Chapter 11 - Cabo San Lucas and another Garmin disaster.

We left Mag Bay pretty early in the morning knowing we had another over night sail ahead of us and light wind in the forecast.  Mag Bay was a great stop and allowed usto rest a bit.

On the trip south, we sailed through and along with a pod of Humpback whales.  Some were breaching, some were fin slapping, and others were beating the surface of the water with their flukes.  The sounds were remarkable; a deep hollow boom heard from miles away, well after the event.

The night was otherwise quiet.  We motorsailed almost all night long.  The wind picked up in the morning and we shut the engine off and rolled out the headsail.  Before long, the wind was up to 20 knots and it was time to reef the headsail.  The main was already reefed.  We have been caught a couple times by inaccurate weather forecasts and since it is just the two of us on the boat, prudence dictated that we reef the main before needing to.

Well, we were clipping right along and as we were just approaching 20 miles from Cabo San Lucas, the evil Garmin deamons bit us again.  You may recall that when we got to Dana Point, our Garmin autopilot went nuts for no apparent reason.  But, with help from Joel at Beacon Marine and Electronics, we got it straightened out.  This time, the chartplotter at the nav pod (upper helm) decided to die.  It flashed and then was stuck on the Garmin logo screen and would not boot up from there.  So, fortunately, we have redundant systems on the boat and we made it into Cabo safely.  Unfortunately, and notwithstanding Joel's best efforts from 1000 miles away, this unit is nothing more than a paperweight and, the internal power supply having suffered a fatal contracture. I am now at the mercy of Garmin customer support.  We'll see how that works out. We need to have them ship us a new unit.  Apparently, they will honor the warranty - so they say.  It's as if they knew they had the potential for this problem, but did nothing about it.  Can you say, "RECALL"?  For now, I am forced to navigate from the helm with my phone. Why not just switch the units out - move the one from the nav station to the upper helm, you might be wondering?  I could do that, but then I would not have sonar.  So much for redundancy.

And that, folks, is all she wrote.

Anyways, our approach to Cabo was interesting.  I have never been here before so the scenes were all new.

So, we anchored in front of the town.  LOUD is an understatement.  There are hundreds of boats moving in every which direction - tour boats, pangas, water taxis and the ubiquitous water toys - jetskis, seadoos, etc.  It's hectic and it's chaos, but that's Cabo for you.  

In spite of the hectic nature of the town, we did enjoy several meals in the harbor and walks around the area, lots of margaritas and interesting spectacles.  Everyone on every street is a salesman and wants to sell you something.  Whether it's a hat or an opportunity to take a photo with a lizard, it's all there.  And yet, people are remarkably friendly and helpful.  It's easy to get the vendors off your back by smiling and saying, "no thank you."  We did some grocery shopping, and even found a lavanderia that did our laundry for us for a ridiculously low price.  That, to me, may have made it worth coming here.

I feel like I learned nothing about Cabo San Lucas other than it is an adult resort town.  There is little here other than resort after resort lining the beaches, the roads, and everywhere the eye can see. They take in 12 or more cruise ships per week.  There are a couple of remakable shooping malls within walking distance of the harbor - one of which is a very exclusive luxury item mall.  I am pretty sure that all clocks tick tourism here and that this is the entire basis of the economy of Cabo San Lucas.  Fun place to stop, but I don't see myself coming back here for any particular reason.

Our view from the anchorage.

Moonlight photo experiment.

So, tomorrow (Saturday) we will be heading into the Sea of Cortez.  Our first stop will be a place called Cabo Frailes (pronounced Fray-lez).  I'll be navigating there with my cell phone as I have no chart plotter at my helm for the moment.  Pray for us.  No, pray for Garmin! I understand it's quite pretty there with nice sandy beaches and clean, clear water for swimming.  We'll be there for a couple days at least waiting for the next opportunity to move north without bashing our teeth in.  Hopefully Garmin will have managed to find a solution by the time we reach La Paz - it is under warranty after all.**

** Just to be clear, Joel is my friend and will always be.  I do not begrudge him for this equipment failure in any way, shape or form.  The equipment is defective and that's what a warranty is for.  Were we in the states, this issue would be resolved in 5 minutes.  But, because we are a cruising boat presently in Mexico, things are more complicated.  Thanks to Joel for putting in the warranty claim for us.  That should help.