Woke up:                  Agua Verde, Bahia Agua Verde, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Went to sleep:         Timbabiche, Bahia San Carlos, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Travel Days

Peter’s travel day begins long before mine. Soon after day break he gets everything ready to go. The very last thing he has to do is flake the anchor chain as the anchor is lifted from the sea floor. Since this involves opening the chain locker below our bed, this is my last wake-up call.

Peter loves to sail this boat. He has all the sails up even before we leave the anchorage. Often the wind is light early in the morning. We’ll leave the bay under sail even if it takes an hour. This morning it took two. But, this is his precious quiet time.

Peter’s Quiet Time

We sail far more than any other sail boat out here. The other cruisers know no matter how light the wind, Peter will be trimming and tweaking sails to move us down the road – if only at 0.9 knots per hour. He figures we could be sitting idle in the anchorage waiting for the wind to come up or sitting idle on our way. I agree.

Our friend, Mark, from Speakeasy, watched us on his automatic identification system (AIS) as we sailed from Catalina Island to San Diego. He later commented, “I’ve never seen anyone sail 50 miles at 2 knots before.”

The wind almost always picks up by 2:00 pm and often we enter our next anchorage with choppy seas and more wind than we want. But, we had fun and sailed almost all the way.

Mostly an optimist, Peter always says he can see a wind line on the water just off in the distance. This morning he took drastic measures getting us to the wind. We have an agreement he will always have us anchored before dark even if he has to paddle to get us there.

Sometimes Peter has to row

My travel days are perfect, too.

I accompany my coffee with Buddhist literature. I’m currently reading Yoga and the Pursuit of Happiness by Sam Chase. This is an awesome book. As part of my yoga teacher training, I was required to read two well-known texts, The Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Neither one made any sense to me at the time.

Sam Chase has paraphrased these two famous historical texts and eloquently applied them to a life of yoga on and off the mat. I read it over and over.

After coffee and breakfast, I usually read a novel. My preference is historical fiction. Right now I am reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. This is a wonderful love story which takes place during the horrendous throes of World War II.

Mid-morning I get sleepy from reading and take a short nap.

After lunch, I may do my arm workout. One hundred tricep push-ups on the companionway stairs and biceps, shoulders and back using 8-pound hand weights. Since the engine ran for a short time, I have ample hot water to thoroughly clean the galley or wash a small load of laundry.

Peter calls me up anytime he sees a pod of dolphins or a whale. The dolphins are the coolest. They’ll come 50 altogether, loping from off in the distance toward the boat, trying to see who can be the first to get to the bow wake. Then they follow us. We are surrounded on both sides by dolphins playing in the churning water cascading off the bow, racing us and each other, frolicking like children.

The dolphins are very hard to catch on camera

The whales are not so welcome. We have heard too many stories of boats, sunk in minutes, the result of a whale tossing the boat into the air or ramming a hole in the hull. Peter turns on the engine to inform them we are not kin.

A Whale

The sound of the ocean, splashing against the hull varies in intensity with our speed. I can recognize a 3.5 knot splash vs. a 0.8 knot splash. A 6.0 knot splash is cause for celebration. Quietly, the wind generator hums while pouring electricity into the battery bank.

Peter decides to try the light wind sail

Light wind sail aloft

Later in the afternoon, when the sun is lower in the sky, I make guacamole and move out into the cockpit to visit with Pedro while working a crossword puzzle.

Each travel day is followed by at least one full rest day. We now have only ten days to get back to La Paz and perhaps four more destinations.