Emerald Star

Approximately 170 boats, with around 630 people total, left San Diego on 10/29/07 in the 14^th annual Baja Ha-Ha cruisers rally. It’s not a race, but we did have “official” start and finish lines for each of the three legs. The goal is to get to Cabo in one piece and generally have fun along the way.

Everyone is required to keep track of when they cross the start and finish lines and also how much time they motored. The starts were generally between the “Committee Boat” and some landmark and the finish lines were just two GPS coordinates that you have to pass between. Every morning there is a radio check in and there is lots of radio chatter long the way. And each stop includes a party and people helping each other with various boat issues, medical issues, etc.

The first leg of the trip took a little over 3 days-and that’s 24/7 of sailing. That’s over three weeks in dog years! We sailed the whole way. Probably 1/3^rd of the boats in the rally sailed this whole leg. It was about 360 miles.

The "start" of the Ha-Ha

We arrived in Turtle Bay (Bahia Tortugas) about 1:00 P.M., took naps, then Ray, Diane, Tiki and Luna headed for shore. Luna and Tiki ran around like maniacs on the beach, rolled in stinky stuff and played with the other boat dogs and a few local dogs. Then we went to a restaurant for cold beer, chips, salsa and some really good cake. After the snack we walked around town for a while. The town has no pavement, street lights, etc. About 1000 people live there. Almost all of the local dogs looked related, tan and white with similar faces. The dogs were all friendly and generally didn’t stray too far from their houses.

The "start" leaving Turtle Bay

The Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria leg is about 240 miles. The winds were lighter, as expected. Lots of the boats were fishing and catching wahoo, tuna, marlin and other fish. It was fun to hear chatter on the radio about who was catching what, where, and with what lures. There were also several whale sightings. We did try out our spinnaker for a few hours, so that was fun. We decided to motor on leg two after the first 24 hours. The deciding factor was that at one point we had only gone two miles in two hours. The wind was almost completely dead and we had a party to go to in two days. Can’t miss that! So we cranked up the engine and motored, arriving in Bahia Santa Maria just as it got light on the morning of 11/05.

The anchorage in Bahia Santa Maria

Bahia Santa Maria is a very small fishing village with a few tiny buildings just outside of Magdalena Bay. The day we arrived we just rested and tried to catch up on sleep. The surf was too big for us to use the dinghy so we just stayed on the boat. The next day we all took a panga to the party on shore. Each year the locals set up a temporary “restaurant” for the Ha-Ha party with fish, beans & rice for dinner and they had beer and water. The food was great. There was a band that played 70’s and 80’s rock.

We headed back to the boat before sunset. Don headed back to the boat early. The rest of us had an exciting panga ride back later since the surf was coming up. Luna and Tiki were a little scared, maybe because a lady sitting near us screamed several times.  We think she screamed just for fun-but you never know.

The final leg was around 180 miles. We sailed for several hours then motored towards the end. The temperature at 6 A.M. was 79 degrees and the water temp was 80. We’re in the tropics!!!

We arrived in Cabo San Lucas on 11/07/07.  We made it!

The crew with opposable thumbs finally added pictures. It's about time!!