Pothole Magazine #4: Baja California

Mack and I expected some sort of military fanfare as we sailed our shitty little boat into Mexico -- a strafing by US fighter jets, getting searched by the Coast Guard, anything to make us feel a little bit outlaw -- but nothing  happened.  It was kinda foggy, and at some point we entered Mexican waters.  I guess you could smuggle just about anything into Mexico: worth knowing!

Mack reaping benefits from a lobster trap we found washed up on a remote and rugged shore in Baja.

This was when the whole Tijuana Border "Drug War" domestic-terror-propaganda was in full swing so we decided to head as far South as possible before checking out the coast.  We kited San Quintin for a few days and then continued onward to Bahia Tortugas -- about halfway down the peninsula -- and the only convenient port to get fuel on the West Coast of Baja.

A better name for this polluted bay would be Bahia Pelicanos.  We didn't see a single turtle but 20,000+ pelicans were shitting all over the place. As retaliation for a business deal gone bad, a big Mexican fishing boat had recently dumped TONS of rotten sardines just off the town of Tortugas.  Little stinkers were washed up all over the place and it seems every pelican within 100 miles had caught wind of the stank.  There were so many  in such a feeding frenzy that Mack caught only pelicans while trying to fish.  We got sick from kiting the poop-flavored waters here.


We also traded a blow up doll and tube of lube for laundry service: double teaming the doll just didn't appeal to us so we pawned her off.

One very stoked resident of Tortugas, Baja.

Huge Gringo sportfishing yachts were taking on barrels of diesel, cases of Pacifico, and, ironically, fresh locally-caught fish.  The Mexicanos at the Muelle laughed at me for needing a mere seven gallons of gas, so I led them in a rousing rendition of Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" to assure them my manhood was intact despite burning so little.  Me encanta la gasolina!  Sorta.

The first tree we saw in desolate Baja... atop a mountain near Magdalena Bay.

We spent a few weeks around gorgeous Magdalena Bay, snagging some bitchin' waves and occasional kiting.  Running low on supplies and completely out of cash we had to get going. A few days later at sunset, we found ourselves rounding Baja's tip and that long line of lights called Cabo San Lucas.  Apparently about 30 years too late, we didn't even consider stopping.  We'd heard it was too expensive, too hideous: a paradise lost because way too many people found it.

As we entered the Sea of Cortez at the onset of winter, we had to watch out for El Norte, fierce winds from the North that kick up steep seas bad for sailing but great for kitsurfing.  Just after dawn we made it to the remote anchorage at Roca Frailles as a stiff wind built from the North.  Here we spent five days waiting for the wind to subside and had our best kiting since hitting Mexico, made friends with some great yachties, discovered phenomenal bouldering and snorkeling, and had a damn good (though hungry) time.

Our destination, windsurf and kiteboard mecca La Ventana lay a mere 60 miles north -- about a 10 hour sail in ideal conditions.  We were exhausted, starving, and filthy after a month of exploring the remoter stretches of Baja.  All that remained in our pantry were raisins and rice. A dozen friends awaited us in La Ventana, and  we could hardly wait to clean up, drink some beers, catch up with friends, chase tail, sleep on land, and look for winter jobs.

La Ventana is great for kitesurfing in steep wind swell which makes it a horrible place to anchor a boat.  As such, our plan was to anchor at a small bay called Ensenada Muertos and then walk/hitchhike/kiteboard the ~12 miles to La Ventana.  We had no idea what to do with the boat while based in La Ventana and hoped an option would materialize.  The most ridiculous option imaginable materialized.

Running out of food, we made a go despite El Norte, and after a rough night battling upwind we found ourselves anchoring in the pristine waters of Ensenada Muertos.  The Bombay Sapphire blue waters were so clear one could see the anchor 35 feet down and 200 feet away.  A few tasteful mansions were tucked away in the gorgeous mountains rimming the bay, and a huge palapa sat on the hillside over a pefect beach..  We'd heard the palapa housed a restaurant so we quickly got our kitegear together, dinghied to shore, and went in search of breakfast.

El Cardon Tequila Bar and Grill, Ensenada Muertos, Bahia De Los Suenos, Baja

Suprisingly modern, this seemingly-deserted palapa restaurant offered free coffee, WiFi, an ATM, and had a menu you'd expect at a nice sports bar stateside.  A few framed football jerseys alluded to owners who'd come through the NFL.  We pulled our limits from the ATM and ordered a few breakfasts each.  As we were gorging ourselves, a few GIGANTIC Gringos showed up and asked if those were our kiteboards outside  We shot some shit, hit it off, and so began the strangest chapter in El Viaje...

Twenty minutes later we were piling into a pimped out monster truck bound for La Ventana.  Our 6'5", 280 pound, heavily-tattooed driver -- a true renaissance man and the owner of that palapa restaurant -- had recently retired from a nine year career as an all-pro NFL offensive lineman.  Though you've probably never heard of him you are doubtless familiar with his handiwork: for years he bashed exceptionally huge holes in the defense through which star running backs Marshall Faulk and Reggie Bush ran through for record yardages.  I speak of Kyle Turley, one hell of a football player, surfer, artist, musician, businessman, and now activist in the fight to properly treat head injuries in professional sports.

After kiting our faces off for a week in La Ventana, Mack and I headed back to Ensenada Muertos.  Kyle offered us the guest house in his mansion, free food at his restaurant, use of a whole fleet of boats and vehicles, and jobs.  Our goal was to develop watersports in the bay and to help promote the area.  My title?  Director of Fun.

Sunrise as viewed form the balcony at the guest house.

Mack and I went from camping aboard a $5,000 boat to sharing a $500,000 guest house behind a $5,000,000 mansion.  We started eating good again and gained back a lot of the weight we'd lost over the trip.  I realized that my current boat, the 27 foot Sin Fin, wasn't ideal for sailing to Patagonian Chile, so I made it my new goal to work as hard as I could in hopes of earning enough to buy a solid boat within a few years time.
 

Mack and I got the ball rolling on our own kiteboard business, threw some kick ass parties at the restaurant, drove around in the gas-guzzlingest roofless truck imaginable, kited almost ever day, made countless new friends, and gained a very interesting perspective on the lives of the rich and pseudo-famous.

Hypocrisy can be a damn good time!

Like all things too good to be true, it was.  Forty strange and stressful days later I  fell out from that crew and -- even broker than I'd been before, and now at odds with my once friend Mack -- I set sail for La Paz...alone.

Pothole Magazine, Installment #3

Looking pretty haggard in Two Harbors, Catalina Island, SoCal.

    When we left off in Pothole Deuce, no-budget-travelers Mack and Max had just sailed piece-of-shit yacht "Sin Fin" through a nasty storm while crossing the Oregon/California border.  Still far from their destination, they're going for broke...

     For the most part, California represented a dangerous, expensive and LONG obstacle between us and the adventure-filled freedom we hoped to find South of the Border.  We'd seen the weather turn foul as winter drew near and felt our cash wads shrinking. Wiser minds told us of safer seas awaiting past Point Conception, still about 600 miles (at least 100 hours) South of our position.  We'd both been to SoCal before and agreed it pretty much sucks.  As such, the plan was GOGOGO-- weather permitting-- until we hit Mexico.

     Even though Gale Force Winds were still howling, we left Crescent City only a few days after our exhausting and terrifying arrival.  After a few hours of white-knuckle sailing we wizened up and pulled into quaint little Trinidad.  Though there were plenty of moorings, we were the only boat in the bay.

     There we encountered world-class kitesurfing and friendly folks.  One morning we even caught a ride to the beach with a local who showed us a nasty scar left by a Great White.  Google sez this about the attack:

October 21, 2005: Chad Reiker was surfing at the mouth of the No Name River in Northern California... He was ~100 yards from shore over water 12 – 15 feet deep when the shark came from behind, striking him on the right side. He was thrown from his board, and the shark pulled it below the surface. He was not wearing a leg leash and began swimming to the beach immediately. He retrieved his board and drove himself to Mad River Hospital where ER physicians dressed and sutured the cut to his right thigh. Reiker described the White Shark as between 12 – 14 feet in length with a large girth. It is noteworthy that two weeks prior to the attack he observed a White Shark of similar size at the same location.  (Italics mine.)

     If you didn't catch all that, our friendly chauffeur, at a spot where he'd recently encountered a Great White, was surfing leashless in 6 to 8 foot swell when he got attacked.  Trailing blood (he needed lotsa stitches) Reiker swam ~100 yards to shore, collected his board, and drove himself to the ER.  Regularly experiencing life a few pegs down on the food chain?  I proclaim that gritty.  Adding to the ridiculousness, the very morning we bummed a ride with Reiker, he was heading home from surfing the same break where he'd gotten chomped.  Call him crazy, but look at the wave:

     The Gale subsided so we hauled anchor that night with our sights set on San Francisco.  Ten minutes out of Trinidad, the autopilot died.  We spent the next 54 hours trading off three hour stretches at the tiller.  Utterly exhausted, we slid beneath the Golden Gate Bridge an hour before dawn on a full moon night.  Surreal.

     We sniped a free slip at the ultra-swank Golden Gate Yacht Club and passed out.  After the much needed nap, we dropped a painful $450 on a new autopilot, were treated to dinner by local friends (THANKS!), tied one on, slept hard, and sailed South the following day.  We wanted to stay longer, but playing around in that amazing city would have broken the bank.

     We dubbed the new autopilot "Baby Jesus", and it proved our savior many times.  Never sail anywhere without a functioning autopilot!  The name also took the edge off when warning people to be careful around the autopilot.  "Don't set your beer on the Baby Jesus... be careful not to step on the Baby Jesus... if you don't understand the Baby Jesus, don't  push the Baby Jesus's buttons". Etcetera ad nausea... but hilarious.  I highly recommend the name.

     We got busted for sniping a slip in Santa Cruz and were issued a $102 fine.  Instead of paying it, we took off in the middle of the night.  The next afternoon, 75 miles South, we got busted again in Morro Bay by an exceptionally grumpy husband and wife fishing team.  We'd stopped there to check the weather and grab gasoline.  The gas dock attendant (granted, not the brightest fellow) gave us the OK to tie up where we did, so Mack and I walked off in search of pizza and beer.  The forecast looked iffy, and we were approaching the notorious Point Conception, so we were unsure whether we'd continue that evening or hole up for the next few nights where we were.

Morro Bay is named after this bad ass rock formation.

Sadly the view from the "Morro" is substantially less inspiring.  HUGE smokestacks.

     We returned from dinner happy to await a more favorable forecast, but found the boat being moved by these irate fisherfolk.  Apparently we were in one of their unused "spots".

     When they realized we were with the boat, they laid into us and got the Port Captain on the radio.  Rather than risk having a few minor infractions snowball on us, we bid them "fuck you" and cast off.  The nastiest night of sailing thus far ensued.

     The whole experience resembled a bad movie.  We raced past the jetty in the glorious early evening, cockily defiant and confident the weather would hold.  It didn't.  The closer we got to Point Conception, the worse it got, and soon I was puking again.  As darkness descended, it got downright scary and stayed that way until well after dawn when under storm jib alone, we pulled into a remote anchorage in the Channel Islands.

Isla San Miguel, Channel Islands

     Another forecasted Gale developed and we were trapped in the Channel Islands for three days of gloriously terrifying kitesurfing.  The water was frigid, the wind gustily intense, the waves well-overhead, and the heavy concentration of Great Whites in the area, indisputable.  We were only 25 miles from the mainland, but the wildness of the island and sea made us feel completely on our own.  This is a feeling we finally got comfortable with about halfway down Baja.


     When this Gale subsided we bee-lined towards Catalina Island for a few days rest in Two Harbors.  This is about the perfect spot for a jaded SoCal boat bum to drink himself to death... just so you know.  We couldn't afford much drink, so we celebrated by splitting a half gallon of ice cream.  Dank.

     From there the light winds of SoCal forced us to motor much of the way to San Diego.  There we made friends with some amazingly accommodating yachties and prepared the boat for Mexico.  Two busy days later, we had dolphins off the bow as we sailed across the border...

He Paddled In

Hopefully pictures like this take a little wind out of the tow-surfers' sails.  Getting towed into a wave is lame like taking a helicopter or snowmobile to a mountaintop.  Real athletes don't burn gas while gettin' er' dun.

Shamelessly Sexy Surf Flick

A pretty compelling argument in favor of sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and generally fucking around...

... but seriously, why don't you guys take Betty's trust fund and throw it into a 50 foot boat.

Yeah, boozin' and smokin' in a motor home.  Congrats.  Neo-Hippies?  Bravo.

All y'all do is surf better than your daddy.

Get off the freeway.  Get out there.  It's good, but art?  Schmart.

Repeat after me.  Y'all ain't even fucking close to free.

Me neither.

Push.


Surf Feature: "REPEAT AFTER ME; I AM FREE" - A Fly On The Beast Documentary from Insight Clothing on Vimeo.

Publish This!

Hey All,

I'm house sitting a mini-mansion for a friend and am taking advantage of the opportunity to pull my hair out distilling my little trip into something publishable.

It's a bitch trying to do justice without getting wordy.

Anyway, I've got a running column in a small monthly Costa Rican travel magazine.  It's a start.

 ***

El Viaje Sin Fin: 1st Installment

WELCOME ABOARD!

I first visited Tamarindo six years ago and recently spent a month there again.  My first time through I was a brainwashed Gringo 22-year-old incapable of truly tapping into the Pura Vida lifestyle.  My recent visit found me mentally much improved…

A few months back I sailed into Tamarindo aboard my beat-to-shit 27-foot sailboat.  I was headed North after sailing and surfing my way through Columbia, Panama, and southern Costa Rica.  I had 62 dollars to my name.  I was lonely.  I was getting too skinny.

Four weeks later and ten pounds heavier, I said goodbye to a dozen new friends, and left Tamarindo with 350 dollars, a pile of food, and a beautiful woman who didn’t care that my little boat was beat-to-shit.

I’d been told Tamarindo’s development would break my heart, that it was the new Jaco and had lost it’s soul.  This was not my experience. There are plenty of characters bopping around and there’s plenty of soul.  The good people of Tamarindo welcomed me in, fixed me up, and warmly sent me on my way.  If that isn’t paradise, I don’t know what is.

I didn’t even catch flak for running little underground surf charters on my boat.  Most other places I stopped, I encountered hostility for trying to scrounge a few bucks under the table.  Thanks for being so laid back, Tamarindo.  Pura Vida, indeed!

The only real problem in Tamarindo is that the locals surf too well, and that’s hard on the tourists’ self-confidence.  Well, that ain’t really a problem, now is it.  Anyway…

Let me tell me you the story of my boat trip ‘cuz I’ve been told it’s inspiring.  I’ll be writing in this magazine monthly until I run out of things to say.  Consider this installment one.

A few years back I sold my car and bought a 27-foot sailboat for $5300.   My previous sailing experience consisted of a few summers on Little Boy Lake, Northern Minnesota.  Now I’ve sailed the Pacific Coast between Washington State and Columbia.

Over the course of a sixteen-month sailing odyssey I encountered adventure, boredom, terror, crippling seasickness, wealth, poverty, freedom, romance, loneliness, a whole lot of paradise, some amazing waves, and a ridiculous cast of characters, including myself.

I started the trip with $2500 in my pocket.  This money lasted four months.  Over the course of the next year I never had more than $400 at any given time.  The meager money that kept the trip afloat came from teaching kiteboarding, surf charters, and donations to my blog.

I got to surf or go kiteboarding almost every day.  I got to discover for myself all the great waves of Mexico and Central America.  I met enough characters to write a dozen books.  I made enough memories to keep me laughing for life. I developed respect and love for the ocean.  It was a truly life-changing experience.

What makes my sixteen-month trip unique is it happened for under 10,000 dollars.  With a little planning, courage, and flexibility, you could throw together a similar experience.  With a little more skrilla to invest, you could have more fun than I did… maybe.

So if you’re still interested, I give you the watered down, fit-for-publication version of El Viaje Sin Fin, The Trip Without End.

CHAPTER ONE: PREPARING FOR THE NORTH PACIFIC

March 3rd, 2008: After a few weeks of searching online, I buy the boat sight unseen off of CraigsList.  After one phone call I know the owner loves his boat and is only letting it go because he has to: the economic crisis hit a lot of US boat owners hard.  I have doubts but the pictures look good, and the boat was recently surveyed.  He listed for $9,000.   I pay $5,300.

April 12, 2008: My younger brother drops me off on the dock in Portland, Oregon.  He drove me there from Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I’d been bartending and ski bumming.  I don’t have a car anymore.  All my possessions fit easily in his old Subaru but they clutter the tiny cabin of the boat.  The weather alternates between dreary and drizzly for the next two weeks.  I’m overwhelmed by the change and having serious doubts.  The boat’s name is “Huzzah!”  My first of many projects is scratching the name off.  I don’t come up with a replacement name for months.

April 27th, 2008:  My 27th birthday.  A lady friend shows up and gets me out of my funk.  We untie the boat and set sail for the first time.  Prior to this, I was too scared to leave the dock.  I didn’t want to make an ass of myself or sink.  We sail a few miles and anchor near a freeway bridge over the Columbia River.  It’s a sunny spring day, and we get schnockered on Gin while playing Scrabble.  I watch the sun set behind a creeping traffic jam on the bridge and have a laugh at the expense of the Nine-to-Fivers.  I realize buying the boat was a good idea.

May 3rd, 2008:  After two days of serious preparation, we sail the 60 miles up the Columbia River from Portland to Hood River.  Sailing upstream in Oregon as the spring snowmelt floods the river is a bad idea.  It’s slow going on account of the current: beneath the dams you’re occasionally going backwards.  I get seasick for the first of many times.  We piss off a whole lot of fisherman.  The motor breaks.  We get rained on.  We get snowed on.  Four stressful days later we pull into the Hood River Marina only to find they don’t have room for us.

May 10th, 2008: After a week on the guest dock, I’m kicked out of the Hood River Marina.  I’m here to kiteboard and Hood River is the Mecca, so I refuse to sail back to Portland.  A helpful young sailor informs me of a perfect little anchorage behind an island right outside of town.  With a line from the bow tied to a tree and two anchors off the stern, I can nuzzle the boat right up to the steep beach.  A five-minute kayak and a five-minute stroll bring me to work at the Big Winds Kiteboard School.  Thus begins a truly great summer.

June-August, 2008:  If I’m not at work, I’m kiteboarding or sailing.  If I am at work, I’m online studying sailing, weather, or plotting routes and probable anchorages on GoogleEarth.  Any money I make I put into styling out the boat or kiteboarding gear.  The more comfortable I get with the boat and the more I learn, the more attainable the dream of sailing out to sea and taking a left becomes.  I meet a bunch of crazy kiteboarders, one of whom decides he’d like to make the trip with me.

September 1st, 2008:  My partner in crime, Mack, and I really set out preparing the boat.  His uncle owns a boatyard so we’re able to get new batteries, a handheld GPS with nautical charts, a small generator, and other essentials for cost.  I also splurge on a new dinghy.  $3000 and a few weeks of lazy work later we’re “ready to go”.

September 21st, 2008:  I tear my knee to shreds while kiteboarding.  I can’t walk very well but this solidifies the desire to make the trip;: I certainly won’t be skiing this winter.  After a farewell party, my crewmember Mack and I pass out on the boat.  I discover he’s quite the snorer.  We set sail downriver an hour before dawn in hopes of making Portland by dusk.

From there, another 24 hours of sailing will bring us to the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, which is where the story starts to get interesting.  So tune in next time…

Have a good one!
Max
For the real story check out…
http://oilfreefun.blogspot.com

VIVIMOS! Sailing Oregon's Columbia River to the Pacific and Turning Left

Note: This is just one of many posts documenting a sailing voyage from Hood River, Oregon to Colombia, South America aboard a $5000 1973 Catalina 27' sailboat named "Sin Fin".

El Viaje Sin Fin (Spanish for "The Trip Without End") was a 19 month adventure with plenty of twists and turns.

Check out an overview of the trip, or start with the first post of this blog.  Peace.

***

It's been a week since the last post. We've wanted to check in daily, but between Max freaking out over little things and/or puking constantly and Mac slaying fish, there just wasn't time.

Plus, it turns out that there's no cell service and hence no poor-yachtsman's-interweb 15-20 miles offshore in the North Pacific.

We didn't die over the course of three nights at sea and now we're at port in BEAUTIFUL Bandon, Oregon... 217.36 fabulous miles south of the notorious, ship-eating Columbia River Bar.

Here's a week of good living crammed into a little slideshow. No justice.

Could this be the best picture I've ever taken? FYI, that's freshly harvested "caviar" in Mac's carvinorous piehole.

We made it to Portland and got the boat hauled out. We're in a hurry to get South but we had to paint the bottom and retrofit some additional keel bolts. As you can see, the hull was DIRTY. Notice that the bottom little bit of the keel is spotless. Mac was kind enough to clean it by running aground on a sandbar just North of Portland. Well done!

If you ever wondered how they haul out superyachts like La Sin Fin, this is how. The boatyard made us wait 36 hours before they'd pull us out and that really chapped my ass.

They also wanted to make us wait to get it back in the water until Monday. Clearly they were trying to charge us for as many days as possible and didn't appreciate our hurry to escape the NW before the fall storms really hit. Otherwise, everyone was really nice and informative at the boatyard.

We were stuck in Portland for three nights watching perfect coastal weather slip away.  This drove Max to the brink of sanity. Fortunately, Justine Jerrel and Randy Bachelor (great name, eh?) put us up and gave us wheels to get shit done.

The friendly "yardmonkeys" in blue jumpsuits put us back in the water without notifying the ass-dragging bosses. As such, the boatyard never got a credit card number from us.

Go ahead and bill me... but what's my address?

Bottom paint is some horribly toxic shit so the uptmost protective measures must be undertaken. Sadly, Max's favorite pair of jeans and his old Jackson Hole employee polo shirt had to be thrown away after the painting project. All the yardmonkeys were quite jealous of the ridiculously steezy ski goggles.

While Max was painting, Mac installed 5 new beefy bolts in the keel. Again, thanks to Winona's own Fastenal for $240 worth of marine grade stainless steel.

We left the boatyard in such a hurry that we left much to be done "en route". FYI, boating and caulking don't mix. All the windows and deckfittings on La Sin Fin look like they came from Santa's Workshop thanks to hearty doses of liberally applied caulk. Importantly, as we discovered at sea, the water stays out.

Cruising down the Columbia River at dusk we came across a sailboat that had run aground. This got us nervous enough to stay attentive as we motored through the night towards the coast. Thanks, fate.

We were happy to pass industrial wastelands like this under cover of darkness. Motoring through the night and hitting Astoria, OR at dawn worked out perfectly. The river isn't exceptionally scenic for the 90 miles from Portland to the Coast... no wind either.

We stopped in Astoria for fuel (oilfreefun... not quite) and then got back at it, hoping to hit the Columbia River Bar when the tide was right. Visibility was somewhere between "horrible" and "supershitty". A hunch said the fog would lift and it did...

Meeting monsters like this in the fog isn't too much fun. Moms and Dads, note our incredible foresight in navigating just outside of the shipping channel. Equally deep water, but less likelihood of getting plastered against a supertanker. We're trying to be safe.

We followed this guy out the Columbia River Bar because he knew where to go. Everyone in Hood River we talked to was freaking out about the terrifying Columbia River Bar. It turned out to be anticlimacticly mellow on account of our intensely-safety-oriented mindsets and parentally-instilled-propensity for planning.

Again, rest easy parents.  We're trying to be safe.

Excitingly, as we crossed the Bar, Max looked below deck to see 6 inches of water had burbled up from the bilge. Too much weight in the stern had put our output hose underwater. The bilgepump proved that it kicks ass in this instance... and we safely negotiated our first technical incident of the trip. Disaster averted.

This may be the biggest boat either of us has ever seen. Its a Chevron Tanker. Without boats like this millions of suburbanites wouldn't be able to commute between pointless jobs and vacant, faceless communities. Yee-haw. Burn it up, suckers.

This was the best picture Max ever took until the one of Mac's massacre. We must have seen three dozen seals out thus far. Great critters, except for when they steal fish off your line.

After we reeled in Mac's first fish, one came right up to the stern of La Sin Fin and gave us the meanest look.

These overgrown aquatic gerbils were pretty cool too. It's amazing what qualifies as a mammal.

On a sailboat with the motor off, you hear the whales before you ever see them. In the middle of the night, their finslapping and spouting can freak you out. The greatest critters on Earth?

Perhaps.

Mac reeled it in and then Golem netted the fish. Golem loves fishies. Golem couldn't wait until Baja to bust out his classic retro Mexico soccer jersey and got it filthy with caulk, fishguts, gasoline, and assorted boatsludge.

C'est la vie.

Our first fish.

The sushichef brutalizing the unborn as he butchers their mother. Gruesome stuff here. I wouldn't have partaken in the sushifeast that followed had we not already eaten through all 20 pounds of candy aboard La Sin Fin. We didn't bother with rice... just soysauce and wasabi. We could have used some spicy aioli mayo stuff but regardless it was the best sushi of my life.

As we dined, the view proved incredible too.


Shortly after this picture was taken, our weather window closed.

"Red sky at night, sailors delight," my ass.

The beautiful N wind we'd been sailing on for 36 hours switched to straight out of the south. We battled upwind for 24 hours and made it about 40 additional nauseating, wet, dreary miles.

Exhausted after four nervewracking nights and with weather forecasted to get worse as the week continues, we pulled in to quaint, sleepy Bandon, OR. And here we are...


It looks like we'll be stuck here until at least the weekend. Fortunately, some of the nicest people on Earth live here... and the kiting looks to be epic.

Ohh yeah, my knee is getting better every day. Good times? Great times.

Sell yer house and buy a boat. Trust me.

Hasta luego, amigos.

Max Mogren

***

Note: This is just one of many posts documenting a sailing voyage from Hood River, Oregon to Colombia, South America aboard a $5000 1973 Catalina 27' sailboat named "Sin Fin".

El Viaje Sin Fin (Spanish for "The Trip Without End") was a 19 month adventure with plenty of twists and turns.

Check out an overview of the trip, or start with the first post of this blog.  Peace.