Cabo revisited again and again and …

After leaving Paradise village in Banderas bay we set sail for Hilo Hawaii. Ahh the best laid plans of mice and men. It was a little disconcerting that you can’t just leave when you want. To leave, you must go through a checkout procedure that entails Immigration, Port Captain, and customs inspections all of which must be scheduled. Well the weather doesn’t follow the schedule and what looks like a good window today falls apart tomorrow. Once we checked out we where cautioned not to stop at any Mexican ports. Well the wind we needed to cross the sea of Cortez evaporated. Mike from PV sails had said on the radio that the window had closed and as well as our opportunity to sail to the trade winds. He was right and after two days of motoring we new we needed to divert to Cabo San Lucas for fuel. Three days and four nights of motoring before we finally punched through the cape effect (too much wind on the nose) to land in Cabo.  We anchored off the beach and jerry jugged fuel to the boat with an eye on the weather. We were now 300 miles closer to Hilo and only a couple of days from the trade winds.

Ok plan “B”

So what do you do when a passing panga upsets your dingy while you are refueling the outboard and rips the gas cap off and overboard on a Sunday in Mexico. Well  I went after it,in hind sight not such a great idea. The water this time of year is crystal clear and I easily located it in 30ft of water. I put on the fins snorkel and mask and made a surface free dive that ultimately ruptured my weak right ear drum. Hey, I recovered the cap. I’ve ruptured that ear drum before due to swimmers ear as a kid so I didn’t think to much about it. Our weather window opened and we set sail again. After two days of boisterous sailing and no sleep I had an ominous feeling and told Debbie I wanted to return to Cabo, and forget sailing to Hawaii. We did an about face only to discover that my ear was badly infected. We carry oral antibiotics but this was an outer ear infection that could permanently destroy my hearing. Ahhh welcome back to Cabo. Upon arrival I went to Amerimed and was treated by an awesome ENT doctor. We also officially checked back into Mexico which turned out to be a two day ordeal. A lady at the port captains office lost her purse and returned to the office and accused everyone that had been there at the same time of theft. Luckily we were still there and were not in possession of the purse. The response from the local police was impressive as three squad cars and six officers some with machine guns took her statement. We also learned of the drama that was playing out on the high seas on the sailboat Rebel Heart. A family with a one year old daughter had to be rescued and they lost their boat. At this point I felt that Hawaii was just not to be. A big high pressure system settled over the Baja coast and created the perfect opportunity to bash back up the coast to home and no way to sail to the trades. So we went with the flow and are now anchored in turtle bay awaiting the next weather window to head for Ensenada.