One sound any sailor dreads is ripping material. No, not the bathing suit; the sails, the engine. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We last left you with expectations of a good night's sleep in a near all-weather anchorage, Escondito. Unfortunately for us, we did not have a restful night there. To start, just after setting the hook, we had a plumbing issue. A 3-way valve failed allowing seawater to dribble into the boat and rendering our head system, shall we say, closed for business. So, after wrestling with poopy pipes long after the sunset we were awaken at 1:30 in the morning to our friends
Scheherazade 
weighing anchor because strong winds from the mountains were pushing them too close to their closest neighbor. There were good westerly winds and we had a long passage planned for the next day trying to get north to a safe norther anchorage. For over an hour we debated weighing anchor ourselves, but sleep won out, at least we attempted to sleep. Soon after, the winds shifted to the SE, bringing with it swell directly into the anchorage and pushing us toward the cliffs we were hanging off of when we had set the anchor. Still we held tight as we were preparing
Tao and
Eeyore to sail and we saw
Pisces heading out, we decided that we had waited so long we might as well wait until the morning breeze picked up to get us out into the San Jose channel; but it never came. The anchorage was devoid of wind with 2-3 foot swells at 4 seconds making
Tao look like a hobby horse. Rough start, but post weather, around 9am, we finally motored out of the now nearly deserted anchorage into perfect spinnaker winds pushing us toward our new destination- Agua Verde.
Our buddy boats Pisces and Scheherezade were way ahead of us and we had 44-nm to go. We figured we would likely just have a night at sea. But the winds were up and they held. We sailed under spinnaker and mainsail for 8 straight hours with our colors flying high and our speed over ground seeing up to 8.2 knots with several hours solidly just below 7 knots. We had our fishing line out but our lucky lure got chomped and we had no other nibbles. As days end approached we were close to making it when the winds disappeared leaving us bobbing in sloppy seas. Hoping for a good night of sleep and staying with our buddy boats, we fired up the engine and motored the last hour past a large reef an onto anchor nestled at the base of large mountains looming to the west. We collapsed into bed and slept comfortably with 7:1 scope out as the gale on the Outside sent gusts over the Baja mountains throughout the night changing our conditions from no wind to 30 knots with little warning. And the forecast norther marched closer.
Although Agua Verde has a small lobe with great protection from the north, we did not relish the thought of having to jockey for position in it and deal another night with a crowded anchorage. So we weighed anchor and sailed out early, around 7:30, the next morning hoping to make it under sail to Isla Carmen to wait out the norther in a safe anchorage yet away from the crowds. It was a fun filled full-wind-spectrum sail. After a mellow downwind sail off our anchor, when we exited the safety of the harbor, west winds were spilling over the peninsula from the gale on the Outside 
creating 25-30 knot conditions. We double reefed the main and had some feisty sailing for a couple hours. As we sailed away from the peninsula, the winds diminished until we had the full main and drifter up, and then diminishing to nothing we brought the flopping main down and let the drifter catch every breath that fluttered past. Just after noon the winds filled in from the SE creating some beautiful sailing with flat seas under full main and 100% jib to our destination- Punta Perico on Isla Carmen. We set our anchor in a near deserted anchorage that our three boats soon filled up and settled in to await the norther.
We spent a little over 4-days there with plenty of space to let out tons of scope to feel comfortable enough to leave Tao to snorkel, head ashore for hikes and yoga, and make visits to eachother's boats for happy hours and meals. We even tested our 22-lb Danforth stern anchor, freshly spliced together by Chris (to remove the weak link created by the shackle), in the 30 knot winds setting it as the primary; both it and the splice were bomber. (Just in case, we left Rocky set and ready should it fail 
and we move more than 20 feet, and we didn't mention our experiment to the boat that had anchored downwind of us). Comforting to know our back up is solid, but we're still in the market for a 70-lb Luke storm anchor. Excited to see more of Isla Carmen, on the 20th the winds finally abated and we decided to sail a few miles into Salinas Bay home to a deserted salt mining town and another spot that had been filled with boats hiding from the norther.
We 
put the sails up, brought Rocky aboard and wrestled with our salt encrusted lines. It was as we poked out around Punta Perico heading out for a sail to stretch our legs that we tightened in our 100% jib and heard the rip. The jib foot had caught on the bow pulpit life line connection, a known area of chafe, and finally succumbed- ripping 9 inches vertically. Immediately we took down the injured sail, hoisted our 80%, and turned around to sail directly to Salinas. Shocked that we had sustained injuries to our main working sail, we set the hook and went ashore to discuss our plan... For the first time we felt like we were "at the beach" as we walked down a mile of white sand with lapping bright blue water to the interesting little mostly abandoned town. More exciting for us, however, was visiting the huge inshore salt pond whose perimeter was lined with 
rocks colored white with inches of salt deposition on each. The next day, devoid of wind, was dedicated to sail repair. With the invaluable help of Pisces, Jacob's sail loft experience, our as yet unintroduced crew member Elna (a Swiss made first model computerized home sewing machine), and a few strong stitches from Pisces' solid SailRite machine, it was a very rejuvenating day for our little sail loft and we went to bed looking forward to putting our new improved sail up the next day.
After we got over the shock of ripping a sail, we got down to business. We borrowed The Sailmaker's Apprentice from Pisces and read up on patching sails. Of course, our situation was different than any of those discussed, but still fairly basic. The jib foot had caught on the bow pulpit life line connection and created a 9 inch vertical tear with the Dacron parted but the foot tension line still intact. Early the next morning we pulled out all of our sail repair gear and our sewing machine, Elna, and lured Jacob with his sail loft experience over to our boat. After discussing the rip and our options we 
followed Jacob's recommendations (backed by his old boss as well!) and used our butane hot-knife to melt the rip and burn a rectangular 22" X 3" piece of Dacron for a patch. We then added basting tape and placed the patch perpendicular to the foot of the sail, still encompassing the entire rip diagonally. We used 4.4-oz material and folded it in half in order to patch both sides of the 7.5-oz Dacron sail. Elna worked like a champ with a #100/16 needle and #69 polyester thread. As preventative maintenance, we plan to improve that patch by adding Insignia (adhesive backed Dacron) material over both sides of the quite large area that chafes on our pulpit. Yay! First sail repair mostly complete!
While we had all the repair gear out and Jacob still there, we decided to tackle an issue that happened somewhere on the Outside. Our lowest hank spur grommet had pulled free of the material so the hank was chafing directly on the leech of the sail. This turned out to be a bigger job than the first. We used the hot-knife to cut out the old material and to cut 2 patches out of 7.5-oz material (borrowed from Pisces). The inner patch was 3.5" X 3.5" and the outer patch was 5.5" X 5". Elna's limit was reached and she was unable to sew through four layers of 7.5-oz Dacron. Lucky for us, Jacob offered to pull out their SailRite machine designed specifically for sail making. It powered through those layers and gave us sewing machine envy. Still there was more work to be done. Chris spent what was left of the afternoon making our die tool which was not quite the right size work with our spur grommets. Three grommets and several curse words later, voila! Now our new improved sail is better than ever.
Although it was a little intimidating to have to repair such an important sail, over all we are happy to have had the experience. Not only is our sail in better shape that before we started working on it, we got to go through our sail repair kit and realize what we had that was good and what we still need. So, added to the project list is beefing up the sail repair kit. Much thanks to Pisces for sharing all their knowledge and supplies as well as encouraging us (specifically Shawn) throughout this project. Of course we hope that you will come to us first if you want to use Elna to embroider something... Thanks you two!!
