Baja Bash, well almost – Not – but that story later.   Predictwind  had us in light winds at least to Turtle Bay so with out stops that was our first destination.  This was only to re-fuel which  we had heard was the most expensive fuel in Mexico.  As we passed Bahai Santa Maria the decision was made to head to Ascension about 50 miles south of Turtle Bay where we could fuel ourselves via Jerry can and save a bunch of $$.  Arriving in Ascention late we slept over night and would get up early to fuel an head out.  The weather window was still good and we might even catch a low headed to San Diego – this meant SE winds and we would be sailing!!!  The morning trip to the Pemex was disappointing – they were out of diesel.  We would have just enough fuel to get us to Turtle Bay  and yes pay the price!!!

Here is the lesson learned on the next leg.  I have been using Predictwind for our 12 hour wind predictions and must say it is excellent – I can rely on it.  In Turtle Bay discussions on the weather window ahead had other boaters saying that the GFS grib’s downloaded from saildocs were as good.  I decided to take a look at the GFS predictions for the window that lay ahead.  Predictwind  looked like we would get a great ride as far a Ensenada and then we would have to tuck in as the low went by and the winds clocked to the NW, GFS looked like we could make it above the low and all the way to San Diego.  Rather that pull into Ensenada we decided to head to San Diego and about 12 miles north of Ensenada the wind clocked to the NW at 25 knots.  We had to jibe and run back into Ensenada.  The results were, ‘boomvang ripped off the mast, topping lift pulled off the end of the boom,  and one of the crew – me – almost going for a dip!   The lesson learned is keep to your trusted weather prediction – don’t change decision making until you have tested others first!   It turned out the the boomvang had an installation flaw and was going to come off at some time anyway.  We repaired our topping lift in Ensenada and the vang would wait for San Diego.

A couple of days in Ensenada and we got our window to San Diego .  It took us 7 days including layovers to go from Cabo to San Diego and it was mostly a non-bash!!