Almost a decade ago, I went to visit my friends Amy and Liz in Louisiana and came home to discover Mack bought a sailboat. Since then, he has bought four more sailboats: Kenutu, Lily Girl, Cynara, and Andante. I will probably have brain damage from all the work we did on Kenutu, and I wept, like actual heartbreak weeping, when we sold her. Lily Girl lasted about 5 minutes before Mack realized the joy of being able to stand up straight, especially when you have back pain. Cynara took a lot of our money and time and enjoyed one trip out of the slip before she was sold. And then we got Andante, a boat Mack said would be his "forever" boat.
Andante is a stunning 40' Hans Christian Christina commissioned by a dentist in 1984 and brought to the sea in 1986. She's a comfortable hoss, refitted with such luxuries as a travertine countertop in the galley and tile in the bathroom. Like Kenutu, she has a Pullman berth for sleeping, which is so much better than a V-berth. It has been a dream of mine to have a fridge with bottom area access since we got on boats, and Andante even fit that bill.
Andante was our most expensive and perfect boat investment, and Mack decided she would be the vessel he'd leave the port with and start a journey around the sea. I agreed to meet him at the other ports because I get motion sick and recently developed vertigo.
His epic adventure was to launch this year with the Baja Haha Rally in October, a "race" with about 100 other boats that goes from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. He recruited his cousin Scott and buddy Dylan to be crew and spent months of time and money getting Andante ready for anything. Plumbing, electrical, rigging, anchor system, radar, navigation instruments, sails... he did it all. I made hats and shirts, got FOMO, and decided that I should probably go too, especially since if I ended up in a puke bucket dangling from the side of the boat for a week, there'd be others who could split the work load.
On October 28, we left Long Beach and started our trip down the coast to San Diego, where the official starting line would be. We had a beautiful sail to Dana Point and got to fly our asymmetrical spinner for the first time ever. I wore my scopolamine patch and stayed in the cockpit and we had a lovely day. We watched a hot pink sunset, enjoyed a celebratory Guinness, and I started to think this could be really fun.
The next day we waited for Scott to fly in before we untied the lines (Dylan had to bail because life) and started the 10-12 hour sail for San Diego. Scott, who arrived with the worst sounding crud of a cold I'd heard in a while, was with us when we sailed Gypsy into San Diego so that history plus the new radar made our late night arrival a little less scary. For them anyway. I'd reserved a slip a week before our arrival, so I knew we had a parking spot... which was basically exactly long enough for our boat and squished between two other boats. Mack snuck our big girl in there like he was putting a baby to bed, Scott and I tied her up, and we all went to sleep excited for the next day's parties and rally meetings.
This was the first sign that the Baja Haha was probably not where we belonged. Mack went to the Captain's Meeting (held in an unshaded parking lot at 8am) for about 20 minutes before he lost all patience for it. We later went to the meet and mingle costume party, held in the same parking lot, where we ended up tucked in a corner wondering what was wrong with us that this party wasn't all that fun. We weren't meeting anyone. We weren't learning anything. It sort of felt like when you visit a retirement home and sure, it's pleasant enough, but you also can't wait to get out of there. Were we too young to relate to the salty boomers or too old to relate to the young adventurers? Is it us or them? I still don't know, but now I don't care.
The next morning we woke up, filled the water tanks one last time with sweet, sweet American hose water, untied the lines, and joined the race to Cabo, a 10-day voyage with two stops along the way. The wind was all wrong for a southern sail, so they announced a rolling start of 24 hours, meaning you could sail or motor for an entire day and it would count the same. It was so exciting falling in with so many other sailboats as we left the harbor, closer than we normally would have been and on the precipice of something incredible. That first day was some of the best sailing we had the whole time.
The sun came up, like it always does, indifferent to the night we had, and put a little life back in the crew. I managed to pee and refill my water bottle, which was really the extent of my entire existence for three days. Mack had rigged Starlink so we could have internet while under way if the motor was on, so Scott watched shows and read books and Mack made phone calls and read the news. Every couple of hours one of the boys microwaved a burrito.
At one point we decided to test the hand line we bought in San Diego. Scott tossed it off the end of the boat, I gave him a clothespin so we could tell if something latched on (learned that watching La Vagabonde), and before we even finished saying, "Think we'll catch something?," something was on the line. A yellowfin tuna, big and beautiful with actual fins that were yellow, came aboard, leaving us scrambling for a way to bleed it and quickly filet it without luring sharks onto the deck as well. That burst of excitement, which was a welcome highlight, took the gram of energy I had in my entire body, and the fresh sushi had to be put in the freezer because no one had the capacity to make something with it.
It is surreal how depleted you can get doing essentially nothing but not dying. As the sun headed for the ocean and the darkness swallowed us up again, the guys developed a 3-hour shift plan and let me go below to try to sleep. The freezing toes didn't get in my way that night, but no matter what I did, I couldn't stop worrying that Mack or Scott would fall overboard and be lost forever. It was an unrelenting dread. If they fell overboard and were tethered in, they'd be drowned by the autopilot. If they fell overboard untethered, the autopilot would leave them in the waves and we wouldn't know they were missing until we were three hours away from them. It was the worst, most constant mindfuck I've ever felt in my life.
By our third day at sea, I was done. Done with the diesel headache and the lurking panic attack and the radio chatter relaying all the great times and dolphin sightings and fresh sushi the other boats were experiencing. I was done with the boat. If Andante sank in the middle of the Pacific I wouldn't have cared, as long as I was off of her. I actually thought the only thing worse than being on that boat was being in that never-ending dark water that is refrigerator cold and full of things that could eat me. That's literally what kept me on board. On her, I lived.
I changed my scopolamine patch, giving it some extra massages to try to get the medication to work better. I laid up by the mast to get away from the stench of diesel and streamed Real Housewives on Peacock. I did not want my sour experience to ruin it for anybody else, but I think we were all feeling underwhelmed by the magic.
And that was the most terrible part. For years Mack had dreamed about this experience, had worked hard and put blood and sweat into making it happen, and seeing reality stain that dream was a new devastation. My heart broke for him, I was disappointed in myself for being so worthless, and I could only muster apathy about it all.
As we tidied the deck after the voyage, I found a nut on the deck. A nut that attaches to the bolt that keeps the boom in place. The boom that is an 11' metal tube that holds the bottom of the sail. A metal tube that could have killed us or knocked us overboard if it had come loose while we were out in the middle of the rolling ocean. Thank god I had no idea we also had that death trap threatening us until we were safe at anchor.
Bahia Tortugas, or Turtle Bay, is a small fishing community with a very alive anchorage. After 450 miles of nothing but sunrises, sunsets, and waves lurching at you, it was glorious to hear the barking sea lions and watch the tornado of birds riding upwind drafts in that bay.
The Haha organized a baseball game with the locals, who have a pretty amazing field for such a remote village. The townspeople set up pop up restaurants in the plaza, and we enjoyed abuela-fuerte margaritas and tacos served on homemade tortillas. It was so nice to walk on land again, to see humans and hear music, to watch the dogs lay in the sand. It felt carefree and happy, and it reminded me why I came on the trip. It also made me realize why the Haha wasn't really working for me. Everything was prescribed, on an agenda, rush rush rush, competing for resources that are already scarce, and being very "Karen" about it. We sat at the only restaurant in town (I think), sipped margaritas, watched a rainbow, and ended up meeting the crew of Big Sky, a boat out of Montana who happened to be in the bay but not on the Haha and seemed to be on our frequency. I also made poke bowls from that fresh tuna and my god, that was probably the best thing I ever made.
With 450 nautical miles and two good nights of sleep behind us, we hauled anchor and got started on leg 2, which would be only one night at sea. We tried to sail to avoid the diesel element, but I fucked everything up on a tack and almost killed us. Basically I couldn't look up to trim the sail because of my vertigo, but the line I was tightening to trim the sail was caught on something so the sail wasn't tightening and the line had about a million pounds of tension on it. I didn't pay attention, nothing was working right, the sails were flopping, and the Captain was pissed at how I could be so stupid. I cried and kept my mouth shut while he got us into a position where we could recover, and once things calmed down, I gave him my resignation, letting him know I will not be sailing one minute past Cabo. Ah, things were off to a glorious start.
This leg was actually better than the first. I think knowing it was shorter helped. We caught a bonita and another yellowfin tuna, both of which took less than 5 minutes to bite. And I was starting to get some "sea brain" so I could actually go down below and make quesadillas or guacamole without needing to vomit. Mack and Scott were still taking the night shifts, but I tried to hang out on deck as late as I could, like midnight, and then head below for a 6-hour snooze. One night the boat started flopping really strangely and I knew someone was dead. I woke up, popped out of bed and headed toward the cockpit, when I saw Scott crawl of his berth. Which meant Mack was dead. Scott opened the companion way and Mack was dodging a cruise ship and a sailboat charging at him with a gigantic spinnaker blocking their view of him. His watches always seemed to have the drama.
Since the boys were doing the nights, I tried to wake up as soon as the light came through my window and head up to the cockpit to relieve whichever exhausted man was on watch. Often they were so tired and bleary eyed they didn't see obvious things, like the torn sail that happened at the reef point. I basically tied myself in, assured them I'd alert them if anything happened, and told them they had to get some rest.
I am not a morning person, but the morning was my favorite time at sea. Watching the world change colors with the new light. Seeing the animals who'd come visit. I saw sea turtles, sharks, dolphins, jumping rays, even whales, most of it with just myself to squeal at about it.
Sunset was also good, but not as much because after sunset is the horrible, cold, tired nighttime of despair. One evening I was in the cockpit alone, listening to a podcast, watching a very dramatic sunset to my right, only to look to my left and see a subdued little moonrise happening on my left. That was the first of four incredible things that happened, that made me grateful to be out there suffering through the awful moments to get to these enchanting ones. The sky also gifted us some shooting stars, one of which was green, which reminded my of my Uncle Vince. Between the shooting stars and the moon, which reminded me of my Aunt Becky, it felt a teeny bit less lonely.
At some point we had 100 nautical miles to go, which Mack turned into the bottles of beer song. He'd busst out with "98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around..." and wait about 20 minutes/1 mile before he would sing the next verse. From then on, when somebody asked, how much farther do we have, the response would be "62 bottles of beer" or however many miles we had to go. I hated every answer above 20. At 20, it was like oooooh just three to four more hours!
We again arrived at the anchorage in the middle of the night, exhausted, desperate to anchor and get sleep, and relieved that the sail was over for now. We had logged another 200 nautical miles and arrived at Bahia Santa Maria.
Instead we spent the days cooking up all the fish we caught, taking dinghy tours around the anchorage to peek at boats, reading books, doing puzzles, watching movies, and realizing that our boat looked like a murder scene because we are bad fish butchers.
It was at Bahia Santa Maria that the second incredible thing happened. Since it was Halloween before we left, I'd bought a couple mullet wigs for Mack and Scott in case I needed a laugh. I pulled them out, Mack put his on, and Punto Tomas was born. I don't know what it is about him, but he was absolutely a highlight of this adventure. Loud, a little bit dumb, and way too much machismo, and I liked it.
Too soon, it was time to haul anchor again and go the final 165 nautical miles to Cabo San Lucas. The rain dribbled on us as we headed out of the bay, surrounded by boats flying spinnakers and having full sails and wondering why the fuck our sails wouldn't cooperate. We were on the same wind, same tack, same everything, but they were getting along just fine and we couldn't. It was motor time, again, but at least the wind wasnt' exactly behind us trying to smother us.
I sat in the cockpit while Mack helmed when all of a sudden the ocean let out a huge sigh about 20 feet off the port side of the boat. My brain finally caught up as I saw the blow holes of two humpback whales close up, head under the water, and say goodbye with their namesake hump. I waited for the tail wave, until Mack reminded me that we needed to get the hell away since a breaching one of those giants sank a boat on the Haha before. Even though it came with some terror, seeing those whales, so close, so enormous, so indifferent to us, was humbling and marked the third incredible moment that gave value to the whole experience. Well, it was probably 11 seconds, not an entire moment, but still.
SHOW ME THE TURTLES.
The weather went from gloomy to brilliant to electric. The sunset's drama was matched by the moonrise this night, which was so good I called for Mack and made Scott get out of his cocoon to come look.
The boat switched into night mode, with red lights on inside and boys taking shifts. I slept but was done before sunrise, so I took my place at the helm and sent Mack to bed. I'd never seen his eyes so glassy, his face grey from fatigue. I found some flying fish on the deck and plopped them back into the ocean. My nausea in the cockpit was finally gone, and it was a peaceful morning to say goodbye to the Pacific Ocean and thank her for being gentle with us.
Peaceful until we got in sportfishing boat range of Cabo. Then I was dodging sting rays jumping out of the water and long trawling lines coming out the back of power boats. The last thing we needed was our propeller to catch on something and have to solve that problem. As we got about 20 miles from the finish line, the whole crew was in the cockpit, taking in the trademark point of Cabo San Lucas. I don't know how anyone else felt, but I was relieved. It was over. I did it. No one died. My resignation was submitted.
After we anchored, I took a little swim, had a beer, and laid on the bow letting the sun dry me off. Mack came up to sit and the fourth and most incredible thing happened. Without a word spoken, I absorbed how much we sacrificed to make this happen, how much we suffered for each other to be here, how even though it wasn't ideal, it was successful. A special thing blossomed between us in the silence of that bow, something that wouldn't have been nurtured if not for the stress of the 10 days before. Something our togetherness hadn't ever touched before. Was it enough to make me go one more mile? No. But was it exquisite and a precious taste of what life is made of? Definitely.
We made it. Even though thousands of people have done it before us and tens of thousands will do it after, it was huge for us. Huge and done. Cheers to that.
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