0700 hours. Been making good – if bouncy – progress all night. We’re just 30 miles from Cabo San Lucas. Going to duck in and anchor for the afternoon, and then leave around 2200 when (theoretically) the breeze will back off until mid-day tomorrow – by which time we should be near Magdelena Bay and/or Bahia Maria where we’ll repeat the process.

Wonder of wonders, it is cold and the atmosphere is quite dry. Water temperature has been dropping all night and is now down to…62.6F. We’d think something was wrong with the thermometer except for the fact that it is cold on board, and for the first time we slept under BLANKETS – something that was inconceivable 24 hours ago.

Behind us the tropical weather scene is quiet. However, with water temperatures like these it will be a few months before this part of the world has any problems. Be interesting to see what we find going up the Baja peninsula.

We’ve been playing with different boat speeds and combinations with/without the mizzen for max comfort and speed. As the seas build and die, what works best changes significantly. Sometimes just a half a knot in boat speed (more or less) reduces pounding by an order of magnitude. Right now we’re using the mizzen, sailing at an apparent wind angle of 20 degrees, doing an average of 9.5 knots. The waves are pretty small – maybe four footers – but there are two of them for each boat length – and this slow speed is much nicer. Besides, we no longer feel like we are racing the weather.