Well, here we are in beautiful, warm Cabo San Lucas. We are not hurt, no equipment was lost or damaged, and we are still speaking to one another, so we guess that means it was a successful passage! Neil has developed a sudden distaste for wearing both shoes and shirt. Nancy has gotten quite tan. We are "on the hook" in the anchorage southeast of the Cabo harbor. It is rolly! A slip inside the marina is both difficult to get and expensive (US$1.50 per foot per night), so we are content to stay outside with all the cruisers, use the abundant "water taxis" to get back and forth US$2 per person per trip), and spend the occasional rocky-rolly night when the swells come up from the southeast. The Davis "Rocker Stoppers" we bought from Jonathan at the Marina Market in Poulsbo help to quell the rolling. All of our baths these days are swim baths followed by a freshwater rinse on deck. We haven't seen the inside of a shower for over a month now. Phew! We have made a half-joking agreement with a group of new cruising friends that if any one of us gets to smelling bad, we'll tactfully but directly let each other know, . . . but let's start where we left off back on the hook in San Diego Bay before the start of the Baja-Haha.

The Baja-Haha is a sailboat race which starts out of San Diego each year for Mexico-bound cruisers and ends in Cabo San Lucas. It is unofficially sponsored, hyped, and led by someone named Richard from the magazine Latitude 38. They disavow any direct association with the event for reasons of liability and litigation. We think Richard, the main sparkplug of the event, is probably the owner or editor of Latitude 38. He is a large man and a big ham, a very likable guy who just loves the microphone, calls himself the Grand Poohbah or Grand Pooh Bear, and runs a big catamaran named Profligate. He does a very good job with the race, striking an appropriate balance between order and efficiency on the one hand and informality and friendliness on the other. We attended all the Baja-Haha parties and events in San Diego and continued to spend money on prepping the boat like we thought we would never see the inside of a marine store again. The biggest new thing we added was two new Siemmens SM-55 solar panels which give us about 8 amps charge to our #2 battery bank in bright, overhead sunshine. We fastened them atop our homemade dodger, . . . as you can see on our new homepage photo of the boat. They are working out very well. We bought a new kerosene anchor light and now carry seven gallons of paraffin which allows us to burn it for 200 consecutive 12-hour tropical nights without running out of juice. This item is working out really well also. And we had a stainless steel bar welded over the anchor bow roller to stiffen it up for sideways shear and to keep the anchor and chain from jumping off the roller.

The provisioning task was difficult, mainly because it was so hard to get around in San Diego. We didn't know the town very well, the bus stops were distant and infrequent, and the supermarkets were far away. On the other hand, it was really noisy being anchored near the airport and a very long row to the dinghy dock. We were glad just to get the heck out of Dodge! The people at Downwind Marine have a 1984 Ford Ranger pickup, aptly named "Lurch", which you can sign up for and use half-a-day for no fee. That helped us a lot! We found Chris Frost at Downwind Marine to be knowledgeable and helpful. Their prices are a little better than those at the West Marine evil empire.

 We made it to the starting line next morning in time, fairly well prepped, with our Mexican visas, fishing licenses and US passports in hand. The fishing license was mandatory and cost $199.45. We even had to buy a $30 license for our dinghy! We'll need to catch a lot of fish to feel good about that.

There is no such thing as a bad start to a sailboat race as far as Neil is concerned. The start was upwind in about 10 knots of breeze, Neil enjoyed himself immensely. A helicopter from Latitude 38 came round and took aerial photos of all the boats, which we could purchase later for $50. Proceeds from the sale go to the orphanage in La Paz. You can see our new photo on our homepage.

We won't give you a blow by blow description of the race. It consisted almost entirely of downwind legs in moderate to light northwest winds. Since we were heading mostly southeast, the big challenge was finding the right combinations of sails which would allow the self-steering Monitor windvane to steer, keep us moving, yet not jibe. The new sails from Carol Hasse were a joy to work with! Boats were broken up into about 10 divisions according to size. There were three legs; the first to Turtle Bay was 340 nm and took us (and most boats) 3 days and 3 nights at sea. The second leg was 240 miles to Bahia Santa Maria, we made it in two days. The final leg to Cabo San Lucas was only 180 nm, but the wind deserted us around midnight, so it also took two days. We won all three legs in our division, which means we got a bottle of Kahlua went we got to the awards presentation in a parking lot in Cabo. We also beat all of the Catalina 38's and 42's (seven in all) in other divisionsl, but we think that part of the reason for this is that we just tried a great deal harder, plus the fact that Active Light is a great sea boat with new sails. We motored only 5 hours and 31 minutes of the entire trip. You were penalized heavily if you motored at all.

In retrospect, there are many good things about the Baja-Haha approach to getting south to Cabo San Lucas. It gives you a calendar date to shoot for and kind of forces you to be ready to go by that date. Meeting all the people from other boats is a positive thing, and anytime you can have a race start with that many boats, testing your boat against many others, that is also a very positive thing. The race was run really well by the Grand Pooh Bear, the information on weather, bar conditions, repairs, and customs learned over the radio nets were really helpful. There is considerable comfort in going in a group, many of the "less-than-well-prepared" boats asked for and received help from others in the fleet. We were surprised at the apparent lack of adequate preparation by some of these boats, but there is a tremendous spirit of helping others which is perhaps the most positive aspect of the event.

On the other hand, the whole thing could be viewed as a baby-sitting service for first-time, timid, south-bound cruisers. Furthermore, there is a definite bias toward the larger, more expensive boats, the smaller boats are almost ignored. And don't kid yourself, it is a great deal harder to race or sail three consecutive days at sea with a "Mom and Pop" crew of two on a small boat than on the multi-crewed larger boats. It is just hard to keep up the concentration 'round the clock with only two hour naps. Anyway, the only boats which get much notice throughout the event are the biggest and most expensive, but that speaks loads toward the value system of the race organizers.

One memory we have of this experience was of the beach parties that are always held at each stop. There we all were upon this beautiful, formerly-deserted beach, now populated by about three hundred boaters, drinking beer and margaritas, trading hors d'oeuvres of ceviche and tuna sushi. Picture several blond bikini-clad women with very prominent dieting-induced clavicles wading knee-deep in the surf, smiling into the beautiful sunset while languidly dragging their fingers through the foam, their tee-shirt and swim-shorts clad husbands laughing, dancing and drinking on the beach to the music of a good but very loud Mexican band which appeared from out of nowhere, while local Mexican families, parked atop the sand dunes in their new (!) pickup trucks looked down upon us in amazement. We suspect they were thinking they were watching a reenactment of "Dallas" or "Lifestyles of the Rich and Foolish". None, including ourselves, made any attempt to walk up and say hello to these people, . . ."What's your name?", "What do you do?", "What do you think of all these gringos on your beach?". Strange, no? It feels ucomfortable in our memory banks. We have to say that the beaches were left clean and unlittered, thanks to the efforts of those same skinny blond women.

Another memory of this race and the beach parties will forever be that of the beach landings in the dinghies. Of the 112 boats, only two had hard dinghies, our Active Light and Fancy Free. Everyone else has the standard So-Cal issue West Marine inflatable with the Nissan 5 or 10 horsepower outboard. People think us a bit odd in that we row long distances everywhere. We have to admit, though, that so far, the inflatable with the outboard makes more sense for ferrying people and supplies long distances to and from the boat. We'll see if we break down and buy one. We had a pretty exciting time, as well as two wet butts, from trying to get through the surf to the beach. As an aside, we are finding that our 45 pound CQR drags frequently while trying to set it in the hard, gravelly Mexican sand. The only time we used our new 44 pound Bruce, it grabbed immediately. We think the Bruce is the better hoook for these waters, (Jean Hart - "You were right, dear!").

And for all of our friends at Esquire Hills Elementary School, here is a photo the Los Cabos Elementary School. We could not spot any grass nor playground equipment anywhere. All the students wore simple uniforms to school, same colored dress for the girls, slacks and white shirt for the boys.

We spent a lot of time just sightseeing with our friends, Mike and Gail Cannady from "Wild Rover" - a Cal 34, and Don and Theresa Rumph from "Tortuga" - a 32' gaff-rigged Atkin cutter.

We had an incredible fish meal at Mariscos Mazatlan, a tremendous meal, but unfortunately Neil came down with a case of "Montezuma's Revenge" from which it took him ten (10) days to recover. Nancy was sick only 4 days.

  Meanwhile, back on the beach, the affluent gringos sip margaritas and beer while being insulated from contact with the poor by an efficient hotel staff. We spent only one afternoon like this when we were allowed onto the beach of a classy hotel by virtue of being part of the Baja-Haha. The rest of the time we sit around in open air restaurants or walk our feet off sightseeing!

We will go through exit customs Tuesday, November 14th and take off Wednesday for La Paz, with two leisurely stops along the way. It will be nice not to be held to a schedule. We are having a little trouble understanding which water is okay to drink and which is not, so were are resorting to bottled water in the meantime.