Author: Brad

Buckle up Amigos! You’re in for a wild ride, minus the wind, waves, rain and lightning. But I’ll leave you with the drama. Without further ado, here starts Chubasco 201!

Brad and I had our ideal “cruisers” kind of day. We first went for a morning snorkel with our pals at the nearby sea lion colony. We enjoyed their playful company and were happy to see the males weren’t territorial or aggressive. Later we departed for a spearfishing excursion. Brad managed to spear a 7 pound cabrilla along with a triggerfish for ceviche. He is so good with that gun. 2 shots, 2 fish! Brad filleted both fish and gave half to our neighbor boat (it’s his way of guaranteeing a spearing session the next day). We had delicious BBQ’d fish and salad for dinner. We cleaned up and tuned in to the SSB Chubasco report as we usually do. Despite only being 8pm it was a stretch to stay awake as we were feeling exhausted from our time in the sun and water. The report mentioned some convection but nothing in our area. It would be a quiet night in Baja. Brad and I bid each other a good night and crawled in to our cabins. Yes, cabins. The temperatures here in the Sea of Cortez are stifling and the humidity is high. The only way to get a night of rest and keep general harmony is to split up and sprawl out with multiple fans directed at our bodies.

I was fast asleep in the forward cabin when suddenly I felt a gust of wind come down the hatch. Feeling a bit traumatized from the Chubasco we received a couple nights prior, I shot out of bed yelling “Chubasco!” I ran on deck to 20kts of wind and wrestled our wind scoop down. Lightning was flashing, lighting the sky up in all directions. This was the real deal! Brad was still asleep so I ran to the aft cabin hatch and shouted “Chubasco, wake up now!”. Startled but comprehending, Brad got out of bed and came on deck. We worked together to secure all remaining loose items and started the motor. The wind was increasing in to the 30’s and the sea state was picking up. Feeling satisfied with our work we hunkered down in the cockpit and watched our boat position on the chartplotter.

The boat was holding position as the winds increased in to the 40’s. Brad went to the stern to check on the dinghy which we had bobbing behind the boat. He decided to pull it closer to the stern to protect it from the larger swells. While he was back there he witnessed Sydney’s beloved shore car flip over, tossing all loose contents into the ocean. The good news is that we could see the motor was still attached along with the gas can. There was nothing we could do about it at that moment so we went back to the cockpit to check on our position. The intensity of the storm increased as the winds howled to the 50’s with a high gust of 64kts (73mph). The anchor was holding.

I kept thinking to myself how much worse is this going to get? Kind of similar to the thoughts I had during earthquakes while living in California. As a child growing up in the Pacific Northwest the schools were constantly doing earthquake drills in case “the big one” finally reared it’s ugly head. Around this time I resorted to staring at the cockpit floor. Why? Because everywhere I looked was downright scary. Seeing the high numbers on the instruments was scary. Seeing the waves pass the boat was scary. Watching our solar panels was scary as I could visualize them ripping off at any moment. Knowing that one of the other boats in the anchorage was dragging towards another boat was scary. The floor was quite boring indeed and it helped calm me down. In retrospect I could have stared at Brad’s face as he was quite calm and stoic through it all. His mind was already in problem solving mode.

Pretty soon we started to hear louder booms of thunder and decided it was a good time to hide down below. Inside the noise was much quieter which helped me relax even further. Sitting at the table near the mast I could feel noticeable vibration from the rigging. I could see water dripping on our chart table from an unidentified leak. I could see Sydney glaring at me as she did not understand why she could not go outside. We could hear the water in our tanks sloshing and churning. Bottles in cabinets were banging and glasses clinking as the boat jostled in the wind and waves. Then we heard a new sound. We looked outside to find our bimini flapping in the wind as its old stitching could no longer hold up to the high winds. The stainless that once held the bimini up had collapsed in defeat. Again, there was nothing we could do and if we did, there was a possibility of injury from the flapping material. We waited for things to calm down before going back out for further inspections.

After an hour and a half of feeling as if we were in a nonstop earthquake/tornado, things started to mellow out. When the wind was blowing in the 30’s it felt calm. It’s amazing how the mind adjusts as wind in the 30’s is typically quite a bit for us. The wind mellowed even further and we took the opportunity to flip our dinghy right side up. Brad volunteered to crawl on top of the dinghy to secure a line to be used for the flipping. We pulled the dinghy along side the boat and tried to muscle it up to flip it over but that did not work. Brad the problem solver came up with a better idea. We attached our main halyard and used the winch. While I ground the winch Brad guided the dinghy and flipped it over. With the dinghy right side up we could finally think about going back to bed.

While my feelings and story may be dramatic…I think it is important to mention that we were in no real danger when all of this was happening. It was purely uncomfortable. It’s hard to see our home get beat up. At the end of the day things are repairable and replaceable. It really puts it in perspective. I am grateful that we kept our minds clear and made safe decisions so no one got injured. On the bright side we got a free boat wash out of the deal!

The next morning we commiserated with the 5 other boats in the anchorage. We shared stories about what got lost or damaged and a scavenger hunt ensued. Some items were retrieved but our dinghy wheels are still missing in action. Offers for tools and help were communicated across the fleet despite everyone having their own problems to fix. Amongst the fleet there was one broken hatch that came unhinged and flew off, a broken chain plate, 2 flipped dinghies, 2 unhappy dinghy motors from being submerged, 2 torn biminis, 1 bent bimini frame, and Sydney lost her favorite beach stick!!!

Having learned our lesson we vow to remove the motor from the dinghy every night and hoist up the dinghy on the davits- at least during Chubasco season. We will keep our fingers crossed as these Chubasco storms are difficult to predict. At least we now know the majority of our gear can stand up to winds as high as 64kts!

P.S. As an aside and lesson on wind, every time the wind speed doubles, the force of that wind quadruples. So, going from 30 knots of wind to 60 knots of wind is 4x the air pressure pushing on you… 40kts to 60kts is twice the wind force…

There is a weather event that happens in the Sea of Cortez known as a Chubasco. As the mainland side (Normally from around San Carlos which is about the middle of the Sea on the mainland side) starts to cool after sunset, the warm and humid air starts to move West towards the sea. This generates thunderstorms and as they continue moving West they normally dissipate over the sea. Normally being the key word here, sometimes the warmth of the sea and local conditions add energy to the system and the storm increases in intensity and velocity and races across the sea to crash into the Baja coast, delivering rain, lightning and lots of wind. They are hard to predict with any accuracy and can be a rude surprise to mariners.

Why am I sharing this and more importantly why do we care?

We departed Bahia de Los Angeles to visit the Northern anchorage on Isla la Guardia aptly named Refugio. Isla la Guardia is an island that shelters the BLA area from storms and is therefore named the guardian angel island. One of our favorite places in the Northern sea is the Refugio area (Refuge in English) as it has much less traffic and fishing pressure that more populated parts of the Sea of Cortez. Fishing, snorkeling, diving, hiking etc. are all relatively pristine and it’s great to get out and live with nature.

We arrived, spent some quality time with Sydney on the beach, had a celebratory cocktail We checked the weather and there was a possibility of a Chubasco, but it looked remote, so we settled in for an early night.

At approximately 9pm(yes, we were in bed by 9pm), the wind started building. We got up, took down our shade cloth and various laundry still hanging on the rails and watched the wind build. We started the motor to enable us to control the boat should the anchor start to drag. We hunkered down and watched the wind build to a peak gust of 44 knots. For non-mariners, this is 50mph, and a gale is 34kts. The wind was rapidly changing direction, causing the boat to dramatically heel over as it was broadsided by the wind, incredibly loud and the boat was pitching in the waves. We prepared all we could and it was time to hunker down and weather the storm.

After abut an hour, the wind subsided and all was well and other than some frayed nerves, Perspective and Crew were fine through the wind, waves and rain. It was the highest wind we had experienced since leaving San Diego 4 years ago and it was a nice milestone. Chubasco=”no big deal”

We are glad to be safe and sound. Thanks for following!

We arrived in the area a few days ago and have enjoyed the cooler weather, water and a bit of fishing. After hearing of whale sharks outside “town”, we sailed into small bay in front of Bahia de Los Ángeles and dropped anchor. We were greeted by three young whale sharks that repeatedly came within 50 feet of the boat. We are looking forward to swimming with the beautiful giants over the next few days. Below is one I caught this morning in calm wind with the drone about a half mile east of where we are anchored. Apologies for the photo quality as it’s coming over our very slow satellite connection. Wishing everyone well!

Guest Log SVPERSPECTIVE by Bob Harley and edited by Karen Treat

I will start this log with a little background. While I have been a stinkpot boater on a houseboat in the San Francisco Delta for 40 years, I was amazed when my son, Brad, said that he was buying a cruising sailboat and taking off with Sarah. But, after over three years, I wanted to join the two of them along with Karen. She was the gutsy one, having never really “roughed it” on the water, and had to avoid golf for the time period, most of the time with no internet! But, in addition to the swimming and snorkeling, she found the Kindle along with Danielle Steele, and now we can’t get her away from that reading!

But I digress. The beauty of the Sea of Cortez is amazing. We moved several times into different bays and they all had special things to offer. But Sarah and Brad talk about that in their blog, so I am not going to repeat it.

What I saw was a full life on a sailboat, and the significant skills and teamwork that it takes to live and breathe in this gorgeous environment. I always thought that the real experience was in being able to “sail”. But I quickly learned from Brad and Sarah that it takes navigation expertise, electrical engineering, software and hardware capability, seamstress effort, teamwork, and constant chores in fixing and cleaning the boat. But most importantly, the choreography that Brad and Sarah have in all aspects of the voyage. It looks like a dance as they haul the dingy on board, raise and lower the anchor, and tend to the sails. And, of course, the boat is completely self-sufficient with salt to fresh water making, pumps, and what seemed like an endless supply of food!

We saw the generosity of the sailing community. Brad provided fresh water to another boat whose water maker malfunctioned, and even loaned a tank of air so they could dive. And when a small Bayliner was having difficulty anchoring in one of the bays, he even loaned the Fortress anchor to them for the day. They not only returned it, but invited us all to dinner in Loreto!

The life and love Brad and Sarah share on the boat will always be wonderful memories. And the time with Karen amazing. She took to the water like a fish and we both wanted to be part of the crew. It was the best Father’s Day vacation and present that I can imagine. BOB

I echo all that Bob has shared. I want to thank Brad and Sarah for hosting us and flat out spoiling us with love and homecooked meals. Brad speared us fresh fish almost daily and prepared it so many ways on the grill. We met some of their friends and went to dinner at a beautiful hotel and also had them for dinner too on the boat. We all slept a lot too with naps here and there. We all loved the water daily many times in and out. With water temp over 80 degrees it was easy. I would be remiss not to give honorable mention to Sarah and Brad’s brown labradoodle, Sydney. She is a love and a great boat mate too. The beauty of this region was a surprise and living the life of a boat cruiser was definitely a top 10 of all my trips. We would do it again. Loreto Bay and the surrounding areas that we experienced were unforgettable. The water and scenery is very healing. Our time together was special to say the very least. I am grateful. KAREN

Hola amigo’s! I thought we would quickly check in. We spent just finished spending a little over a week in La Paz which was primarily focused on work. Our batteries were getting tired, so we swapped out our AGM batteries for Lithium Ion Phosphate (LifePo4) batteries on the boat. What a huge difference this makes!!

From my perspective, the primary problem any lead acid battery has for a cruising boat is that they want to be fully charged and the battery charging slows WAY down when they are over 85% full. No problem in a car where you run the alternator for hours. On a boat, where we run things like refrigeration all day and night and sometimes have cloudy days. This means the batteries don’t always get charged which shortens their life. The beauty of lithium batteries is that they don’t care, and as a matter of fact prefer not to be fully charged. This means we can basically live off solar except while on anchor and not have to worry about power. We even have enough to run the watermaker (36 gal/hr) off solar as long as we plan it appropriately. It’s a big difference! If you’re worrying about safety, there are multiple lithium technologies, and LifePo4 is safe. I could actually put a bullet through the pack and it wouldn’t catch fire.

We are currently making our way north. As always, the Sea of Cortez is known for motoring from windy anchorage to windy anchorage…

Hola Amigos! Perspective is on her way back to the Sea of Cortez for the summer and we are about 1/2 of the way across the sea, coming from Puerto Vallarta and inbound to La Paz.

We left on Weds, 5/13 at about 10 am knowing that the forecast for wind was low and was forecast to continue being low for at least a week. While we would normally wait this out, we are subject to the bane of every sailor… A SCHEDULE! I know, that sounds terrible but I’m sure we will suffer through and survive… We have just been motoring all but 45 minutes across the sea and expect that to continue. At least motoring makes for good fishing…

We are super excited to be on the move again as we have lots of fun plans for the summer with family, friends, wildlife and nature. Speaking of wildlife, we just caught this little beauty. He’s a juvenile yellow fin tuna which will provide 4-5 meals for Sarah and I (maybe some for Sydney too). It’s only the second yellow fin we’ve caught during our cruising time down in Mexico, the last in October of 2017. Can’t wait to sear a bit on the BBQ tonight!

Best wishes to all, hug your loved ones tightly, and be kind to each other.

Happy Easter!

We are sitting cozily in beautiful Punta Tosca, Isla Socorro. Isla Socorro is drastically different than San Benedicto in that it reminds me of California with its green, rolling hills. The island is inhabited by a Mexican Naval Base and as a side note does not allow guests on shore without special permission. I’ll admit, I didn’t always think it was beautiful here, in fact, I was quite afraid of this place as we pulled into it. As Brad mentioned in the last email we had a 36nm sail to get here and Perspective was bringing up the rear of the pack at a solid 3rd place out of 4. (Its an unstated rule that if boats are going in the same direction it’s a race). There are benefits to not being the first boat in. As boats 1 and 2 rounded the corner into the anchorage they were met with 20kts of wind with their spinnakers up! Once they got things under control they were kind enough to alert the rest of us about the high winds and to prepare ourselves accordingly. Sure enough we were hit with the same winds but had only our reefed main up as we entered.

We waited as boats 1 and 2 got themselves anchored and then we made our approach. Here arose a missed training opportunity in my arsenal of skills. In these windy conditions its best to use the windlass free fall function via a clutch and rod. That’s something I’ve never done before and we decided not to practice it here. This meant that while I dropped the anchor, Brad would have to do some heavy duty piloting to keep us from blowing back from our anchor too quickly as it had a long way to drop before it hit the sea floor below. I let out 150ft of chain as quickly as the windlass would release it, then another 50 and we let the boat pull back on it. Then we let out another 50ft. We sat there and watched to see if the boat would drag backwards or stay put. Once we confirmed that we weren’t going anywhere, I went to the anchor locker with Brad and untwisted the rest of our chain so it could come out of the windlass. He went back on deck and slowly released the rest of our chain, link by link. Eventually all four boats were settled into the anchorage, all appropriately spaced with dragging alarms set. Just before bedtime a whale and her calf visited the anchorage and got pretty close to our neighboring boat. What a treat for us all!

Accompanying the wind we had large southern swells rolling into the anchorage, hitting us stern first. As these swells roared into shore you could see their true power as they pounded into land, spraying water high into the sky. I spent a lot of time on deck observing the power of mother nature as it was the only place I could handle being without feeling seasick. The waves were bouncing off shore creating a washing machine type of sea state. Even with our flopper stopper deployed Perspective was rocking in every direction. Even the multi hulls were getting bounced around quite a bit, albeit their motion was arguably worse as it was a quick and harsh jostling back and forth. We all rode it out knowing the conditions would soften up. And sure enough things did improve as the day went on yesterday. Bringing us to today, Easter Sunday!

You may be wondering why we left our last anchorage and headed to this one? We would have received the same high winds and swells in San Benedicto but with the unwanted bonus of volcanic ash and grit landing everywhere on our boats. No thank you! We are very excited to explore the new dive sites around this anchorage and will keep you posted on what we see.

We hope that each of you are having a wonderful holiday weekend, spending it with those that you love! We thank you for the email responses back, they’ve been quite entertaining and great for crew morale. If you’re reading this message on our blog we can be reached via email at crew@svperspective.com.

Cheers Amigos!

Happy Easter Eve!

We had been in the same spot at Isla San Benedicto for 10 days and wanted to get one more dive in before moving south to Isla Socorro. I am so glad we did as we experienced a first for us underwater. While we have had pretty close encounters with hammerhead sharks on this trip, it is normally one or two swimming around minding their own business. That’s good as we don’t want too close of an encounter, but it is nice to see these magnificent animals clearly.

Before we get into our sightings and pictures, I’ll talk a little about sharks here. If you are not aware, there are three variants of hammerhead sharks: The bonnethead, scalloped hammerhead and the great hammerhead. The bonnetheads are largely harmless, the scalloped not dangerous unless feeding or spearfishing, and the great hammerheads should be monitored as they *can* but rarely do get aggressive. We pretty much exclusively have the scalloped hammerheads here in the Revillagigedo islands and therefore are alert but not worried. Other sharks we see regularly are silkies, duskies, white-tipped reef sharks and silvertip sharks. The white-tipped reef shark isn’t considered dangerous and the rest are if there is spearfishing or feeding activities or a diver is trying to molest one (petting, riding, grabbing the fin/tail and other stupid activities). Again, we are alert but not concerned. The one shark we keep an close eye out for is tiger sharks. We have not seen any, but they are in the area and can be aggressive. Universally we are excited to see these magnificent creatures and surprisingly have never felt fear. I expect that’s largely because they show so little interest in us and just go about their sharky business.

Back to the dive, we had a great dive for April fool’s on what is known as the canyon. There is a fish/shark cleaning station where everyone congregates and gets ‘cleaned’ by the little fish, who then pick the parasites off the big fish. Amazingly, no one gets eaten… It’s an example of predator/prey cooperation in the wild and is fascinating to watch. While hanging out here, we saw our first school of hammerheads in the distance and it was beautiful!! A first for us and hopefully to be repeated.

Sorry for the clarity as they were right at the edge of our vision. This one is a bit better looking up from about 70 feet.

Happy April Fool’s day from Bruce!

Shifting gears, the wind was forecast to pick up, so we departed San Benedicto on April 2nd and sailed south 36nm to Isla Socorro and anchored at Punta Tosca( 18 46.894N, 111 02.722W). More about that in our next message.

Happy Friday Eve!

We had our first experience of having to pull anchor in the middle of the night last night. It was a learning lesson for both of us as we made an error in judgement. But first, let me back up before we get to the juicy gossip of midnight re anchoring! When Brad and I first rolled into the San Benedicto anchorage we were quite tired and struggled to place our anchor in a spot that wasn’t caught in the rocks. The wind was blowing off of the volcano at a steady 20kts which had stirred up the visibility in the water. Finally on our fourth drop we found a place that seemed suitable. But was it really?! The next day we got in the water and dove our anchor and chain to find it mischievously wrapped around several boulders and making several 90 degree turns. It looked like a drunken sailor dropped anchor! Nevertheless, our gear was holding and we weren’t going to go anywhere with how the chain was set. In fact, it was set so well that the it snapped our “snubber” (a line connecting the chain to the boat acting as a shock-absorber) due to the chain wrapped around a rock right under the boat–See attached picture.

Yesterday the wind was low and Brad and I set about fixing our anchor situation once and for all. Brad was at the bow and I was at the helm following his instructions while we tried to get Perspective freed from the tangled mess below. We cautiously pulled forward and our attempts were met with hard yanks from below, pulling Perspective like a toy. This would require another tactic. Cue our amazing boat buddies, Bruce and Alene on Migration. They had just finished doing a dive and were suited up and offered to give us a hand. Alene kindly offered to hop in the water and provide directions to untangle our anchor chain from the surface. When she first had a look at our tangled mess, she gave a good chuckle. Not one to back away from a challenge she said we could do it! Brad and I resumed our stations and Brad followed Alene’s instructions and repeated them to me. Step by step we were able to get our chain free from the rocks below and eventually pulled up our anchor.

Now all we had to do was find a new place to drop the hook and once again Alene provided her snorkeling services. She located some sand between Paseo (another buddy boat) and the shore. We pulled into the spot, dropped the hook and sighed in relief as we knew we would be able to pull anchor in a hurry should an emergency arise. We were pretty close to Paseo, about 200ft or so but felt it was a safe enough distance to stay put. Here’s where we made our mistake. We had asked Paseo how much chain they had out, and we had about 70ft less than they did. Combine that with a change in wind direction and you end up with two boats that are very close together, ready to go bump in the night!

If it weren’t for an annoying squeak on deck that required some on deck investigation, we wouldn’t have known just how close we were to Paseo. Brad being the trooper that he is, went on deck to find the squeak and silence it, but not before calling me up there. Paseo was maybe 35 feet from Perspective! I uncovered our dodger glass, hailed Paseo on the radio to let them know that we were going to pull anchor and to stand by. It was a tense time for all of us as we placed fenders, stowed our flopper stopper and finally pulled the anchor. Once the anchor was up, Brad took the helm and we began the process of finding a new spot to anchor. The moon had yet to rise making the anchorage and the surrounding land quite dark and disorienting. We made several loops and finally it was decided we were going to anchor in another area altogether.

I went to the bow with a flashlight in my hand waiting on instructions to drop the anchor. I had the light shining in the water to see if I could spot rocks below, but all I could see were the curious sharks making their way around our boat. With the bright light shining on them they looked like ghosts as they swam ahead of us. I thought to myself this would not be a good time to fall in the water, and if I did, I’m pretty sure I would be running on the surface! Once Brad found a suitable spot he gave me the command to drop the anchor and let out 100ft of chain. I did exactly that and stuck my foot on the chain to feel for any skipping or dragging. The feedback I received was solid. The chain pulled taut and the boat lurched forward. I dropped more chain until we had 200ft laid out, then another 50ft to finish the job. Words cannot express how thankful I was that we did not get caught up in the rocks below (at least from what I can tell) but that will require some under water investigating later.

Feeling confident in our new spot we radioed our fleet of buddies and gave them our thanks for the offers of help and support. We definitely learned an important lesson and are so glad that we managed to avoid that imminent bump in the night!

The lesson for the day is to ensure our chain is the same length (scope) as our neighbors so that we move *together*…

Happy Wednesday!

We went back to the “Boiler” yesterday. It’s amazing what a difference a day can make. We only saw one manta swimming by in the distance, and the water clarity was much different. We also dove with a group from a dive boat, and you can see the density of divers in the picture. Maybe that has something to do with the larger life staying away… 🙂

It was still a wonderful dive, and we were joined by a couple on a fourth boat for our dive, so there are currently 8 of us in our cruising group. We also took advantage of a birthday last night to gather on one of the boats for cocktails and cake. So much fun!!

We plan to travel South to Isla Socorro tomorrow or the day after, and check out the dive spots there.

More later!

As always, we miss you at home and it makes us feel less isolated to read your emails, so don’t be shy!

P.S. I’m trying a new email ‘reply-to’ address as I have reports of some of you not getting our emails. If you haven’t, they are being posted to our blog at the address below.