With just a month to go to the start of the 22nd Baja Ha-Ha Cruisers’ Rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas — with stops at Turtle Bay and Bahia Santa Maria — there has been some confusion as to the location of the Kick-Off Party. The confusion stems from the fact that the West Marine Superstore at 1250 Rosecrans in San Diego, the site of the kick-off party for many years now, is undergoing a major refit. Indeed, Chris Hunt, who has done the Ha-Ha for almost every one of the last 10 years on the mothership Profligate, won’t be able to go this year because he’s the lead contractor on the store refit!

But there should be no confusion, as today both Josh Williford, who just took over as manager of the store, and Laura Barry of Marketing at West Marine headquarters in Watsonville, confirmed the party will again be in the West Marine parking lot. And next year, too! There might have to be some minor modifications to the layout, but it’s full steam ahead.

If you haven’t looked, this year’s paid Ha-Ha entries are up to 134, with a few more expected. This is a smaller fleet than in recent years, but it doesn’t bother the Grand Poobah. "It will be a little more intimate event, if you can call 134 boats intimate, and I think that’s a good thing," he said. "Bigger isn’t always better, and the morning roll calls won’t be so long."

Not everybody who signs up for the Ha-Ha actually starts the event, of course. David Addleman of the Monterey-based Santa Cruz 50 X, for example, signed up "as an incentive" to get his boat the rest of the way back to California from the Philippines. But he just wrote us to say that after 63 sailing days over the last year to cover 8,000 miles, almost all of them with the wind forward of the beam, he has too much work to do on the bottom, rudder and rig, and thus probably won’t make it.

The Poobah reminded Addleman that it’s almost all downwind from Monterey to Cabo San Lucas, a Santa Cruz 50’s favorite point of sail. And after that it’s less than 300 off-the-wind miles from Cabo to Banderas Bay, where there’s a fine boatyard at the Marina Riviera Nayarit that we use, and that it’s home to Peter Vargas’s Sea Tek, which built many of the sled rigs when the business was located in Southern California.

"Ding, ding, ding . . . best email of the week!" Addleman replied. "Doing the work in PV is a great idea. Thanks!"

By the way, this will be at least the third Ha-Ha for Addleman. No matter if it will be your first or your fifth, we can’t wait to see you at the West Marine Ha-Ha Kick-Off Party on October 25.

After the two long and demanding passages that they endured while crossing from Victoria, BC, to San Francisco and then on to Hawaii as volunteer researchers for The Ocean Cleanup project, we’re impressed that Canadian sailors Jason Frechette, Nicole Belleau and Wayana Emanuelle are preparing to set sail again after just three weeks in the Hawaiian Islands. After sailing to San Francisco (where they earned themselves a story in the September issue of Latitude 38), the three young and intrepid mariners made a number of repairs and additional preparations while dockside at the South Bay’s Sequoia Yacht Cub before pointing the bow of their Rawson 30 Stay Gold toward the promised land: Hawaii.

Spending nearly a month at sea, the trio not only managed to conduct more trawls and Ocean Cleanup research than almost every race boat that participated, despite having a smaller boat and fewer crew aboard, but they also survived a couple of hurricanes! Lying ahull in 40 knots of breeze and 30-ft seas for two days, the Stay Gold crew came within 200 miles of the eye of late August’s Hurricane Ignacio, while also narrowly managing to escape Hurricane Jimena.

Stay Gold wasn’t the only boat challenged by the abnormal and dangerous conditions created by this summer’s ultra-warm El Niño waters in the Pacific. As reported in both ‘Lectronic Latitude and Latitude 38 magazine, Japanese solo sailors Michiaki Koga and Yasuo Abe — both in their 60s — survived four and five gales respectively while sailing solo and nonstop from Japan to San Francisco. Unfortunately for the Japanese singlehanders, the weather was no more calm on the return ride, as both of them sailed near the same storms, Ignacio and Jimena. Koga-san told us, “I had to heave to for five days! Abe-san did the same and after how long we were both at sea, he decided to come to Honolulu instead of sailing nonstop back to Japan as planned.” When we saw the Canadian vessel Stay Gold and the Japanese boats Tsuyotaka and Yukikaze II in Honolulu, none were looking much the worse for wear.

For more on this developing story, stay tuned to the Ocean Cleanup’s tracker and the Stay Gold blog (complete with great write-ups and lots of photos). With any luck and a quick return passage, the Canadians on Stay Gold will be crashing a Baja Ha-Ha near you in about a month’s time.