THE BASH
Assistant Poobah Patsy Verhoeven has just completed her Baja Bash, about her 20th, from Cabo to San Diego in 5.5 days on her Gulfstar 50 Talion. She reports it only would have taken her the normal five days, but she had to take off into mildly adverse conditions from Cabo in order not to get stuck there or confront bad weather later on. A week later, it's still blowing pretty good — gusts to 25 knots on the nose — along parts of the Baja coast.
Patsy arrived in San Diego with her Perkins sucking fumes, but only because a crewmember dropped 13 gallons overboard. Oops. But stuff happens. Sucking from the bottom of the tank is never a good thing, as that's where all the sediment resides. It often means bleeding the diesel over and over.
Talion's Starlink became frozen in the 'stow' position. When Patsy got to the lee of Cedros, one of the crew climbed up and rotated the antenna 90 degrees. From then on it functioned perfectly the rest of the way to San Diego.
STARLINK
With regard to Starlink, if you have the right plan, it will qualify for the Ha-Ha's mandatory two-way communication requirement. Starlink's plans can be confusing and have been changing rapidly, so we'll go over them in detail later.
Except, however, to say that if you can, the smartest thing would be to buy a Starlink in Mexico, where the equipment is a couple of hundred dollars less than in the U.S. and where the monthly charges are significantly less. In addition, if you have a U.S. Starlink you are likely to have to change your base country to Mexico after a few months.
Starlink deliveries have been swift within Mexico, as in just a couple of days.
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
Not to freak people out, but there have been a number of recreational boat emergencies lately that required or could have used some form of emergency communication.
Before the Poobah lists them, he wants to note that of the more than 3,000 boats that have done the Baja Ha-Ha, only two have been lost. One was sunk by a whale, but thanks to an EPIRB and the Coast Guard the entire crew was rescued in a matter of hours. The second was a Newport 41 inexplicably driven ashore during daylight in calm weather a few miles north of Turtle Bay. If memory serves, there has only been one dismasting.
To the emergencies: Dan Streiff and Jeannie LeBlanc-Streiff's Vancouver-based Catalina 470 Lucky Dog lost steering in the South Pacific. They had to be rescued.
Travis and Shawna Nicolet and their three children had their Westsail 43 Niniwahuni dismasted two weeks into their trip to the South Pacific from La Cruz. Shawna and the kids were taken off the boat, after which Travis singlehanded it to one of the Revillagigedo Islands, where cruisers brought fuel out so Travis could motor back to La Cruz.
David Wysopal and son Zachery, 12, on the Island Trader 45 Yasukole, Islander Trader 45 were headed for Samoa but are long unaccounted for. They'd been leaving a breadcrumb trail with a Spot X, which suddenly stopped. It possibly stopped because Spot X uses 'bent-pipe' technology and is only good for a limited distance offshore. There are also rumors that this is a Sterling Hayden situation, where one parent sailed off with a child. But these are just rumors.
The most troubling has been the disappearance of Frank and Kerry O'Brien, and crewmember William Gross, on the Lafitte 44 Ocean Bound. They left Mazatlán for Cabo and haven't been heard from since. It's not known if they had an EPIRB or other communication device. The Poobah suspects there might have been a propane explosion.
COMMUNICATION EQUIPMENT FOR EMERGENCIES
The following is a list of emergency communication equipment the Poobah recommends, in what he considers the order of desirability.
1) A Garmin InReach or similar. This is a handheld battery-operated device that can leave a breadcrumb trail and can send an SOS with the press of a button no matter where you are in the world. Of particular value is that you can text back and forth to communicate the nature of your emergency. As of October of last year over 10,000 people, most of them on land, had received help as a result of InReach. (Spot X is a somewhat similar device but uses a 'bent pipe' system that dramatically limits how far offshore it works.)
2) EPIRBs. While the Coast Guard also encourages the use of InReach, their number one recommended emergency device is the EPIRB. The signal is a little stronger and thus unlike the InReach it can still communicate a few feet underwater. The big drawback of EPIRBs is they are one-way communication. You have no way of knowing if your signal has been heard, and you have no way of communicating the nature of your emergency.
It's best, of course, to have both an InReach and an EPIRB.
3) Iridium Satphone. Like an InReach and EPIRBs, you can take a satphone in a liferaft. And like an InReach, it gives you two-way communication. Our longtime experience with Satphones is that there have been times when they didn't work well if at all.
4) Starlink is, among many other things, the best emergency device — if you have power and don't have to get into a life raft.
5) Ham or SSB radio. While these are great because an unlimited number of people can hear you at one time, they are dated technology and you can't take them in a life raft.
6) While it's not a device, sailing in events such as the Ha-Ha and the Pacific Puddle Jump have two safety features: 1) There is a certain amount of safety in numbers, particularly in the Ha-Ha where there are a lot of boats sailing the same mostly straight line legs. And 2) Both events offer an optional breadcrumb trail feature.
We sailors should be thankful for modern technology. When I started sailing in the '70s, there were several stories of cruisers who weren't picked up from their life rafts for as many as three months. In emergency seminars, a big topic was how much pee or seawater you could drink a day without harming yourself. This was in part because most early EPIRBs did not work, and there were no alternatives.
Thanks to today's communications, if you find yourself in a life raft on almost any of the main cruising routes, if you have the right equipment, you could be picked up in 18 hours — and often less. The worldwide rescue system is a modern miracle. We can't count the lives it would have saved in decades past. So please, avail yourself of it.
AN ENSENADA START?
The Ha-Ha fully supports boats that want to start the Ha-Ha from Ensenada. Indeed, there are some advantages. One is that the longest leg, the first, will be 55 miles shorter. Even more important, you can clear your boat and crew into Mexico. Indeed, the dream would be if boats with a lot of time could go to Ensenada, clear in, come back to the States for a few weeks, then take off to Mexico and already be cleared in.
The downside of starting in Ensenada is that berthing is limited and you'll miss the Kick-Off Parade in San Diego. However, there is no reason to miss the Last Cheeseburger in Paradise Costume Kick-Off in San Diego the day before. Transportation between San Diego and Ensenada by trolley and ABC bus is no problema.
BAHIA SANTA MARIA CHECK-IN
We're getting inquiries about how the Bahia Santa Maria check-in to Mexico is going to work. We'll have details later.
MORE ROOM IN MEXICO?
Thanks to a large number of boats that took off for the South Pacific this spring, and this year's smallish Ha-Ha fleet, there's a decent chance getting slips in Mexico over the holidays won't be quite as difficult as last year.
HOW THE FLEET IS SHAPING UP
There are 10 boats 50 feet or longer. That's 13%.
There are seven boats under 35 feet. That's 9% of the fleet.
There are 13 multihulls or 19% of the fleet, by far the highest percentage ever.
BIOS AND PHOTOS
If you've signed up for the Ha-Ha and haven't completed your profile or sent in your skipper and first-mate photos, please do so as soon as possible.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE HA-HA, THERE IS STILL TIME
The event runs from October 30 to November 11. And while we don't want to alarm anyone, as we've mentioned previously, this may be the last Ha-Ha ever. You can sign up at www.baja-haha.com. You might well have the time of your life.
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