each participating boat gets an award. Each class has a first and second place winner and everyone else gets a third place. There is a special mention for any boat that sails any leg(s) without motoring. This year only six boats actually sailed all three legs without motoring due to light winds.

This year the first leg started from San Diego on Monday October 26th.There were a record number of boats: over 160 with just over 600 persons on board. Here we see the fleet behind us giving us the illusion that we are leading the fleet since we did get a good start.

There is a prize for the crew with the best costumes at the start of the rally. The costumes give the event a little light hearted spirit as we face 750 of sailing along a mostly barren coast.

Here we see the good news and the bad news for Virago. The new asymmetrical spinnaker flew very well and helped us keep moving in the light air we experienced for most of the trip. The bad news was that for all the "this is a rally not a race" talk, most boats flew full racing symmetrical spinnakers. So this picture captures a scene we saw all too often--Virago out sailed! This especially hurts when the overtaking boats are only half our size.

The first night of leg one gave us very light air and we chose to motor rather than languish. As we got into the second day the winds freshened and by the third day we were seeing 25 to 30 knots winds from behind and seas building to 12 to 17 feet. This had been predicted and the Grand Poobah suggested that boats not wanting to face those conditions put into an anchorage and lay over for a night. In fact, this turned out to be the worst leg for weather in the sixteen year history of the HaHa. Since Virago and her crew had passed through almost a bad conditions on the way to San Diego, I decided to tough it out. We were rolled around a lot by the following seas, but we did make speeds of over 8 knots with only about one quarter of our main and jib out. Since the finish is on the honor system, we took a photo of our chartplotter screen as we crossed the imaginary line in the sea.

We finished the first leg in a reasonable time averaging just under 6 knots.

Once we finished the race course we restarted the engine and rounded the point at Turtle Bay.

You can see from the photos that Turtle Bay is no garden spot. The land is barren. Until a few years ago there was a cannery in town to process fish. That is gone and all that is left is a dusty impoverished little Mexican fishing village. The annual visit by the HaHa fleet is the biggest economic event of the year as yatistas descend on the town. Boats can get diesel here and the crews can get beer and have a choice of about three eateries. We knew we were in Mexico.

Leaps of Faith

There is a dinghy dock at Turtle Bay and experienced HaHa cruisers say it is a vast improvement over the old pier only arrangement. You used to have to climb a rusty ladder to get onto the pier. Now you can tie up to a normal dinghy dock. (Or for about two dollars a head, Enrique will send a ponga out for you.) Of course you can land your dinghy on the beach if you trust your surf landing skills.

You do still have to make one leap of faith though. There is a three foot gap between the end of the dock and the steps up to the pier.

There are only a couple of actual restaurants in town. We ate at this one on the bay. It is owned by the same Enrique who runs the pongas. This was our first real Mexican eatery and maybe we were a bit squeamish, but the food was excellent. The service was definitely on Mexican time.

No trip to Turtle Bay would be complete without a trip to the Veracruz hotel up on the hill in the center of town. The view up the main street shows how dusty this Mexican town really is.

We did make the pilgrimage to Hotel and although it is hard to tell, Virago is in the picture near the head of the woman of the unidentified couple in the next picture. You can tell by the cap that he is a HaHa participant though.

Next you see Virago's crew testing the beer at the Veracruz. There is a disco dance floor at the hotel that was created just for the once a year visit of the HaHa fleet. We didn't attend the party at the hotel though.

The Work Goes On

There is always work to do on a boat and Virago is no exception. Below you see the crew checking the oil, the fuel filters, and the cooling water intake filter. All was fine except the intake filter desperately needed a cleaning.

There had been one minor mishap on the wild third night of the trip. A wave of green water came over the side of the cockpit and used the two escape skylight in the aft cabin as an exit route. The bedding for the aft cabin berth was drenched as well as the guest cabin double sleeping bag. It would normally have been safe up on a shelf except for the fact that I had been using it to take up some space so that I would not roll from side to side in the big following seas. Here you see Bob demonstrating his Eagle Scout grasp of the rolling hitch as he prepares a clothes line for drying duty.

Even in port the crew needed to be fed, so here is a shot of the rough fare of blueberry muffins that the skipper whipped up. We all highly recommend KrustEase mixes by the way: both pancakes and muffins.

The Turtle Bay Pot Luck

There is always a beach party/pot luck during the stay in Turtle Bay. The deal is to bring your own beverage or buy beer on the beach and bring something to share. Here is crew bringing in our sacrificial lasagna.

To ensure fairness the Grand Poobah appointed a "portion Nazi" to make sure folks did not take more than they brought. It's a rough scheme, but works pretty well. The only real problem is that there develop two lines: one for food and the other for buying beer. By the time my crew reached the food our lasagna was gone, but there was plenty of other choices.

The party presents quite the spectacle from the tall bluff behind the beach. I think you can get some idea of the size of the bay where our 160+ boats didn't even make a dent in the available space to anchor.

After a two day rest/party at Turtle Bay, we were ready for leg two of our journey.