Episode #178: 30th Annual Baja Ha-Ha: LIVE Aboard Profligate in Cabo San Lucas

This week we chat with Chuck Skewes of Ullman Sails and the crew of Profligate, LIVE from the last leg of the 30th Annual Baja Ha-Ha cruisers rally. This third and final episode in our Baja Ha-Ha series includes livestreams from November 13 and14, 2024.

Tune in as Chuck tells Good Jibes host Nicki Bennett about the immigration snafu, the epic rockin’ beach party in Bahia Santa Maria, the once-in-a-lifetime experiences during the Baja Ha-Ha, what happened with the last three events in Cabo San Lucas, and a grand finale — complete with an engine dying.

Here’s a sample of what you’ll hear in this episode: 

• How do children still get schooling during the Baja Ha-Ha?
• What happens after Cabo?
• When immigration gets complicated
• How the crew deals with culture shock
• How sailing changes as you age

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots — follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re feeling the Good Jibes!

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

• 30th Annual Baja Ha-Ha: LIVE Aboard Profligate in Cabo San Lucas
  • [0:21] Welcome to Good Jibes with Latitude 38
  • [1:32] We’re going to meet the entire crew!
  • [3:45] What happened with the immigration adventure?
  • [9:00] Where did the Baja Ha-Ha check in before this year?
  • [10:39] How long will it take to get to Cabo San Lucas?
  • [12:20] Have you looked at our Classifieds lately? Go to Latitude38.com to find boats, gear, job opportunities and more 
  • [13:04] What percentage of the boats go to La Paz?
  • [14:20] How many of those with Starlink are having the kids “attend” school during the Baja Ha-Ha? 
  • [15:23] What’s the age range of the kids?
  • [16:19] How do you bring sailing to a younger audience?
  • [19:52] Where in the world would snow be in mid-November?
  • [23:37] If you’d like to be a sponsor, email [email protected]
  • [24:10] The last leg of the journey to Cabo
  • [27:22] The dichotomy of life
  • [29:27] Where’s Chuck going?
  • [32:43] Any parting words for Good Jibes listeners?
  • [34:39] If you want to watch video footage referenced in this episode, check out the Latitude 38 Youtube channel and Facebook page
  • [34:49] Make sure to follow Good Jibes with Latitude 38 on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
  • Theme Song: “Pineapple Dream” by Solxis.

If you missed the first two episodes you can find them here: Episode #174, Episode #176.

You can also catch the crew on our YouTube channel:  @Latitude38Magazine.

Episode Transcript:

Please note: transcript not 100% accurate.

00:02

This is the best time I’ve ever had in my life.

00:21

Ahoy! It is time to cast off, laugh, learn, and have more fun sailing. My name is Max Branstetter, and I have the honor of bookending today’s episode of Good Jibes, a podcast to help you experience the world of sailing through the eyes of the West Coast sailor. Each week, hear stories and tips from the West Coast sailing community on cruising, racing, and just plain sailing. All brought to you by Latitude 38, the sailing magazine for West Coast sailors since 1977.

00:52

Today we have a real special treat for you as we’re taking you back to the 30th annual Baja Ha-Ha Cruiser’s Rally. You will hear host Nicki Bennett talk with Chuck Skewes of Ullman Sails live aboard Profligate aka the mothership. This episode includes livestreams from November 13th and November 14th, 2024, where you’ll hear stories from the final leg of the Baja Ha-Ha and the arrival in Cabo San Lucas.

01:21

Now, let Nicki and Chuck take you away with the sounds of the 30th Annual Baja Ha-Ha!

01:32

We are going to meet the entire crew. This morning the crew left Bahia Santa Maria bright and early and they’re on the final leg to Cabo. So this has been super fun to kind of tag along and see what it’s like, thanks to Starling. And I’m gonna hand it over to Chuck. All right, here we are on Profligate and today we’re gonna introduce the crew. And so in about…

01:57

five seconds you’ll get them and they’ll introduce and they’ll talk give a little bit of bio on themselves fantastic hi my name is dana i live in san francisco and this is my first haha awesome hi dana mitch perkins from sasolito sasolito boat show on my third haha

02:22

My name is Jeanette Drake. I’m now from Good Harbor, originally from San Francisco, and I think it’s my fourth ha ha.

02:31

Hi, I’m Jim Drake from Kig Harbor, Washington. This is my fourth ha ha. Did the first. Hopefully this won’t be the last. Goodbye.

02:44

Hello, I’m Dino. This is my 18th haha and it’s the most amazing privilege here. That’s awesome. Hi, I’m Chris. I’ve been on this one or two times and I’ve heard more. One or two times 12. Hey, I’m Dottie DeMaiorca, head of security and the food class girl. Get on every haha.

03:14

I’m the poohba, this is my 30th haha, and I pay the bills. Hahaha.

03:21

I love it. So we have a couple shy ones that didn’t want to come out. I guess they’re asleep actually. So we’ve got sleepers. Me and Kristen with a K. Kristen helps us with the roll call every day, does all the data input. Yeah, we had quite the adventure yesterday. And so she helped quite a bit with that. Are you talking about the immigration adventure? Exactly.

03:49

All right, well, I’d love for you to share a bit about that if you’re comfortable. Absolutely. So, you know, last year they checked an immigration on a board profligate and it went very smooth and there’s been a couple of snafus. So tell us exactly what happened. We’d had arrangements with the people that the agents, the agents work directly with the immigrations and kind of streamline things because you have your boat import and you have your.

04:19

visas for each individual crew and then you have agricultural. So the agent generally puts all those together and when you go into Cabo you hire the agent and you give them your passport and you see and then they give it to you the next day or a day and a half later and indeed pay them for that service. Well a couple years ago the port captain in San Carlos which is the closest town to Bahia

04:49

That actually is a little bit more the way the regulations truly are. It’s just we haven’t, we don’t go to San Carlos. So we’ve just bypassed that and done it, didn’t Cabo. So last year they came over to the boat and did it all on the boat. Why we called by division, people would bring their passports in. We, he’d go through them, stamp them and go back. And it was about a three and a half hour thing. And we were planning to do the same thing this year. The agent said, that’s what we’re going to do.

05:16

about an hour before they’re supposed to arrive, he says, oh, the machine’s broken that we do for portable documents. And so now we need to grab everybody’s passports and take them to San Carlos and then we’ll return them. Well, it’s 400 passports. So we had this kind of emergency situation where we didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the system. So we called everybody.

05:44

And it’s really specific. Write your, put your passports in a Ziploc bag, write your division and your boat name and the number of passports in that bag. And we took that. We, it felt like we were packing up drugs. I’ve never seen so many passports in one place. So then we, we packed up all these passports that are in bags by division into dry bags. And we sent Donya and Jim from the boat to San Carlos and they were joined by Annie Gardner.

06:13

and they went by Ponga to this remote beach in Bahia Santa Maria, which is like five, the bay’s like five miles wide. They walked over the sandbar down this kind of road and then had to wait out to another Ponga that took them over to San Carlos and then they walked to the immigration office and then it took about four hours for them to get all that done and then they had to do the reverse trip all the way back and they got back to the boat at 7 p.m. last night. Wow.

06:41

So then we had to call each boat, we had to call each division, have the boats come over. We had to identify who was picking up the passports for who and make sure it all did. And it all worked. It’s amazing. It worked. There was nobody stuck with somebody else’s passport and nobody lost any passports. The fleet was really cooperative. It was quite an effort, but it made it.

07:06

You know, actually I made it easy. Everyone got to go to the party and have a good time. The beach party was last night with the rock and roll band. And if you go on the Facebook page, you’ll see some video and how amazing the band actually is and how surreal. I mean, that’s the only word people can use to explain the party in Bahia, San Maria is surreal. It’s, it’s a once in a lifetime, well, not for us, but it’s, but it’s kind of a once in a lifetime thing that we get to live every year. That’s really.

07:36

It looked like a lot of fun. I saw some video and some photos this morning and also congratulations on getting through an immigration snafu. I was thinking about this last night. I talked to Mitch briefly and he shared how disconcerting it is to give away your passport in that situation. Then to have the responsibility of all these passports, we were thinking, well, we could sell these things, disconnect AIS and sail around the world for the rest of our lives and we can make sell these passports.

08:05

Well, and then I was reminded of what Richard said yesterday, just about, you know, that that’s what an adventure is about, you know, exactly unexpected things happen and you roll with it and you come up with solutions and sometimes it makes the adventure what it is. So sometimes those unplanned adventures into my life, I’ve had, you know, dozens of them and those are the most memorable and sometimes the best adventures when it wasn’t planned and you.

08:35

get to go explore new areas and new things. And I think we’re obviously gonna plan next year that it had if somehow to do some sort of system where we plan on getting those passports to San Carlos, probably that way there can’t be a snafu or as much as preventable in Mexico and then go forward from there. Interesting. And did you guys used to check in in Cabo? Is that?

09:04

Yeah, yeah. And in theory, you know, that there was a it was a gray area because we were in two places that didn’t have port of entries. And in theory, you’re not supposed to go to land and stuff. So we used to check in and Cabo in the old days, it was really easy. I mean, checking in was one of the easiest things you could do. Then it regulations got a little harder and a little harder and understandably so and they and now it’s that’s the first port of entry. And if we can do that.

09:34

maybe a little smoother next year. You like how I’m saying next year? Like it’s a guarantee, it’s not a guarantee yet, but. We’re hoping. Yeah. All right, well you guys departed Bahia Santa Maria this morning quite early. Wondering if there’s any news from the fleet or any issues that popped up on roll call this morning. No, one boat stayed behind to do something minor. They actually called about an hour ago that they were underway.

10:01

There wasn’t much wind. There was a few boats were sailing, but it was kind of patchy. And the fog rolled in right as we left. Like it was clear this morning in the bay and we could see fog kind of inland of the bay. And by the time we got out to the starting area, fog had rolled in. And then, you know, 45 minutes later, the fog had lifted and we went by what we call the Entrada, which is the entrance to Mag Bay. And we had some pressure.

10:29

So people started sailing and then once you get past that, that died out and we’re just starting to get into the building sea breeze, like it’s building from the correct direction. And so I imagine in less than an hour, we’ll have a spinnaker up and cooking along towards Cabo. Fun. And how long will, once you’re sailing, what’s your estimation on how much time it’ll take? We’ll get to Cabo tomorrow morning, probably eight or 10, which is kind of perfect. But is what’s…

10:59

typical with you have to stay fluid is we have always in the past asked people if they want to slip if available at roll call when we leave Bahia Santa Maria and we did that this morning. Probably 30 boats said well I want to slip if available and Prophagate usually gets a slip because we bring all these boats in and we just got notification that we I don’t even think we have a slip.

11:25

You know, Cabo is a very full marina and during COVID it got more full and the Bisbee fishing tournament brings, you know, lots of really big money boats in and those boats haven’t all left. So it doesn’t look like there’s much in Cabo. So hopefully we’re still hoping to get a slip, but right now there’s nothing available. Wow. That’s what I was going to ask because I know the anchorage is quite busy in Cabo as well. And of course, slips are hard to come by. So yeah. And so.

11:55

It’s not the end of the world. You know when the ha ha first started that marina didn’t exist so everybody anchored It’s a pretty solid anchorage We have to haul a bunch of stuff in for the award So we’re hoping we’re probably gonna drop it off at the fuel dock haul it up to the Baja Cantina and then take off out to the The anchorage is what my guess is is if something doesn’t change by tomorrow morning

12:20

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12:50

Pick up a magazine at a local marine business or visit our classy classified pages at Latitude38.com to find boats, gear, job opportunities and more. Then tell us your next sailing story.

13:04

After Cabo, what percentage of the boats would you say go up to La Paz? I know there’s also a big beach party in La Paz. Yes, and then in… On a Sunday. Yeah. So I would say close to 50% of the boats go to La Paz. This is a long way to go to just turn around and beat back. Yeah. And so we only see kind of less, maybe less than 10% of the boats turn around and go back. You know, it might be like somebody just did it for just the adventure of the Ha Ha.

13:35

at least half the boats stay down for a year plus, and then about 20% or so, 25% go on and go indefinitely. And so a lot of them go to La Paz and a small number go over to Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta, or just start their cruise into the sea at Cortez. And then we see these people clear at the end of the season.

13:58

A lot of people change their minds. They like the sea of Cortez. So they start flying home and keep their boat down when they were planning to come back at the end of the season. They’ve done so. That’s great. Uh, I love that it’s the start of a great adventure for so many. I love seeing how many kids and families are kicking off a season or more of adventure. Did you, I was curious if you have any knowledge on how many, um, with Starlink, how many of the kids are actually schooling during the Hawks?

14:26

I think it was 100% were schooling except for the ones that were under school age. We talked with a couple that I know, it’s original Bay Area family, the Claussons and now her last name is Levy. And they have two daughters and the daughters are in the single digit age. And last night, they said that they’re planning to cruise until the kids are in high school. And so the kids were on Zoom classes and homeschooling and they just they’re just

14:55

not planning on returning until the kids are in that 15, 16 year old range. So what an incredible adventure. Oh, I know at such a formative age. Yeah, I don’t know if they know, I think they know how lucky they are, but I don’t think they truly know how lucky they are. You know, it’s, I think, you know, they miss friends, but they’ve, they already made friends on this trip. They like the warmer weather already. And, and so it’s, it was nice.

15:23

What is the age range of kids that you have? Do you know? We had one little boy that was at the Olympics, you know, the jumping off the back of profligate that had to been about three and a half. The oldest was a boy that was probably 12 to 13. That’s awesome. Yeah, and there’s 12 boats that have kids on this route. That’s incredible. I said this on another video, but I have met a lot of ha ha kids this year.

15:53

crew party in South Solito. There was a lot of families there, which was really great at the kickoff. And then at the South Solito Boat Show, there was quite a few ha ha boats that came to the show and were walking around before they headed South. And it’s just, I always thought it would be just a really cool thing to do with kids. So I think it’s awesome to see more and more people doing it. It’s a cool thing to do with a bunch of adults. Yeah, totally. It’s actually just a really good thing. Well, I think there’s always that, we always talk about that.

16:22

attitude, you know, is like, how do you bring sailing to a younger audience? And I think obviously one of the easiest ways is to raise people in it. But those stories are really cool. And I, yeah. You know, for parents that have that get their kids into racing, a lot of what we find is a lot of kids get into racing and then they kind of burn out. And so past high school, they don’t really stay in it. Like the junior programs are strong, but the people that are racing later on.

16:49

But bringing them into cruising so that they kind of see the whole thing of living in an aquatic life, I think is really important. Yeah. And just I think in an age where I mean, I didn’t have screens growing up in the same way that kids do now. And we had television, but it’s great to see kids really having that interactive relationship with the natural world. And you really get that when you’re living on a boat and you’re so connected to the water. Also, I think just the sense of community is really strong.

17:19

And that’s really important. Oh yeah. And the culture, you get to see other cultures while you’re, I mean, that’s the biggest thing these kids are going to be seeing cultures all over the world. And just what they see in just this West coast of the Baja Peninsula from Turtle Bay and Bahia, Santa Maria with the fishermen and then what they’re going to see in Cabo, they’re radically different cultures. Yeah. It’s really awesome.

17:43

Great. Well, hopefully the has going to produce some good humans. Yeah, let’s hope so. Make some humans better. Well, so there’s a gal and I think Richard wrote about it on his Facebook page that she came on the haha like 20 years ago or 18 years ago. And now she’s she’s 26 years old and she’s a helicopter pilot for the Coast Guard. And so, you know, she was just an amazing lady that we met. So, yeah, yeah.

18:12

Yeah, I met her at the kickoff party. Oh, cool. Yeah. And it was pretty cool to like, look at the pictures of the past ha ha’s and stuff and like how that started her on a married, you know, a career in maritime. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s very cool. So this is the outside of mag bay. These mountains are actually islands, kind of a series of islands with narrow entrances into mag bay.

18:40

Mag Bay is Bahia Magdalena, but everyone refers to it as Mag Bay. If you could see 100 miles that way, you would see Cabo Faso, which is what we, first thing we see as we go into Cabo San Lucas. There’s one little last mountain. That is the island that kind of makes Bahia Santa Maria. We are anchored up in between, in behind there. The rest of this is just wide open ocean with a few ha ha boats around.

19:09

You can see everybody’s motor sailing, but it’s a. It’s pretty, it’s pretty nice here. It’s probably 78 degrees and crystal clear. And we have, you know, six knots of wind right now, and it’s going to build the 12 this afternoon and we’ll be sailing. Beautiful. It’s a pretty chilly in Northern California. So I’m empty here, sunshine 78. We have one person on the boat, Dino who lives in Colorado and then Chris and Steve who didn’t come up.

19:38

through the door, they live in Truckee and they’re all showing photos from back home of snow on the roads. When you’re in this climate down here and you’ve been, you know, weekend, you’re like, where in the world would snow be this time of year? And then you realize it is mid-November and here we are in shorts and t-shirts, showering outside and enjoying life. So here you go. As we’re on deck, nobody knows that we’re dragging two fish right now.

20:05

You’re dragging two fish? That’s a new strategy for us. We’re trying to drown them. We are the only boat in the haha not to catch an eatable fish. These both look like skipjacks as well. So there you go, live fishing. Live fishing. You’re not going to starve to death. We keep looking for the good fish. But if you needed to, you could eat a skipjack. Several people in the fleet do and some of them have enjoyed it.

20:34

It’s just if you do enough of these you get a little spoiled and you really look for the yellowfin and the Dorado and the Wahoo. Sierra mackerel so. Well I hope you guys catch a good fish on this last one.

20:52

Give us a timeline on when the, the ha ha officially ends. Everybody in theory gets to Cabo tomorrow and then tomorrow night we have the, uh, thank God we cheated death again party at Squid Row. And that’s at seven o’clock tomorrow night. Almost everybody in the fleet will be there at that time. Okay. And then the day after that.

21:19

We have a party at the Mango Deck down on the beachfront in Cabo San Lucas. And it’s just a luncheon. We kind of all just tell stories. Everybody kind of gets together. Uh, one final time for just a social hour. And we have the here to eternity beach competition where couples go out in the surf and reenact the here to eternity kissing scene in the surf. And we usually get about.

21:47

15 to 20 couples that go do that. And then in the seven o’clock that same night, we have our awards banquet right there at the IGY Marina. And then that’s the official end. That’s the official end. The official end, everybody gets their awards and we have awards for people that talk on the radio the most, the most spectacular spinnaker explosion, best fish, biggest fish, most fish, places in each division.

22:15

and then we oldest and youngest crew members, all those type of things. And then everybody takes off, but it’s funny, it’s everybody kind of ends up hanging together. So many people go to La Paz and they have that beach party in La Paz at that little Mexican restaurant. A huge amount of people come there and some people even travel there if their boat isn’t there to go to it. And then a month from now they have one in Puerto Vallarta. And so you see maybe

22:44

30 or 40 boats from the Ha Ha showing up in Port of Iarta for another party. That’s fun. And then you hopefully have some lifelong friends and many more memories to, uh, to create. Oh, absolutely. It’s really fun. I have a couple of friends from the Northwest. This is their first Ha Ha and they’re like, this is unbelievable. They could not get over the party last night. They’re just like, this is, this is unbelievable.

23:10

And then, you know, I have customers and friends that this is their first haha and everybody’s like, this is the best time I’ve ever had in my life. And then we talked to, there’s a number of boats where they’ve done eight or nine haha’s on their same boat and they just keep coming back because they really enjoy it. It’s got to speak to something special that’s created in two weeks of cruising down the coast. Yep. Absolutely. Hey, listen up.

23:37

We hope everyone is enjoying listening to the stories of West Coast sailors on our Good Jives podcast. We’ve heard lots of great feedback from the 150,000 listeners who’ve tuned in over the last couple of years and if you have a marine business, we’d like to give you an opportunity to connect with them during upcoming podcasts. If you’d like to be a sponsor of future podcasts, you can email Nikki, N-I-C-K-I, Nikki, at latitude38.com to learn more about how your company can benefit.

24:06

from sponsoring Good Jibes.

24:10

of Oman sales is going to give us an update on what has transpired in the last 24 hours. The last leg of the journey to Cabo and some other news of some changes that have occurred within HaHa events since the fleet arrived in Cabo. So tell us what’s going on Chuck. As we always do, we check the weather, you know, several days out and what we determined is that there’s a tremendous amount of wind coming in Sunday morning to through Sunday night, very strong Sunday night.

24:39

And if we held all the events that go through Saturday evening, that would put everybody where they couldn’t make a port before these big winds come in. And the Sea of Cortez could get really sloppy. So we had to make the hard decision to really cancel the last two parties, the last three parties actually, which is kind of a condensed party where we do Squid Row tonight, we do the beach party tomorrow, and then the awards tomorrow night. And we had to cancel them just so that people could…

25:09

that we weren’t forcing people to stay and not be able to make safe passage to their next destination. We didn’t want to have all the boats here anchored in Cabo with 30 to 35 knot winds. And so a lot of boats are heading up to La Paz and other places that are dispersed a bit. And so yeah we got into Cabo San Lucas this morning. We anchored out for a while. We just got to the fuel dock and here’s Bebe, one of the boats from the AHA coming in. We have Swan Fun

25:39

just fueled up, you know, and everything’s fluid in Mexico. You just can’t guarantee schedules or plans. And that’s a part of cruising in general. So you got to take weather into consideration all the time and have backup plans. It’s a good lesson to kind of take forward. And again, back to what Richard said a few days ago, you know, that sometimes that’s what makes the adventure, but also that, you know, the safety of over a hundred boats and their

26:07

crew is in the hands of, you know, what plans are made. So I think it was a good call. I read about it this morning. Obviously I’m sure some people are disappointed, but there is a big beach party in La Paz on Sunday. And so that should be something that people can look forward to making passage and having a shift in their plans. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you have to be fluid and you have to take responsibility for yourself. We give you what we feel.

26:35

is the safest route. You know, like we could have said, hey, we’re going to have the parties, but don’t come if you don’t think you are. But we just didn’t want to have the temptation and have people get stuck, not able to deal with the wind. Because we have people of all different levels and there are definitely people that can deal with it. But anything over 20 knots is really not that much fun. As many years I’ve been sailing, I used to think, oh, I want 25 to 30 knots downwind. And it’s just, even downwind is not fun. So if you’re heading up to…

27:04

La Paz and the short chop that you get in the Sea of Cortez, it would be kind of brutal. Totally. And then Anchorage and Cabo can be a little dodgy anyways. It’s very busy. Yeah. It’s super busy. We’ve been in all those remote places, and now we’re in this. Oh, wow. Music playing, we’ve got super yachts, and we’ve got skyscraper hotels. It’s just mayhem.

27:32

It’s like you’re like, well, we should go back to where we came from. Right? A little culture shock. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that’s the dichotomy of life, right? You know, you’re out there and then you’re in you’re in it. So I’m curious, what’s what is the crew of Profligate doing? Are you disembarking in Cabo or some of you going up to La Paz? What’s the plan? So most of the crew is disembarking here in Cabo, like like 80 percent of us.

28:01

And then Richard and Danya are going to take off first thing tomorrow morning for Puerto Vallarta. They want to get, they want to only spend one night at sea and get into Puerto Vallarta before the big wind happens. And the wind as you exit the sea of Cortez ends up being less. They’re looking at, you know, mid-20s versus mid-30s if you head north. So. Okay. So now it’s about how many boats in the fleet do you think are going to head across to

28:31

10 are heading to Puerto Vallarta, most are heading La Paz, or just a couple, there’s two really well protected bays between here and La Paz that a lot of the guys are gonna go to. And then about 20 or 30 boats will probably just stay here in Cabo and wait it out. The issue with waiting it out is you now have to wait it out till maybe Wednesday or Thursday, so it makes almost a solid week of being here. It’s not the end of the world, it’s warm, but it’s windy. You don’t really wanna leave your boat at anchor when…

29:01

when there’s that much wind. So you don’t leave it alone at anchor. You know, they’re dealing with that. And but we talked to a few guys in the here. There was one guy that was heading down. I wish I can remember the name of the boat. They’re heading down to Puerto Vallarta. They’re going to spend like one day in Puerto Vallarta, then head to the South Pacific. So they’re heading down kind of a couple months early for the South Pacific run. But you know, good on them. Interesting. They’re just going for it. They’re going for it. So where are you going, Chuck?

29:31

What’s next for you? I’m going to hang out here till Sunday and then fly back to San Diego, because I have to go to Puerto Vallarta in about another week and a half. And I have another trip up to the Pacific Northwest between then. So I’m going to be on the plane a lot in the next three weeks. So tell us a little bit about the passage. Yesterday when we chatted with you guys, there was no wind. And tell us about the rest of it, and then if there’s any news from any boats from this morning’s roll call.

30:00

Yeah, so it went right literally an hour and a half. So next year we’re doing this at three o’clock. That’s a good idea. Like I say next year. Yeah, because we were sailing in 18 knots of wind at three o’clock and 80 degrees just flying down. We had wind into the night. We started motoring and then the wind came back up. So it was great sailing again. We watched another SpaceX launch last night.

30:26

I think 100% of the boat saw that. It was right overhead when it when it departed off into the atmosphere or off into the orbit. It was pretty impressive. And then, and with no ambient light around it, that’s quite a view from out here. There really wasn’t any issues with any boats until we got here this morning. Somebody ran aground coming into the marina here and I don’t know exactly how they did that. But, you know, it’s pretty well marked.

30:55

They just got confused on something and ran aground on a sandbar, but they got off. It was a pretty short amount of time. Oh, that’s good. Yeah. And, you know, just people were disappointed, but completely understood that the events had been canceled. You know, Richard and I went back and forth on it for quite a while, you know, just like, what are the scenarios? You know, what can we do to if people stay there? And people can stay here. It’s just if you add 100 boats to the anchorage.

31:22

there was going to be people drifting. There’s a huge shelf. So like if your anchor went off the shelf, you’re in hundreds of feet of water all of a sudden where you can’t anchor. And we just wanted to avoid any issues. No, I think that’s really smart. And again, you had to make the call. It’s not always an easy call, but weather is out of our control. So we have to make call that, you know, that’s what, you know, sailors have to do. You got to look at the weather and the forecast and you got to make the best decision for the…

31:48

the crew and in this case, you know, you’ve got the crews of over 100 boats that are sort of relying on you guys with the right call. Exactly. So yeah, and then, so now that we’re here, there was no slips available yesterday. Now we have a slip and I think one other boat, so it’s really slim. And so then we decided that, hey, we’re going to go to Squid Row and everybody that is in Cabo decided to stay a night can come and at least sort of

32:15

participate in the Squid Row party. That’s fun. Yeah. Well, so it’s like a pseudo event. Exactly. And I mean, a year younger than I am, Squid Row, you know, I’m done with Squid Row by 9.30, 10 o’clock. I’m done with anything out of my house. Yeah. Well, this has been really fun. Does anyone, anyone on your

32:43

crew have any parting words for Latitude 38 today? Do you guys have any parting words for Latitude 38 while we’re docking here? Richard, any parting words? We hope there’s another one, but you never know. All right, fingers crossed. Slow down, Jim, slow down. Major. Slow down. Man, I got no engine on that. We just had an engine die on us and hit the dock. At least it didn’t hit the boat. Yeah. I got the hell responded. Oh, that was a bummer.

33:12

Yeah, I kind of felt that stress coming through. All the way from, all the way to Cabo and had one little incident. I think we’re all good though. Good. Okay, good. Well, you know, Chuck, I’m hoping next year I’ll be on the haha and we could maybe livestream between two boats. That would be awesome. And that and and I’m going to do what I can to make sure there’s another haha and Richard.

33:37

You know, we’ll see. You know, like I said, Richard’s in his 70s and everything getting a little harder to get things handled. And we’ll just see how much energy he has. That’s great. Well, I do appreciate Richard and Danya and you and everyone on Profligate for inviting us aboard. It was really great. And thank you so much for giving us such great detailed information every day and letting us peek and letting our audience peek into what it’s like to be on the Ha Ha. Appreciate it.

34:07

Absolutely, and thank you very much, Nicki, and have a great afternoon, and we will talk more when I get back. Alright, sounds great, Chuck. Thanks, and thanks to everyone for tuning in for this. It was fun, it was something we’ve never done before. Like I said, hopefully we’ll do it again next year, maybe in a little bit of a different format, but thank you all for tuning in, and if you’ve never done the Baja Ha-Ha, we hope there will be a 31, and we hope you will sign up and join us for it. Excellent. See you, everybody. See ya!

34:39

And that’s it! Thank you so much for tuning in to the latest episode and a very special episode live from the 30th annual Baja Ha-Ha. If you want to check out any of the video footage or these livestreams referenced in this episode, you can check out the video on YouTube @Latitude38Magazine or on the Latitude 38 Magazine Facebook page. If you like this podcast, make sure to Follow or Subscribe to Good Jibes with Latitude 38 on your favorite podcast platform.

35:07

And to get the latest issue, go to Latitude38.com or follow Latitude 38 on social media. Until next time, Happy Sailing!