If you’ve ever felt remotely significant in life, spending a night alone at sea is the cure. There you are, a vulnerable speck on the enormity of the trackless ocean. Then you look up to consider the unfathomable vastness of the Milky Way, which itself is a speck in the sea of the Universe.

Or is the Universe just a simulation? If so, we were about to simulate our longest passage yet! Three nights at sea and 350 nautical miles down the Baja. This would be the first time that we’ve spent more than a single night underway.

We’ve heard from several experienced sailors that it takes 3 days to acclimatize to a sea voyage, but we’ve always felt a little skeptical. This could be a survivorship bias. We only talk to sailors who still identify as sailors. We don’t hear advice from the other type. The people who completed a long passage, then immediately moved to the desert where they now enjoy PTSD counselling and a no sodium lifestyle.

How will this family react to 3 nights at sea? Hoping for the best, we pushed off the dock.

Our first day out of Ensenada was not our best. We’d lost our seasickness resistance by spending too long in the calm waters of the marina. The sea was confused and we all felt mildly nauseous all day.

When night falls Sarah and I take turns at 3 hour watches. Every now and then one of the kids will wake up and come to hang out in the cockpit for a little while. We’ll watch the stars or marvel at our long phosphorescent trail when it’s dark enough. I hope they’ll remember those moments, and maybe forget the 15 hours of nausea we subjected them to earlier.

At some point during that first night 10 small squids jumped onto the boat, a poorly researched attempt at piracy maybe. We found them a little dehydrated in the morning. We also saw our first sea turtle, and flying fish. The water had become a stunning shade of blue.

On Day 2 we felt a little better. Good enough to try fishing, which we hadn’t done since leaving Canada. As I got our line set up the kids asked how long it might take to get a fish. “Well, we caught a salmon in 2009, and another in 2022, so if we put the hook in now we should probably check it around 2035.”

Ten minutes later we caught a tuna! Alert the media! “Fishing Challenged Canadian Family Catches a Tuna!” This was pretty exciting.

On day 3 we were feeling so much better that we even had a little energy to spare. We tried to come up with creative ways to pass the time. My ‘imagine bacon’ event was not popular. The sea-legs olympics was a hit. Cookie roulette was a good idea in theory, but we learned a valuable lesson about buying all the cheapest cookie brands in Mexico.

By the time we arrived at Asunción on the morning of day 4 we had achieved a reasonable routine, nobody felt seasick, and we even felt somewhat rested. The 3 day acclimatization rule seemed to apply to us too. Whew!

Asunción is a lovely small fishing village, with very little tourism. Being 50 miles of dirt roads from the next town, it feels quite remote, completely different from Ensenada.

We did one more overnight passage from there to Bahía Magdelena which is when an unusual scene unfolded. We tried fishing again and had caught one before we even let the line all the way out. We let that one go, because that is simply not how fishing is supposed to work. We caught another within a few minutes. We were now existentially prepared to keep a fish, but this one was smaller than the first, so we let it go. We hooked a third shortly thereafter and decided to keep it. We need to throw the line into the water in order to coil it away for storage, so I did so, and… caught another fish. We decided to keep this one too. Sarah was now managing the 2 slippery fish in the cockpit, when I put the line in one last time trying to stow it away, and… caught yet another fish.

“Stop catching FISH!” cries Sarah, trying to brace herself on the rolling boat, with her hands full of tunas.

A moment to reflect. In two decades fishing on the BC coast we caught a total of two salmon, each of which probably cost us $500 in licences and fishing gear. Today, in Mexico, with a piece of string and a wooden lure gifted from a friend, we are unable to stop catching fish. The world is full of wonders.

The community at Bahía Magdalena was even smaller than Asuncion, with just a tiny general store serving the small population. It’s fascinating to consider what life is like for the locals here. We spent a couple great days there swimming and exploring the beautiful desert surroundings.

Next stop: Cabo San Lucas!

Some photos…