It was 5:00 pm by the time we'd tied up in our slip at Marina San Lucas on that warm Wednesday evening. From the gas dock where we'd arrived I'd hiked around the long inlet to the boat launch ramp. The marina office was right next door and the woman behind the counter very helpful. She assigned us a slip near the bathrooms and showers, handed me a passkey for that dock's gate, smiled, and welcomed Faith to Cabo. On the way back to the boat I passed the restaurants, bars, little stores of every description, men offering boat rides on the party trimarans....basically a much bigger, smoother version of Puerto Vallarta's boardwalk. I smiled as I waved away offers of the best food, booze, marijuana, trinkets, boat rides, et cetera, but it was a forced smile: I was exhausted. The last twenty four hours of the ride in had been rough; a good deal of heeling and bouncing that had restricted sleep for the three hardy mariners of little Faith. It was gratefully that I climbed back aboard (after having to wait at the gate to the gas dock for someone with the proper keycard to exit � apparently our passkey would only work on the gate to the specific dock we'd be berthed at). Brian, Eric and I moved the boat to our new temporary home. Eric whipped up a hearty meal, after which the first mate and I fell promptly and soundly to sleep.
Long, hot showers were the order of the day when we rose � that and lots of hot coffee. Our arrival on the extreme southern end of Baja California signaled the end of the cushy 80+ degree water. As we'd noticed on the approach to Cabo (it's hard not to when every now and then you're hit in the face by a wave), the ocean was cooling perceptibly as we gained the northern latitudes. On land the shift wouldn't register. The Baja peninsula is mostly desert and temperatures can be scalding. Out on the water it is a different story. We were beginning to appreciate whatever heat we could subject ourselves to while on land....you never know, maybe that one extra joule you soaked up ashore would keep you from freezing to death out at sea....or such is my reasoning.
Next, we searched for my friend Lori. Lori had flown down to Baja for a week and timed the trip so she could spend a couple of days in Cabo San Lucas. The couple of days while Faith was in port, we all hoped. Searching for her meant counting on general directions left with friends of friends with unspecific times and indefinite places where one of us could find the other. So, of course, it was very easy: we hung around the boat and watched for her. She showed up on the boardwalk at about 10:30 in the morning and Brian found her.
Lori was the first friend to meet us on international soil (at least the first none of us was engaged to). She accompanied me to the Capitania ("You'll love it," I told her, "probably an inexplicable two hour wait and I might have to run to some bank, or maybe Migracion, before they close. But then you'll know how to do it when you get a boat.") The Port Captain's building was easy to locate from a sketch map I'd copied from a cruising guide � and we were in and out in under five minutes. They didn't even collect my documents. Just looked them over, entered the boat name, my and the crew's names, and told us to radio them on VHF 16 when we left. Wow! My amiga and I spent the rest of the two hours I'd set aside for the check in/check out process in a tacaria down the street telling stories about our previous five months.
When we got back to the boat the sun was blazing and Brian had put together the biminy (our blue plastic tarp strung from the boom with bungee cords for cover from sun or rain). Eric helped me tear apart the attachment for the bow stay, then re-seal the whole contraption. That leak in the forward compartment had persisted despite our previous work in Vallarta....something we did would eventually have to stop it.... I felt this was appropriate for our guest to witness; no port experience could be complete unless we were fixing some problem on the vessel.
Everyone was ready to do some exploring when night fell. Our little troupe wandered into the heart of Cabo, where we lost Eric. He insisted on going to see Cabo Wabo, the bar owned and frequented by members of Van Halen. The rest of us had no vested interest in going to an expensive, americanized, pop-culture feature so we went to the inexpensive, Mexicanized, Baja-culture attraction just down the street. This place was like an internet caf� for hip Mexican bar hoppers: computers you could use as you drank beer and talked to your buddies while being congenially harassed by the bartenders to drink a tequila from one of their massive wooden kegs. The place closed relatively early (probably to protect the computers � I'm not sure whether from the bartenders or the patrons) so we headed to Lori's hotel for some patio time. Sitting by the pool, we were joined by a rowdy group from England and Canada. There were six of the blokes, including one female, staying at the hotel. They told us they were recovering after a weekend in the Cabo San Lucas jail for being maniacs in and around some club downtown. One of the guys' brothers had been coerced into flying down to Cabo to spring them and figured he'd make a holiday of it. It was kind of intriguing to finally be in a place where we were the comparatively low key posse. Brian headed back to the boat for the night; I got to stay in Lori's hotel room (I know what you're thinking but, no. Really.)
I spent the next day working at an internet caf�, uploading the story onto the website and gathering pertinent weather information: it would be unlikely we'd have another chance to gather anything but local forecasts between Cabo and Ensenada. The predictions looked good � steady over the next four days with barely a discernable shift in the wind. And, who knew?, the winds would be right on our nose for the entirety of the fabled Baja Bash. I sighed in acceptance. My email was somewhat more uplifting. Two old friends, Stacy and Eric, would potentially be meeting up with us in Ensenada, just under the wire for a visit while Faith still sailed foreign waters. (Also, there was a lovely digital letter from mi corizon, Erin. Hehehehe.) Brian and Eric took care of the shopping, stocking us well in anticipation of scanty resources as we did the long barren stretch north.
The four of us regrouped back at the boat, then strolled back to Lori's for a screening of Jaws. I can never get enough of Quint the shark hunter. We were all scowling and biting off our words in bad imitation in the aftermath. It was an early night for all.
At last the day arrived when we would bid Cabo San Lucas and our wonderful, adventurous friend, Lori, adios. I checked us out of with the Marina San Lucas staff, we organized our gear, loosed the lines, and backed gracefully from our slip. Lori shipped on as a passenger for the short ride to the gas dock. After we'd collected our fuel we waved goodbye over the transom as we struck out onto the carnival waters of the outer harbor.
Once again we were greeted by a cacophony of psychotic water-sportsters, even more numerous than on our arrival, it being a Saturday. This time, as we passed by the beautiful Land's End arch, we noticed an ambulance boat waiting in the wings. On the edge of the free-for-all there bobbed a red and white first aid ship, its captain and a couple of technicians standing by with binoculars, scoping out the frantic festivities. This was at once reassuring and disturbing: on the one hand it's great that emergency services are right there if anything gruesome should befall an unmindful pleasure boater; on the other you'd never see such an expensive, time consuming operation in place unless the need for it was an almost daily occurrence....we hope the emergency crew had a boring week.
Once beyond the arch we were back in our element. The wind whipped up to say welcome back! The seas sharpened their crests and the air went crisp and clean, bleached by a noontime sun. Adios Cabo San Lucas! Gracias, Lori, and good luck! We are off to face the northern wastes! Arrrrribbbba!