Wednesday, July 3

North 22° 52.528’
West 109° 53.604’
Distance: 12.7 miles

We paddled 12.7 miles today. We are now at Land’s End – the end of the Baja California peninsula. Well, we are not there now, but we were a few hours ago. We started early with a little coffee. Mike was useless yesterday without it and I enjoy it too, so today I made mud coffee which jolted us both awake. A couple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to make it all work. We had to get the timing just right to get into the water today. The waves crashed on the beach and would smoosh us if we got trapped under them. The waves are bigger today than they were last night. We spent some time watching them and watching their patterns. We had to pick the lull between the sets to get out. I picked just right, but I got my paddle caught in a rope and it took a while to get it untangled. Also, my broken seat back was in my way and I couldn’t sit in the seat. Mike was yelling “Go! Go! Go!” I was imagining the next wave smacking me into the ground. A crowd from the hotel was watching my graceless floundering and, I guess, wondering if I was going to live. I got lucky. This was one of the longest smooth times we had seen all morning. If I had done nothing else right I had at least picked the right time to do it. I finally got everything untangled and started paddling. I just slid my butt forward eight inches and worried about the seat back after I got a few hundred yards out to sea. Once he saw that everything was OK with me, Mike made a textbook entrance and a few minutes later he was with me. We paddled for a few hard hours and then came to the arc at the end of the peninsula. The waves were large and surging, but we took pictures of each of us in front of the arc. I paddled all the way around the island off the end past the arc. Then Mike and I paddled to Lover’s Beach and had a celebratory shot of El Jimador, took our last GPS reading, and sat down for a while. We met a nice couple who had just gotten married. Teachers from Idaho who had to go home the next day. They told me they were going to be in San Diego the next day, so I told them where to go for dinner in Ocean Beach. They seemed like the kind who would appreciate my town. Then we all paddled into the harbor. Mike and I went to the marina looking for a hotel and dry storage. We went to a few wrong places first, but finally found the right office and for sixteen dollars we could store the boats for four days. They also pointed us to a hotel – Best Western Cabo San Lucas. Se spent a couple hours checking in and hauling our stuff around. We looked pretty funny carrying the boats the couple blocks to the dry storage lot and everyone we passed had a comment. We got food and showered and bought a six-pack and went back to the hotel. We spent some time talking to the girl at the front desk and to the security guard. They were both helpful and interesting and told us a little about Cabo San Lucas and helped us with our Spanish. After a short while we went to our room and watched “You’ve Got Mail” in Spanish while we had a couple beers. Then we went to sleep in real beds. As usual, completing a big goal is a bit anti-climatic. The exact moment of completion, nothing changes except that you have a little less direction and maybe less confidence. Going down the coast I knew where I wanted to get and roughly how to do it. Now I need to figure out what to do next. A couple days rest here in Cabo San Lucas should help with that. I know from experience that the let-down feeling is transitory and I will soon be involved in the next goal.