I’m exhausted. Like I can’t dig myself out of a deep sleep type of exhausted. I dream I’m driving a sailing catamaran overland to Oregon. What? My brain garbage is especially weird when I’m this tired, but if I complain I will get no sympathy because it’s a privilege to be exhausted by an ambition of your own choosing.
Lolling about on a catamaran in the Sea of Cortez is bliss, but I can almost taste the delight of my own pillow at home. Don’t get me wrong—the visit is spectacular with bat rays swimming in the blue glow of our underwater lights, stark vistas of crystal waters below the jagged dry peaks of the Sierra de la Giganta range, and lazy dolphins milling about our bows. The “World’s Aquarium,” as Jacques Cousteau dubbed it, is the 700-mile Gulf of California in Mexico and although the famous whales are up in Alaska getting fat for the winter, there’s plenty of sea life down south to keep us company.
The winds are light and the temps are high. July isn’t a season to hike the desert. Who could have guessed? The water is our salvation, and I seriously contemplate rigging a harness under the boat to curl up on the SUP for the night and be gently rocked in the cool spot between the hulls. There will be mosquitos of course but hell, there are at least as many enjoying me as a nocturnal smorgasbord in my cabin anyway.
I hate running the genset at night for the air conditioning. The diabolical machine thrumming just a couple feet from my head is like white noise on steroids, and I feel it will rattle something loose in my skull. No doubt it contributes to my nightmares. I dislike not hearing what the boat is up to in the anchorage at night, but the mere suggestion of not running the AC in this oven of Hades leaves a wafting scent of mutiny in the air.
One evening we tuck up into Evaristo, a tiny fishing village on the Baja Peninsula. There are maybe 20 houses, a few cows and goats, and the ubiquitous pangas that head out at night to do the heavy work of subsistence fishing. The winds are due from the west so we should be shielded in our little hidey-hole. And we are, until we’re not. Then I’m up at 3am, cursing my weather app that mentioned nothing about 30 knots. Our anchor holds, and the stars are amazing.
Another night, our anchor is similarly stalwart, but the tide is dropping and the wind is shifting. If we sit here much longer, we’ll suck sand into the genset intake as we gently descend into the shallows. We have to re-anchor in the pitch black because light pollution is not really a thing down here. My night vision is blown by the chartplotter as I retrace our track and give us another 10 feet below the keels.
And of course, there’s the night the genset quits when the pump gives up, leaving a rusty streak in the bilge that it’s been working on for months. We have no air. The misery is palpable. I wrap myself in a sheet like a burrito and stumble up to the flybridge where I finally surrender to having my mosquito bites become layered since there’s not an inch of unchewed skin left on me.
To add insult to injury, we run out of wine on the last night. Frank produces an airline-sized bottle of peanut butter whiskey that we mix with coconut water. Before you judge me, know that it’s actually tasty and that’s not just desperation talking. I may have invented a new cocktail. I’ll call it “Gusting to 30.”
At the end of our odyssey, we come into the marina, sunburnt and smelly but feeling like intrepid adventurers. The mezcalitas await as do the stories that will grow taller the farther this jaunt drops into our rearview mirror. It wasn’t exactly a gritty expedition, although it did have its moments of “hardship.” But seriously, who’s gonna listen to us bemoaning the privilege of lounging about a yacht in Mexico complaining that our steak’s too juicy and our lobster’s too buttery?
This article was originally published in the November 2026 issue.
