Ah, what fun it is to look back on all the fun we’ve had with our Wetas. But we’re closing down our Ventura office, so it’s time for them to find a new home—it could be yours!
We’ve got the most stylin’ Weta setup around, with two identical boats and a sweet trailer for carting them around.
Both Wetas have been sold.
We made a clip show from all the video Carl shot while on the Baja Ha-Ha this year. Hilarious!
This year’s post-Ha-Ha trip back up the Baja coast was, like last time, a re-play of the Ha-Ha in reverse.
We stocked the boat with food, water, and fuel in Cabo, and set out on November 8 just after the Ha-Ha awards ceremony, bound for Bahia Santa Maria. When we arrived, there was one other boat in the bay: the steel-hulled Muktuk sailed by Austrian Karl Mayer and family. They are one of the saltiest cruising families out there, home-schooling their kids, eating homemade kelp pickles, and making some extraordinary passages like New Zealand to Alaska and Alaska to Cape Horn. We waited a day for the next weather window, then made our way north to Turtle Bay.
The weather this year was dominated by a norther in the Sea of Cortez. The Pacific side of Baja is mostly insulated from weather in the Sea of Cortez (and vice versa), but there are places where the wind pours through the mountains, making it like sailing up the SoCal coast when the Santa Anas are blowing.
It makes the wind angles better (NE instead of NW), but it can pile some serious chop on top of the normal NW swell.
We arrived in San Diego just ahead of a winter storm and just in time to meet our friends Sam and Anthony from the Farr 55 Whistle Wind, who started the Bash a day behind us.
People always ask, “The Bash is all upwind, right? Do you have to motor the whole way?” It’s never so bleak as pointing the boat into the wind and seas while the motor labors and the mainsail flogs. The Bash is definitely motor-assisted sailing, but we’re always sailing strategically, looking for the best wind angles and using the motor to get a few more knots and point a few degrees higher than with sails alone. This year we even had some reaching and running during the last leg from Turtle Bay to San Diego.
Woo-hoo! Charter guests Sean and Carl (in the squid hat) rock the spirit of the Ha-Ha and land themselves and Vanishing Girl on the cover of Latitude 38.
This year’s Ha-Ha was Vanishing Girl’s first, and it was a great one. The weather was about as good as you could hope for: sunny, with a steady 10-25 knots from behind. Fisherman Sean caught a couple of right-sized fish along the way:
And Carl, who Ha-Ha’ed with us in 2013, rocked the Bahia Santa Maria beach party with the band:
After the beach party in Bahia Santa Maria, we had one of the fastest final legs in Ha-Ha history, thanks to a solid 20-something knot wind that followed us all the way to Cabo.
We enjoyed a few days of R&R in Cabo, then Robert and Danna flew in for the trip back up the Baja Coast.
Chief among the weather gods is El Niño ;) Tomorrow morning we leave San Diego, heading south in the direction of Cabo San Lucas. Looks like hurricane Patricia has left the area, thankfully. See where we’re at, courtesy of Vanishing Girl’s satellite tracker: share.delorme.com/PaulMartson 
We have fun! This year’s SoCal Ta-Ta was another perfect week of sailing between Santa Barbara, the Channel Islands, and Malibu. Thanks to our crew, Caryl Woulfe, John Ricks, and Karen Huie, and thanks to Latitude 38 for putting on another great event.
Fearless (and first-time) Weta sailors Tony Oropallo and his nephew Brian sail one of our Weta trimarans 22 miles across the Santa Barbara channel to Santa Cruz island. We sail Vanishing Girl with the Neagley family as the support boat.
Tons of fun! We’re going to do this again next year.
Thanks to all who attended for making this year’s Weta Training Camp a big success! And thanks to photographer Rick Saez for shooting it all. See all the photos from the event on Rick’s web site.
US Weta Ambassador Stephanie De Lair came out from the other coast and gave us a nice write-up on the Summer Solstice site.
This year the famous N2E became the infamous N2C (Newport to Catalina) because the wind was exactly one day late to the start line. Vanishing Girl was one of 4 boats in our division to retire with a DNF, a decision that came swiftly and unanimously at 1am while slatting off Carlsbad, CA.
Let’s rewind to the beginning of the 5-day trip with Captains Paul and Jared, and PPS crew Danna, Mike, Andreas, and Mark.
_/)___/)_/)____/)___
Interesting problem the authorities appear to have in bustling downtown Ventura.
Van Girl sleeping under a waxing and just slightly gibbous moon, ready to go.
We departed Ventura at 4am. A whale came by to say hi as the sun rose over Pt. Mugu. Nice way to start the day!
Race Day morning. Drizzle!
206 boats this year. Danna loved the close quarters milling about before our 12:10 start.
We had a good start. Here we are on top of Cool Man Cool. Photo credit to Joy.
Sail #1006. We could’ve used a bigger headsail. Photo credit to Woody.
The dreaded leeward hike. Even the 70′ tri ORION was pretty much stuck to the water.
From the bluffs just south of Newport. Like a great migration. Photo credit Woody.
By sun up, we were no longer racing. It was a strategic call to spend the night motor-sailing to Avalon for two reasons:
First, because it was fun to spend a day with nothing to do but play 6 games of pool and walk around town.
Second, because when the wind came back it came back big. I almost felt bad for those who finished. What goes down must come up. And the forecast was for 30 knots from up.
That morning I had to go unfuck the main halyard at the first spreaders.
Here’s the whole crew looking at me looking at them. Down faster please!
The breeze came on, and the cowboyz got serious.
It continued to build – up to 30 kts true, briefly – and we kept reducing sail. Great opportunity for boat and crew to hone some skills.
By the end of the afternoon we ended up with just a double reefed main, flying in to Jared’s anchorage (Paradise Cove).
It was dark the rest of the trip. We arrived Ventura the exact time of day we left, 4am. By 7am the crew had resisted the temptation to go “off watch and snooze” instead driving home to SF, Arizona, and Oxnard. Van Girl and crew had a fun sailing adventure, if not a race to Ensenada. See you all again for another attempt!
Captain Pablo out.
No, our roof deck is not getting fumigated. This is Vanishing Girl’s new-to-her half-ounce Pineapple runner! It’s far from crispy new, but it is light and big. It will likely see some action in just a few weeks as we have some downwind miles to log… Newport Beach & Ensenada here we come!
