11/07/2001: "We are motorsailing about 7 miles offshore, after leaving Bahia Santa Maria, on our way to Cabo San Lucas, the last and final stop of the VIII Annual Baja Haha Cruising Regatta.  

Everything is fine aboard the SIESTA. We are currently making water to prepare for showers on deck by all and general boat deck cleanup of salt water. BTW, this Spectra watermaker we installed on SIESTA is the best thing since sliced bread. We make 18 gallons an hour with 18 amps at 12 volts DC.  It was great and refreshing to play on deck, washing off the salt, taking showers and shampoo treats, and even horsing around like kids, shooting water at each other. You cannot beat the watermaker technology available today. Our Spectra Santa Cruz 380 supplied us with ample pure fresh water, powered mostly by our solar panels, all the way down to Cabo, and beyond.

 Gary, one of our top-notch crew members, an expert fisherman, is working on getting the barbeque grill mounted on the aft pulpit back to snuff, to cook steaks from that 25 lb. mahi-mahi (dorado) that we caught yesterday. We plan to barbeque them on the way to Cabo, since the seas are so calm today. Oh, baby! And...the current sea water temperature is 77.5 degrees Fahrenheit. There is no doubt that the crew of the SIESTA is having a good time indeed. Off are the hot boating shoes, and in are the cool Teva sandals. Off are the pants and jackets. Shorts and a tee shirt is all that is needed. Off are the plastic curtains around the cockpit. Just the bimini top is left to give us cool shade in the cockpit. The temperature in the cockpit is 78 deg F.

We arrived yesterday noon at Bahia Santa Maria, an isolated, but very beautiful and peaceful anchorage, our second stop in the Baja Haha Cruising Regatta. Peaceful, that is, until the 100+ boats from the Baja Haha arrived on the scene within a day. It was a sight to see. But there was plenty of room for us to anchor. We anchored in 25 ft of water, close to a beach and near an estuary of great beauty.

A lot of the faster sailboats boats had arrived already, and the word on the VHF radio was that a great party was starting on the beach. We tidied up quickly, and all five of us hitched a ride on a Mexican panga boat to the beach. The enterprising Mexicans had quickly converted their fishing boats to water taxis at $2 a head for the trip to the beach. There, on the beach, a surprise awaited us. In this deserted beach, besides one of the fishing camp huts, was a full fledged party in the offing, put together in an impromptu fashion, out of nowhere. See some pictures of the BSM party below:

      Daisy              Dinghies at BSM     Hank and Gary     The Grand Poobah,right     Kojak, right       Dancing at BSM...

This enterprising fellow, known as KOJAK, had trucked from great distance all the ingredients for quite a bash. This is the second year in a row that he has done this for the Baja Haha event. He brought plenty of fresh Mexican beer (read abundant and ice cold), several varieties, at $2US. Several Mexican ladies were cooking lobster tails and fresh caught pompano fish, served along with salad, and salsa, for $10US. And underneath a makeshift open tent was a 5-piece Mexican rock band, loud and good! There must have been over 250 people at the beach.

A lot of us danced into the night, and exchanged stories of our trip to Cabo so far. We have met a lot of people, all of them very interesting, many unusual, some with substantial financial resources ( judging by the type of boats they owned), as well as some with more modest means.

But, it was clear, from the lively discussions going on everywhere, that virtually all of the people on the Baja were making a fairly drastic change in their lifestyle, if not permanent, at least for a long while. 

It is interesting to note that many of the Baja Haha participants are not yet of retirement age. They are quite a few couples and singles in their twenties and thirties, taking time off, looking for adventure and a change of pace. There are a number of young kids and teenagers in the group. One 25 year old was wearing a t-shirt with a message on its back, hastily printed with a magic marker: "Will crew on a boat to the Marquesas (South Pacific). Have experience".

After having a great meal on this great vantage point, it was a real treat to look at the harbor full of beautiful sailboats and the beach next to us, chock full of inflatable dinghies, most of them with wheelsattached, to facilitate rolling them back to the water, since the Pacific tide leaves them high and dry many yards away.

We took a lot of great pictures that we hope to add to our web site once we get to Cabo San Lucas and La Paz, our next planned stop. Our experience so far is even better than we had hoped it to be. We checked into the Chubazco Ham net yesterday, while in international waters. We need to get our reciprocal ham license at La Paz ($80, US). We were not able to get to Tijuana to have that done prior to departure from San Diego. We can get excellent weather information from the net. We listened to the last game of the World Series on our SSB radio, loud and clear. The Mexicans at Turtle Bay were all rooting for the Arizona diamond backs, of course!

Well, this is all for now. Stay tuned. Anybody from our family in Miami that has news of my Mother's health, please send us an email at our wireless email address given to you in San Diego. And we love to hear from all of you. Remember to limit the length of the messages to 3-4 paragraphs, and please DELETE, DO NOT INCLUDE any text we have previously written to you. By deleting this redundant text, it makes the message shorter and faster on the airwaves. WINLINK is a very slow method of email communication, but it is reliable and is working like a champ.

Our love to you all. We wish you were all here with us."

Update: Below are some Latitude 38 pictures of the Baja Haha 2002 stop at Bahia Santa Maria, one year later: