8 Feb 2010 Los Frailes
Mag Bay to La Paz Picassa Pictures
From Bahia Magdalena, we sailed through the night at a nice clip of 8 knots, made it around the tip of Baja, and sailed past Cabo San Lucas, escorted by breaching humpback whales. We then motored late into Los Frailes, the most eastern point on the Baja peninsula. We did a quick walk down memory lane, recounting for the kids an epic moment 13 years ago when my Dad and Betty wowed those in this anchorage, by sailing in with their spinnaker flying. We had dropped ours a few miles back, and were still surprised by the powerful downdraft off the steep cliffs north of the little bay. We’d radioed, to warn him, but it’s not always easy to hear the radio up on deck (or to take advice from your kids:) So we got out the binoculars to take in the show. Silver Lining under full spinnaker is a sight to behold. It’s amazing what 20 knots of wind with 30 knot gusts can do for the velocity of 20 tons of steel. They must have been doing over 10 knots, as Betty bravely turned into the wind, heading straight for the beach to drop the Spinnaker. SL broached, brazenly mooning us all with her glorious bottom. Gary, on the foredeck attempting to pull the sock over the spinnaker, got launched 6-10 feet off the deck gripping the lines of the sock like a trapeze artist. Three times he did a jack in the box leap into the air as the spinnaker, reticent to be doused in such fine winds, attempted to shed the sock – each attempt sending Gary high into the air . On the third attempt Gary won the upper hand, bagged the beast and tossed the anchor in the water. Here I may be exaggerating, but I swear I remember SL riding the anchor rode like a bungie jumper towards the beach, before she settled back to hanging in her proper spot to leeward of the anchor.

There was a French boat in the anchorage, and when Frank paddled over to greet his compatriots, the French, not easily impressed by other sailors, especially American sailors, said something like “Dit donc! ton Beau Pere, il a des couilles” I leave translating to Google…

This time we arrived in the calm dark of night, not wanting SL to get over eager and give us a repeat performance.

SL misses you dad! xoxomo

P.S. According to SL’s engineer, we are missing some data to complete yesterday’s math quiz.; does anyone know the absorption properties of whale blubber?