THE OUTSIDE ROUTE — S
pringtime, when flowers bloom, young hearts look for love — and tropical cruisers start thinking about what to do with their boats. For many, it's time to bid adios to mañanaland and head home
days or even weeks longer than you'd ever thought. It can also be quite fun and really lovely. It can reconnect you with yourself, and reacquaint you with really sailing your boat. Especially if you do it right. Most people don't. We'll get to that in a minute.
JENNIFER MANN
F
Captain Stephen 'in the office.'
before hurricane season starts on June 1. Some owners are flush enough to put boats onto trucks or specially designed ships for the trip home, but most boats do it on their own bottoms via a delightful exercise called the Baja Bash. Sometimes they're delivered by a professional captain and crew, but for many cruisers already pinching pennies, even this is too expensive and they opt to do it on their own to save money. I'm a delivery captain based in San Di-
irst, for the sake of clarity, a ‘traditional' Baja Bash is the leg from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to San Diego, USA, a run of approximately 750 miles. There are essentially two variations on the theme. The main one, advanced by magazines, Baja guides and many other delivery skippers, is putting the pedal to the metal and motoring a mostly straightline course against wind and wave. If you do it this way, you will definitely ‘bash and crash,' put unnecessary hours and fuel usage on the engine, and possibly blow out (stretch) the leech of the mainsail by the time you make San Diego by strapping it hard to ease the rolling. Plus, if you are close to the beach, the sea is less comfortable due to wave refraction; you have to be super vigilant that you don't run over kelp, pots, other boats; or suffer any breakdown or problems with a looming rocky lee shore. When it's over, and you, the boat and every piece of clothing you own is sopping wet, you'll be another believer that it's awful. The other option is sometimes called the 'Clipper route,' so named for the square riggers that came up the coast engineless by sailing halfway to Hawaii first. Of course, they could barely sail above a beam reach. Modern boats don't have to go that far. Though either of these methods will get you there, and I've done multiple
The first falsehood is that you must go north. The second is that you must stay near the coast. ego. Over the past 33 years, I have traveled up and down the Baja Peninsula dozens of times, by every possible route, at all times of the year, and on just about every type of sailboat that's ever been made. And I can confirm that everything you've heard about the Bash can be true. It can be brutal. It can break boats. It can hurt people. It can be cold, wet, rough, windy and damned uncomfortable — and go on Page 68 •
Latitude 38
• March, 2021
variations of both, most people choose to 'straightline' Bash. But just because many people do it the way they've always done it, doesn't mean it's the best way. I'm here to tell you of another method that I have been using for several decades now that has worked out very well. I call it the Outside Route, a variant of the Clipper. To understand it, you first have to wrap your head around a couple of misperceptions.
No, this isn't a Baja Bash (it's a boat crossing the bar at Bahia Del Sol, El Salvador). But we thought it set the proper mood for this article — plus most Bashers are too miserable to take pictures anyway.
The first falsehood is that you must go north. The second is that you must stay near the coast. The truth is that you can't go directly north. The coast runs mostly northwest, and the prevailing wind blows parallel or very slightly onshore. With northwest wind, you can sail only north and east, or west and south. Sailing north is impossible because, as mentioned, rocky death is immediately there, on the right, so port tack is just not an option, and starboard tack only takes you west. So go west. The added benefit is that the seas are generally more pleasant far from shore.
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his is where many people's understanding falls flat. So ingrained is the idea of 'going north' and remaining within sight of land that instead of sailing, the D-sail (diesel) is used along with the vertical stabilizer (main). They pound along right into the teeth of the prevailing noserlies and, well, you know the rest. I can tell you from experience that 75% of the time, the wind along the Baja coast is NW, 18-25. If you are pounding into it at 5 or 6 knots, you've got 25-30 knots of apparent wind on deck. And 100% of the time, the California current, like a giant conveyor belt, is dragging everything southeast by about 24 miles a day. Over a six- or seven-day passage, that's more than 150 more miles of water to get through. Not only will pounding into that be awfully uncomfortable, eating will be difficult and meaningful sleep almost impossible. About 20% of the time, there may be light wind or even no wind the entire way. In that case, yes: Motor directly toward your destination and achieve maximum VMG. As you get north of Guadalupe, the wind usually goes light in any
