WEB LOG OF OUR TRIP
ON THE 17TH BAJA HA HA RALLY
LEAVING SAN DIEGO
Leg 1
2010
Seasilk in for a spa treatment
Good crew is hard to find
We flew under the Yacht Club Burgees:
Oyster Point, Coronado Cays, South Beach and Peninsula
The Ha Ha Fleet passing Shelter Island
And we're off
Yes Craig...that really is a submarine!
First of many beautiful sunsets
STARLA made all the difference when the breeze got light
Say Paul, are you still worried about getting enough to eat?
Oct 25
Our story begins months before today as we prepared the boat for 6 months of cruising and found willing and able and compatible crew. Seasilk had not had new bottom paint since San Francisco, so a trip to Shelter Island Marine was in order. Craig also needed to install the A/C unit that he had purchased in San Francisco and brought down in a plastic container tub; <said tub will appear later in this narrative>. During this process and our pre-HaHa sea trials with friends Dick and Edye to Mission Bay, we lost our Panda Genset to ingested salt water and had to replace it as well. We did a second set of sea trials with friends Tom and Polly Morellli to Catalina Island. Everything was now in working order. Thankfully, getting crew was an easier task. We recruited Paul Friedman and his girlfriend Jen Nurse from the Latitude 38 crew list and old SF beer-can racing friend Jeff Dunn and his girlfriend Alex Kirkland and we had our complement of 6 for the trip. After packing the boat with everything you could imagine including all the never-to-be-used foulies and boots that our crew insisted on bringing with them, we went to bed in a house for our last time for weeks secure in the knowledge that we were ready.
This morning Craig awoke to noise on the dock and found Paul head-down in the aft lazarette repacking the gear to make room for MORE BEER. Chuckle, guess we are now REALLY ready. After the amount of beer consumed at the West Marine Ha Ha send-off party Sunday, who would have known?
The morning was gray and overcast with almost no wind as we left for our 9:30 appointment with the Ha Ha parade. As we passed Shelter Island the breeze began to freshen which allowed us to sail out in style and begin our approach to the starting line; between the Grand Poobah's catamaran Profligate and the lower light on Point Loma. We got a great start and sailed south on a broad reach at over 6 knots.
As we all wove a past thru numerous haze-gray vessels giving warning blasts and radio calls; it was clear that the US Navy didn't really appreciate that there were going to be 150+ sailboats heading south all at the same time . The list included one aircraft carrier that some of the lucky Ha Ha boats witnessed doing jet recovery operations during the night and even an inbound submarine.
Our course took us into Mexican waters and between two of the Coronado Islands just before sundown as we set watches of couples 3 hours on, 6 hours off through the night.