Cabo San Lucas

Sunday, April 10, 2011

022-53.109 N
109-54.617 W

Ahoy from Cabo San Lucas (aka Cabo)!

We arrived here last Thursday after doing an overnight 160 mile passage. For the majority of the trip we had glassy seas to small ripples on the water from very light winds. It was nice and sunny and we saw lots of whales, including one which surfaced just a few yards from the boat. That got Sue's attention! Overnight the winds picked up and we finally got to sail. As we were coming in we had 25 kts from the NW and we hit 10.4 kts while surfing down waves. Cabo has about 500 charter fishing boats and they all seem to head out at sunrise. As we approached Cabo, we saw what looked like hundreds of boats heading our way. It was quite a sight and we quickly decided that they weren't coming out to welcome us.

The cliffs, as you approach the entrance to Cabo, are lined with homes and condos that have fantastic views of the Pacific. As you turn into Cabo's harbor, you get a great view of a natural arch and two beaches...the leeward beach is named lover's beach and the windward beach is known as divorce beach.

As we pulled into the harbor we saw that there were five cruise ships at anchor! We dropped the sails and called a marina to see if there was any space for us. Thankfully they said that there was and we headed in. We had been warned that Cabo was very pricey, but because we've had BlueJacket at 2 other IGY marinas, they gave us the off-season pricing of $1.48/ft which is much better than the standard $3.40/ft. I was psyched!

After getting a few hours of sleep we headed off and started exploring Cabo. Cabo is amazingly Americanized where virtually all of the service staff speaks some English. The marina district is the center of the tourist area and is lined with restaurants and high end shopping. The number of restaurants in the area surrounding the marina district is amazing. I have no idea how they all survive, but they seem to. We've had wonderful dinners in nice restaurants and amazing lunches in hole in the wall places where there's no menu and we were clearly the rare gringo who eats there. All in all, we really enjoyed the food here.

Our only complaint is that we're constantly bombarded by people selling goods and services and restaurant staff trying to get you to eat there. In the evening it's quite sad to see young children off hawking small goods and candies. One can only imagine what life they'll lead in future.

We had only planned on spending two days in Cabo, but due to the marina pricing and the fact that we were just enjoying ourselves, we decided to stay for 4 days. We got the boat all cleaned up from 900 miles of moving, did some boat projects and just spent time exploring the area. We had a lot of boaters tell us to just skip Cabo, and I suppose that we would have blown through the area due to the marina pricing, but we really enjoyed it. I know that as we head into the Sea of Cortez that we're going to be in very remote areas, so this was a nice excursion.

For those regular readers of these logs, you'll remember that we've been having issues with our generator and we're still having prop shaft vibration issues. The generator voltage controller has blown out for the 3rd time and the only commonality that I can come up with is that it blows when we use the air conditioning. My issue is that this controller is far too fragile as it shouldn't matter what's running. The current theory on the prop shaft vibration is that it's caused by a diesel fuel injector that's causing the engine to run rough when the loading changes. This actually has a lot of credibility as the vibration occurs when we have following seas and we slide down the back of a wave, causing the engine to surge by 200+ RPM due to the lack of loading. Anyhow, importing parts under the yacht-in-transit tax-free statute is quite complex and we have to wait until we get to La Paz to order the parts and fill out the paperwork.

On Monday we're undertaking a massive 20 mile push up the Sea of Cortez to Puerto Los Cabos and then we'll work our way to La Paz, making a couple of stops along the way.

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser:

We stayed at Marina Cabo San Lucas and were very impressed with how helpful and friendly the staff was. As I stated above, we got the off-season rate of $1.48/ft, which was due to the fact that we've stayed at several other IGY marinas. The normal rate was $3.40/ft. There's excellent security and the docks are in great shape.

Our favorite restaurant was Salvatorres Italian restaurant on Zapata E Guerrero. This was outstanding food and service. Due to the portion sizes, we would suggest that you get a salad and one main dish and share them. We also went to La Dolce on Hidalgo and had a very good meal. For seafood, we can recommend Mariscos de Mazatlan, which is just a few blocks away.

Log ID: 1437