It was an interesting start. We had been staying for a week at the California Yacht Marina in Chula Vista making our final preparations for the Baja Ha-Ha and awaiting the arrival of George and Carl who were to crew for us to Cabo San Lucas.
On Monday, October 24, we let go the dock line as 7:45 am and headed out from Chula Vista Marina to join the rest of the Baja Ha-Ha fleet who were assembling off Shelter Island in San Diego. As we left the Marina we were joined by Distant Drum whose skipper was doing his seventh Baja Ha-Ha. We arrived at the assembly point at 9:45 am, ready for the fleet parade out of San Diego Harbor.

Grand Poobah was checking off all of the boats by radio and we along with everyone else checked in for the start. Some were no shows and others had issues which delayed their departure, including one boat with a broken prop shaft.

Finally, about midnight, the wind was gusting to 18 knots so we took the spinnaker down. On the way to the foredeck I noticed a large washer sitting on the cabin top, this is not a good thing. While tying up the Spinnaker Halyard at the mast, I finally noticed the cotter pin keeping the main boom in its place was sticking up. On further investigation the cotter pin was working its way out of its socket and as it did so, the washer that I found on the cabin top had dropped out. We re-centered the boom spindle and then pushed the cotter pin back into place. We wrapped a small piece of line to cushion the spot where the washer had fallen out. We did a full repair on this in Turtle Bay.