We had a horrible ride from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas. We went through almost everything what can happen when you are underway.. but lets start at the beginning:

We left Ensenda on Friday evening around 8pm. It was windy, but nothing to worry about. Because of the southern wind we made a Offshore heading 240 close hauled on Starbord. We had a cloudy, moonless, dark night, you couldn´t see anything out there. There was no difference between Sea, Horizon or sky, all was just black. After a while Rebecca and me started to feel a little seasick. Just the common first reaction of our Landlubber bodies, i thought. But seasicknes was going worse and we had nearly 2 days being very sick. I hadn´t been seasick like this before and i hope, i never will be again. I couldn´t do anything without feeding fish, if you have something to feed. But after a while there wasn´t anything left to spit out. Because things have to be done, if you are on a sailboat. We did our best and layed down on the floorboards immediatly after finishing it. Sunday, after some good sleep, i was cured from seasicknes and Rebecca was on her way to be. So the nice part could start..

yes, it could, but it wasn´t! after a whole day heading south our Autopilot quit work around 3 Miles away of San benito west. nothing to worry about, just restart it and go.. but it quit working, because the whole rudder wasn´t working! Again Rudderproblems! but this time it was serious! We have a hydraulic steering system and one hose was broken, so the oil was gone and with it the pressure to move the rudder as well. Not a good thing at all, but just in front of the rocky coast of San Benito West makes it really dangerous. The Emergency tiller wasn´t any help. We couldn´t move the tiller at all and VHF is a wonderful thing if somebody is out there you can talk to..

after some deep breaths and processing approximatley a couple million bits and bytes in my brain, i decided trying to steer the boat just under sails with some help of the engine and its propeller walk passing the island on its south side and try to get as far into the anchorage area as possible. Going upwind is easy, but upwind were the rocks of the islands rough coast. The Engine in reverse helps us to slow down the boat and we passed the rocks drifting southeast. When the way upwind was free of rocks, we trimmed the boat and pushed the bow into the wind, using the propeller walk of the engine. When we went through the wind, we dropped all of our 300ft of chain an hoped it will hold. We had exactly one shot. it happened at 50ft dephts. Not as far into the bay as i wanted and the wind was blowing with around 20 knots and the sea was up to 2 meter, but… the anchor was holding!!!! Still no contact on VHF.

We renewed all hoses of the hydraulic steering before we sailed her up from Ensenda to San Diego last July.. except two, who looked very good. and guess what.. one of it broke. I took the hose from the autopilot pump and put it in place where the broken hose was, filled and bleaded the whole system and we had a working rudder again. but no autopilot!

That means we had to steer by hand all the way down to Cabo San Lucas. Next morning we started early trying to reduce the 500 miles to cabo as good as we can, changing the helm every 2-3 hours. This is a piece of extreem hard work and makes sailing very unattractive!!!

Because of slow winds we had the engine running. At around 25% fuel level i switched the fuel supply valve from the starboard tank to the port tank and got in my mind not to forget to watch the tanklevel and switch again before the tank is full. The Port tank was 100% filled. We have two tanks but the backflow from the engine i sonly going into the starbord tank. that’s the reason why we use the starbord tank first, and when nearly empty we switch to port and pump the fuel into the starbord tank. how fast that will happen we got no idea. I went to bed to rest for my next watch and forgot the tanks..

The moment i remember what i forgot, was when the engine starts changing its noises.. “Fuck#!” the port tank is empty and the engine gets no fuel! AND where is the fuel gone, wich didn´t fit into the starbord tank? This must be around 25% capacaty, which means around 37.5 gallons.

I found out by opening the engine room. The bilge was filled with diesel. The fuel was pressed through the seal of the maintanance door and flowed into the engine room. Of course it was in the middle of the night and Rebecca and I were tired from the whole trip. we stopped the engine and let us drift again. After we pumped the fuel from the bilge into spare tanks with 5 gallons of capacity, we filtered it and put it into the port tank.. one by one.. after this we cleaned the bilge and started the engine to be under way again.

The last day in Ensenda we talked to Peter, a german canadian sailor. He told us not to leave on a friday, because it means badluck for your journey. I said, i´m not supersticious and forgot about it. But after we cleaned the bilge for more than 2 hours, i remembered it. I took my best bottle of rum out of the shelf and sacrificed it to the sea, asking neptun for forgiveness and promised him

never to leave on a friday

again.

on friday, 4 days after San benito Island, we sighted land and reached Cabo San Lucas just after sunset. We digged our hook into sandy bottom close to the shore in 15ft of water and sneaked into our beds.

Nevertheless the local Hotels celerated the whole night their party program, we slept like stones and woke up the next morning in paradise..