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April 28, 2010 – At Sea, 23º 48’N, 110º 46’W
By Herb McCormick
The name “Sammy Hagar” might not ring a bell with most normal folks, but those of us with a little too much time on our hands know Sammy as the howling imp who replaced David Lee Roth (at least for a while) as the front man of the rock-and-roll band called Van Halen. Prior to this uncanny vocational move, Sammy was a solo act best remembered (or forgotten) for his deep, soulful, introspective hit, “I Can’t Drive…Fifty Five!” Well, Sammy, who can?
We invoke Sammy’s name today not because of his pitiful attempts to jump and strut like David Lee and scream, “Panama!” at the top of his lungs, but for his even more startling parallel career, which proved to be about a hundred times more successful and lucrative. For in a moment of true inspiration, Sammy zipped down to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, opened a bar called “Cabo Wabo,” and began distilling a brand of tequila by the same name. The saloon does a rollicking business with the gringos on holiday, but what has made Sammy truly, obscenely rich is the tequila, which aficionados of the ember firewater describe as pretty darn good.
Though we admit to visiting Cabo Wabo in the past, this time around, in our latest, drive-by visit to the city, we never did make it. That’s because, other than stopping for fuel, the reason we’d come to the place was to leave it, which, if you happen to be on a boat, is not always a simple prospect.
Trust us, we know.
Just about two years ago, shortly after skipper Mark Schrader and mate Dave Logan found and bought Danzante, the boat that would become Ocean Watch, we left Cabo one mid-afternoon in early May and proceeded to get the living crap knocked out of us. Danzante had a tired diesel engine and worse sails, and these defects, coupled with our boneheaded decision to head more or less straight offshore towards Magdalena Bay, proved to be a recipe for misery. At times barely making three knots, for the better part of three days we pounded north into staunch northerly wind, one step forward, two steps back. When we finally made Mag Bay – less than 200 miles up the coast from Cabo – we all agreed it was right up there as one of the worst trips of our lives. Really, it was an unmitigated disaster.
So, obviously, we’ve been wary about this leg of our current voyage.
The trickiest part of splitting from Cabo happens right off the bat. The actual cape known as Cabo San Lucas – with the famous Arch Rock that appears in all the travel magazines – is right off the city, but the more significant headland called Cabo Falso is a few more miles to the west.
We have a photocopied cruising guide of the Baja California coastline on board Ocean Watch that was left by the previous owners, unfortunately with nothing that identifies the actual writer of the book. (Clearly a seasoned delivery skipper, he does refer to himself as “Jim” at one point and it appears at least some excerpts were published in the popular West Coast sailing publication, Latitude 38. Anyway, Jim, you wrote one fine book and we’re sorry not to give you full credit…we’ll try and rectify that in the future.)
In any event, Cabo Falso is referred to as “the granddaddy” of all capes because of the confluence of weather and currents that converge there with precise regularity. The passage continues: “There is an old maxim that describes Point Conception as ‘the Cape Horn of California’ or some such thing. Whoever coined that phrase must not have been referring to Baja California (the original California) or didn’t get out much… All one has to do to understand the incredible wind/sea convergence at Cabo Falso (the western point just a few miles from Cabo San Lucas) is look at a map of the Pacific Coast.
“From Valdez, Alaska, all the way down for thousands of miles into Baja, there is no place where land really ends like it does at Cabo Falso. Sure, you can hang a left into San Francisco or San Diego Bay, but I’ll never forget my first approach into the cape… The overriding thought in my mind was, ‘Wow, I can really hang a left in there.’”
The best time of day to attempt a rounding of Cabo Falso is in the early morning (not bloody midafternoon!), when overnight winds have subsided and not had a chance to intensify with the heat of the day. Thus, the wake-up “boat call” this morning was at 0300 and an hour-and-a-half later Ocean Watch was abeam of Cabo Falso. The forecast for the next few days ranges from “about average” for these parts (afternoon sea breezes around 20-knots) to “terrifying” for just about anywhere (35-45 knots sustained winds). But the winds off Falso were a fraction of those figures, and on top of that it was a sensational sunrise bathed in a warm, golden glow as the lights of the city receded in the distance.
Lucky.
Even when they’re not sailing up a beach, sailors like to say they’re heading to “the beach,” when what they really mean is they’re heading inshore. (Racing sailors tacking towards shore always remark that they’re bound for “the beach,” even when they’re staring at a forest.) But the prescribed strategy by sailing north up Baja California really is to hug the beach – two or three miles off it – and take advantage of a northwesterly counter-current that parallels the coast. And this was some beach. For most of this afternoon, Ocean Watch was running northward along mile after mile of uninhabited, pristine, white-sand shores. It’s been a real treat to have the sweet visuals as the miles ticked away, and thus far, they’ve been ticking away at a nice 6-plus knots…or about twice as fast as we were going the last time we transited these waters.
Last night, a few hours before departing, Dave Logan, David Thoreson and I took the dinghy into shore at the sole, ritzy, gated marina where we’d purchased fuel that morning. It cost us $20 for the privilege of tying up the inflatable; as I handed over the bill, Logan nearly had a seizure. In the two short years since we were last there, an entire mall of restaurants and high-end stores have cropped up around the vast marina, bearing some of the most popular Mexican brands: Cartier, Haagen-Dazs, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Harley-Davidson fashions, and so on.
“It looks like an airport,” said Logan. It also looked like a nightmare.
Sammy’s place is a few blocks into town, and we had neither the energy nor the spirit to make the trek. Early this evening, we were nearly a hundred miles north of Cabo Wabo and headed in the opposite direction. In other words, we were exactly where we needed to be.
-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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