Credit: Latitude 38
Note: The following two stories are the two I mentioned which are being told out of sequence. They take place on the Pacific side of Baja, immediately after my two near disaster posts when we got knocked down and when Rebecka had to save the day on the bow of the boat. I apologize for posting them out of order, but as you will see, the first involves another emergency, so it’s just as well that we got a little break from those high anxiety posts.
The day after Rebecka’s heroics. After a day of drying out our four boats, we set sail at dawn and had a long, overnight hop because there were no good intermediate bays to rest in. We had beautiful, pleasant day of sailing, a clear night with a steady breeze that gave me a star to steer by, and the following afternoon we arrived in Bahia Tortuga, Turtle Bay. This was exactly how we pictured cruising to be. We dropped anchor around sunset in Turtle Bay, one of the most protected harbors on the west coast of Baja California.
Turtle Bay:
Anchored in Turtle Bay we got our first taste of what the next six months of cruising would be like, so much time, so little to do. I have often said that I was taking my retirement in installments in case I never made it to 65, and at this rate, retirement was sweet. We visited each other’s boats, rowed in to shore for beer and groceries, and at night the folks from all four boats would get together on the Eclipse, the largest boat, to play games swap stories, and enjoy reviewing our ‘nothing to-do lists.’
Below you will see me and the boys, they are doing some work on Eclipse, and I am doing what I do best, following them around like a little brother and handing out compliments for a job well done. From left, me, Jim, Blair, and Chuck.
After about a week in Turtle Bay, someone got the urge to continue the adventure so that evening we opened a chart, consulted Baja cruising books and picked the next destination.
We raised our anchors and hoisted our sails on a perfectly still dawn and realized that any wind was being blocked by the hills on the point, so all four boats started motoring out of the harbor. Rebecka was on the tiller steering and I was on the bow, straightening out the anchor chain and line and getting the anchor tied down. As we approached the point of land I could see that the sea outside the point was quite choppy. It was either quite windy out there now, or it had been the night before and the waves hadn’t had time to settle down. Time would tell.
As soon as we cleared the point, we were hit by a terrific gust of wind that made the boat heel sharply to port and then I was puzzled by a sound I could not identify. It sounded like rain hitting the deck. I looked around and found wire streaming down.
“We just lost the rigging,” Rebecka called out. “Bringing the bow into the wind.”
That little maneuver saved the mast because one section of the wire rigging that ran from the deck to the middle of the mast and kept it straight had fallen when a bolt broke.
Practice makes perfect. This particular type of emergency was one of the dozens of situations Rebecka and I had practiced every time we were sailing on a nice afternoon with a steady breeze. Rebecka would be steering the boat, I would be lounging in the cockpit, drinking beer, and I would call out an emergency and Rebecka would have to recite the proper steps to take, in the proper order to respond to the emergency. Rebecka was not a fan of this exercise, there was a lot to learn, we would be preparing responses to things that might happen once in 20 years of cruising. It was not her favorite game because I think she felt I was constantly testing her. After the Turtle Bay incident where she was able to identify the problem before I could and she remembered the exact steps to take to protect the boat, then execute those steps flawlessly, she said maybe we should have spent more time practicing scenarios.
Our boat’s misfortune is a call to action for the other boats.
I jumped on the radio and told the other boats what had happened, and they immediately turned around and headed back into Turtle Bay. When we had all anchored up Chuck, Jim, and Blair raced over to assess the damage.
While Rebecka and I were stunned with this breakdown, coming as it did on the heels of our knock down, I would characterize the other three guys as giddy with excitement. As I mentioned, cruising involved long days with a constant search for work to do.
But this, an actual important boat maintenance task, was a gift to them. With Chuck’s experience as the maintenance supervisor at a saw mill in Oregon, plus Blair’s years spent building the huge sailing ship Eclipse himself, and Jim who was a MacGyver of the first order when it came to anything nautical, it was a dream repair team.
They decided the first thing that had to be done was to straighten and stabilize the mast which had a pronounced bow to the side of the boat where the rigging remained. The mast was still in danger of collapsing.
The rigging had fallen to the deck from the point shown in the circle. It ran from the deck to the middle of the mast and a bolt running through the mast had broken.
To stabilize the mast and bring it back to vertical, Jim suggested using an age-old technique, the Spanish windless which was used on old wooden sailing ships. A loop of rope is tied between two points, a stick is then placed inside the loop, and as the stick is turned it twists the rope and shortens it, pulling point A closer to point B.
A Spanish windlass.
Here you can see Jim working on our rigging. In the close up you can see the twisted rope of the Spanish windlass by Jim’s right foot.
Jim is sitting in a bosun’s chair which is attached to mainsheet, the rope which normally raises the main sail. For this operation we disconnected the mainsheet from the main sail, connected it to the bosun chair and used the winch to raise Jim up.
I always say I am the luckiest person I ever met, and this problem came at the perfect time. If that bolt had broken a week earlier when our boat broached and rolled, we would have lost the mast for sure and probably would have sunk the boat. If the bolt had broken a day after we left Turtle Bay there would have been no place to buy a replacement bolt until we got all the way down south to Cabo San Lucas and I doubt we could have limped that far. As it was, the hardware store in Turtle Bay had just the hardware we needed.
It took two days to make the repair and we were ready to sail again.
Here we see Chuck working his magic and building the replacement rigging on the deck of the Eclipse.
Rebecka achieves hero status. Again.
When the repairs were completed, Rebecka offered to row Chuck from our boat back to his boat. Chuck was used to traveling in his zodiac which you entered by stepping off your boat and stepping on the air-filled side of the zodiac and then stepping to the bottom. With a zodiac you can stand on the air-filled side.
An inflatable Zodiac.
Rebecka was in our tiny fiberglass row boat that looked something like the one below. To get into our type of dinghy, you have to carefully step right into the middle of the bottom of the dinghy and keep your balance because it will tip over very easily.
Chuck handed his heavy toolbox to Rebecka, with more than $1,000 worth of tools in it, and when he went to step into our dinghy, by habit he stepped on the side of the dinghy which flipped it over, sending Rebecka and the toolbox into the water.
As it went over, Rebecka made a grab for the handle of the toolbox, which easily weighed 60 pounds and which promptly pulled her under the water. She kicked and struggled back to the surface long enough to get a breath of air and sunk below the surface again. Chuck was shouting for her to let go of the tool box as we tried to get a zodiac over to her, she made it to the surface a second time and went under again just before we arrived. When the rescue zodiac arrived we tried to grab her, but she shouted, “Take the box!” Only after the tool box was safely stowed on the zodiac would she let us pull her onboard.
Being someone who had spent his life working with his hands, those tools meant the world to Chuck, and the fact that Rebecka would risk herself to save them made her his new superhero.
Rebecka and Chuck
Next up: 128. Rounding Cabo San Lucas into the Sea of Cortez
Out for Justice 