The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
The prevailing wind blows from the north at this time of the year. We rode that very northerly all the way down the Baja Pacific coast, but now we need to go *up* the Sea of Cortez coast – unless we wanted to stay in Cabo for a couple months, which I’m sure would cause our collective untimely demise. I had...
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....
Our sights have been set on visiting Magdalena Bay for some time. It is known for the visiting whales, and the geography of the place looked like we could explore it for weeks. That was the plan, but we threw it out as usual. First, we had to get there though. From our last anchorage at Bahia Santa Maria, Magdalena was...
It was to be another multi-day passage to get to our next destination further down the Baja coastline. There is a couple spots to have stopped along the way, but we both preferred to knock out some serious distance southward. Bahia Magdalina – a large protected bay where whales frequent with their babies – was our real destination, but just...
We coulda-woulda stayed in Tortugas longer. We may even shoulda. We both thought we had already toured the town during one of our two previous visits to Baja in the van but we found that to be false only after we had already left. Us leaving, was dictated by incoming weather. A seriously foul system was moving in by Thursday,...
We were anxious to leave Ensenada after a three week stay. Sure, we are in Mexico and that has been a goal for some time now, but Ensenada is “barely Mexico”. It has been nice but we still want to get further South, fast. While there are a few options to day hop down the coast line, we chose to...
We entered Mexico at some point in the middle of the night, during a 15 hour, overnight-sail from San Diego to Ensenada. Nothing of note happened. In fact, it was our usual, boring, motor-all-the-way sort of sail, but it didn’t matter to me – we were in Mexico! The morning was spent dealing with all the customs paperwork, none of...
Year number four living on a sailboat. We aren’t newbies anymore. In fact, this year we both have been feeling the salt in our veins as we become veterans of this lifestyle. And with that tenure comes our biggest year to date, by far! In 2021 we traveled more miles then 2019 and 2020 combined. In 2022, we travelled nearly...
The trip to San Diego from Catalina Island took us on yet another overnight voyage. This ensured we can arrive during daylight with no rush to get there by a certain o’clock, and to sail at what ever speed the wind allows. And, even though we really didn’t foresee a whole lot of sailing that night in the forecast we...
Completing a full circle, almost four years since we were in Santa Barbara for sailing lessons, we arrived once more in our own boat. This to avoid a gale hitting the Channel Islands where we had been happily anchored for the pat few days. And we ended up staying a few days – over Thanksgiving – to visit with California...
