baja harhar

[11/7/2009: updated with photos]

We're on our way! Christy, Kim (a good friend of ours who decided to crew the Baja coast with us) and I crossed the start line of the 16th annual Baja Ha Ha Rally/Race yesterday at 11:00AM. Almost 200 boats charged across the start line heading south. We hit Mexican waters an hour or two later. We had a brilliant afternoon sail under 8 knots of wind. We hoisted our Swedish flag spinnaker (one of the previous owners was Swedish) and had an incredible sail. Our drifter/spinnaker does fantastic in light wind sailing and had us going 5.5 to 6 knots and pulling ahead of some boats we shouldn't have been beating.

That is, of course, until the spinnaker came fluttering down from the masthead into the water. Turns out we didn't entirely address the chafing issues on the spinnaker halyard up at the masthead so the spinnaker halyard parted and is now lying in a heap at the bottom of our mast. The worst part is that we don't get to fly the spinnaker until we get someone to the top of the mast and reave another halyard.

We're also looking for an anchorage to duck into tonight. Looks like a front is coming through and rather than take a beating, we'll tuck in somewhere out of the worst of it.

The kooky kids of s/v Lovely Lady at the start line.


The Baja Ha Ha start line.


Flying the spinnaker.


The spinnaker piled up into a sopping mess on the side deck after the halyard parted.


Note where the halyard chafed through, approximately 8 molecules above the chafe gear.

31 01.608N 116 38.591W

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