Mish and Mole in Cabo

Our final leg of the Pacific side of Baja was finally happening. When we completed this voyage and anchored, we would officially be at the tip of the Baja peninsula and point Meriwether to the North for the first time in well over a year.

The trip would cost us just over 40 hours at sea again, including two overnights. Nothing of note happened over the forty hours, split nearly half and half between sailing and motoring. I was happy to even get that much sailing as the weather forecast wasn’t really great for sailing. Nevertheless, we found just enough wind to sail the majority of our first day and through the night. The second day wasn’t as good, but we got some in here and there.

Kerri pressured me into this weather window as the sea state would be very mellow in comparison to most of our Pacific passages. I had proposed to go a couple days later when we had more wind to sail the distance, but with more rolling seas. She was right, (don’t tell her I said that), as it made for a much more enjoyable passage. These one and two night passages are becoming easier and easier. One day we will do a passage longer then a couple days, where we will get our bodies into the groove and life can/will feel quite normal, even just a two people in a small boat in a large ocean.

We went out of our way to avoid Cabo when we came down this far in the van back in 2016, but this time around we would have no choice. We needed some basic foods, diesel, and a whole lot of laundry to be washed and we couldn’t wait until we arrived in La Paz for any of that. We arrived at 4am, dropped anchor, and took a few hour nap before picking up and re-anchoring in the daylight.

The anchorage leaves a lot to be desired. Mostly open to the ocean, a fair amount of the swell makes it in to rock the boats around. Then add in the churning effect of the hundreds of boats and jet skis everywhere, and there is nothing but washing machine water all daylight hours. Then, each morning a new cruise ship – or three – comes in and drops anchor. If they were allowed to swing they would wipe out every please boat in the anchorage. Luckily, they can control the way in which those monsters are facing. Party boats and beach parties pollute the air with 80’s American top-40 just to add a cherry on the anxiety levels. I bring all this up not to complain actually (really). Even though we were prepared for the worst, anchoring outside of Cabo turned out to be as bad as we had read from many, many sources. I guess we just expected worse, and we were just happy it wasn’t.

We have been near a lot of cruise ships since Alaska

That is three cruise ships at anchor this day, ugh

The culprit

With that said, we did get a “knock” on the hull our first full night at anchor. I will leave it to Kerri as she summed it up perfectly on Facebook;

I guess you can’t really get a more genuine Cabo experience than getting woken up from being dragged into by a drunk dude in a motorboat getting a blow job. – Kerri

Oh Cabo!

Dan and Marlene came to the beach nearest Meriwether so we can easily hang out for a day

Mole and Margaritas

Pretty early on we took a ride out to the biggest grocery store Kerri could find online to start step one of the multi-phase reprovisioning we were in need of. Immediately after welking in the doors we were greeted by a voice we have not heard since 2016… in Baja! It was Marlene (and Dan) of the Malimish family (legends in full-time family RVing) who are back in Baja after a few years traveling overseas in their van. And luck would have it that they were finishing their restocking just at the moment we were starting ours. What are the odds?

Over the course of the next week or so we went to shore just about each day. To run errands (oh you wouldn’t believe how much laundry we had), to hang out with the Malimish family, and to eat at any restaurant NOT on the main tourist strip. In fact, we found a beauty which we ate at twice before we departed. Oh the chicken mole! I would go back there again, even though it is in Cabo.

It took a total of 8 days before we could leave, thanks to the wind finally working with us just s little bit. I’ve been putting my foot down a little firmer as of late; we sail when the weather is in our favor as opposed to leaving when convenient for us and end up motoring everywhere. So it took a couple extra days, but eventually the wind shifted and allowed our escape of the dirty-gringo-asshole that is Cabo.

Kerri speaks