My god, is it beautiful here, 20 miles off the coast of Baja California. The sun—finally, the sun—is casting a hot glare on Thisldu as she surfs down the cerulean blue waves, and we’re soaking up all that Mother Nature has to offer. A thin line of fluffy clouds is hovering above the mountains that make up the coastline. They’re gray on bottom, white on top, and a purplish blue throughout. We’ve passed two cruise ships in the past hour. They must have just left Cabo. We probably won’t get there for another 12 hours.

I’m getting tired of these long sails. Ready for a break from the overnight hauls. We’ve covered a lot of ground—sea?—in the past ten days, and being constantly on the move is wearing.

We have stopped, twice, with two nights in each anchorage, first in Bahía Tortugas and then in Bahía Santa Maria. Bahía Tortugas is the biggest town on the Pacific side of Baja between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas, or at least the biggest town with a safe anchorage. It comes alive for the Baja Ha-Ha, turning kitchens into restaurants and front yards into bars. Kids storm your dinghy when you pull up to shore, demanding $3 to help you land it and keep watch over it while you meander. Everybody has an entrepreneurial spirit during the Ha-Ha.

Street dogs are everywhere, which breaks my heart and gives me joy at the same time. Puppies flop all over the beach, older ones seek shade. For the most part, the ones we’ve seen look fine—not too skinny, not beaten up, not dehydrated—but we did have to yell at kids for dropping and holding a small dog under water. It put a bad taste in my mouth for Bahía Tortugas, and made me feel ready to move on.

We left for Bahía Santa Maria the next morning, Saturday, November 9. This leg was shorter—240 nautical miles instead of the 360 we had done before. We caught two yellowfin tuna just an hour into our sail. Jim and Garrett each filleted their own. Our fridge was stocked with fresh fish, so we pulled the lines out of the water for the remainder of the sail.

On that first day out of Bahía Tortugas, things were fine until they weren’t. A storm system was building; the late afternoon sky turned a bleak, heavy gray. Raindrops started falling, the swell began to get choppier. The wind was building. The seas were getting heavier. A squall was coming. Jim was catching sleep in the quarter berth below deck and I was at the helm while Garrett reefed our sails. My knuckles were white on the binnacle, my breath in my chest, my knees braced against the impact of the breaking waves on our stern. Garrett went forward to take down the whisker pole before things got too heavy and, all of the sudden, the wind started gusting 30 knots. I slowly released the jib sheet, loosening it so he could corral the sail. He looked like a dancing monkey on the bow, fighting the wind and the jib, trying not to slip on deck. I hate moments like these. They make me want to hide. But I can’t. I have a job to do.

I returned to the helm and the autopilot started to catch, confused by the swirl of wind and waves. “Here, I’ll take over,” Jim said quietly as he came on deck, “I enjoy hand steering in rough seas.” I gladly complied and nestled myself underneath the dodger. The rain started falling in fat drops; I rolled my hood down over my forehead and kept my eyes on my knees. I’d peek up every once in a while and brace myself as the sea lapped up at us, splashing us with salt and threatening to break into the cockpit. I watched Jim as he watched the waves, how he steered into them as they approached and down them as they washed away. I eyed the bed we set up in the cabin longingly, wishing I was down there, warm and dry, instead of up here, wet and scared. This too will pass, I chanted in my head; I’ve found that mantras help me get through hard times. This too will pass. And it did. The rain abated, the seas calmed, and a big, high arch of a full double rainbow popped up over our heads.

The men were fine, but I was on edge for the rest of the night. Would things get worse? Could I handle my next watch alone? I went below to try to sleep, immediately frustrated with every step that I took as the boat threw me around. When we’re sailing in rough seas, it feels like someone is trying to knock me down with every movement I make, every simple task I try to accomplish, like changing into leggings or brushing my teeth. Lift right leg, fall. Put leg into pant, fall. Groan. Repeat with left leg, fall. Get angry at my invisible abuser, fall. I’m covered in bruises, sore in weird places, have cuts that don’t make sense. I’m tired and angry and just want to go about my life without falling down, but I can’t. This is my life now.

We were, to say the least, happy to arrive in Bahía Santa Maria at 9am the next morning. We napped, jumped in the sea to rinse off, and ate a big taco salad and quesadilla for lunch. Arrival days are usually lazy days, we don’t put too much pressure on ourselves to get anything done. The next day would be busy—a hike through the canyon, a beach party in the afternoon, a fish fry onboard Thisldu—so we took the time that we could to decompress.

I enjoyed Bahía Santa Maria more than Bahía Tortugas, perhaps because it was more remote, more visually appealing. A string of fishing huts on the beach, a small bar perched over a cliff, and a shack with two toilets made up the civilization of the bay.

The Baja Ha-Ha fleet picked up after two nights and motored 30 miles to Bahía Magdalena. We decided to stay put, to take advantage of one more night resting at an anchorage before our last leg of the Ha-Ha to San Jose del Cabo. But then we started to do calculations in our heads and realized that, no matter how we cut it, we had a two-night sail ahead of us. A tropical storm was due to hit Cabo in three days time, and we had to get there before it did. Neither Jim, Garrett, nor I wanted to leave Bahía Santa Maria that afternoon, but we had to. Begrudgingly, and slightly hungover, we set sail at 4:00pm.

Our sail to San Jose del Cabo was easy. The wind was low, so we motored most of the way. One of Garrett’s dreams came true on that leg: he caught a mahimahi. Two, actually, but the first one slipped off of the hook as he tried to bring it up over the lifelines. I was a little relieved when it got away, because, well, catching it made me a little sad. Mahimahi travel in groups and stick together when one of them is on a line. The fish fought and jumped and carved its way through the water with four others; they stayed with him until the end, and then swam away together when he dropped back in the water. It made me wonder, do fish emote? Do they understand what is going on? When we caught the second mahimahi, I had to look away. This one had three others swimming with it, too. Garrett brought this one successfully up, Jim gaffed it, and they put it out of its misery as quickly as possible.

I’m grateful for all of the fish that we’ve been catching, and it’s good for us to be fully aware of what it takes to have one on the table for dinner, however uncomfortable that awareness might be. And that was one hell of a dinner. Pan-seared over a bed of spinach and rice with a garlic butter sauce. The best thing we’ve eaten in months, and we’ve been eating well.

We slid past Cabo San Lucas at two in the morning. I was on watch; now, as I’ve gotten comfortable with my shifts, I usually bring up my Kindle to read, but this time, I didn’t need the distraction. After sailing down a raw, natural, empty coastline for the past six weeks, Cabo shined in the night. It looked like a black velvet jewel box pouring over with gold and pearls. It was radiant.

Two hours later, we were approaching our final destination: San Jose del Cabo. Now, the Baja Ha-Ha officially ends in Cabo San Lucas, but, well, Garrett and I have been there before and…just don’t love it. It’s especially unpleasant on a boat: the anchorage is rough from all of the irregular motion caused by glass-bottom boats, jet skis, pangas, water taxis, and all other sorts of activity, and the marina is packed and expensive. We’d been to San Jose del Cabo on our friend Nick’s boat years before, and knew that the marina was much more comfortable, and in a much more pleasant place. With this knowledge, Garrett booked a slip in San Jose del Cabo about a month ago, and it was a good thing he did; the marina was full with other Ha-Ha boats in anticipation of the storm.

I’d only been down below for twenty minutes when Garrett beckoned me back up. I sighed, layered on my foul-weather gear jacket, and prepared to take a flashlight and walky-talky to the bow.

“What do you want me to be looking for?” I asked Garrett, sleepily.

“Everything,” he retorted.

“Don’t be condescending,” I quipped back.

“Look out for channel markers, buoys, rocks, anything in the water. Shine the flashlight back and forth on the breakwater, and tell Garrett whether he should head more left or more right,” Jim helped.

I wrapped one arm along the rolled-up jib and shined light on the breakwater to our port, the breakwater to our starboard, port, starboard, port, starboard, port. It was pitch-black, making the blinking red and green lights of the channel markers easier to see. A dockworker came out, shone his flashlight on us, and, over the radio, instructed us on where to go. At 4:30am, we pulled into our slip, threw off the dock lines, and cut the engine. Twelve days, eight hundred and ten miles. We had completed the Baja Ha-Ha, sailed from San Diego, California, to San Jose del Cabo, Mexico. Garrett and Jim celebrated with a drink. I celebrated with sleep.

After twelve days of makeshift showers (jump into the water, shampoo hair with one hand while holding onto the dinghy with the other, rinse of shampoo, climb, awkwardly, on board, condition hair, rinse off with fresh water on the deck, go into the bathroom with a bar of soap and a wash cloth, dry off outside), carrying our trash, and accumulating dirty laundry, I was so glad to be at a marina. We took off all of the trash, aired out the boat, stood under hot showers, and thanked our stars for having made it this far.

Jim left us the day after we got into San Jose, just before the storm hit. Tropical Storm Raymond washed over us with heavy rains and light winds—it wasn’t as bad as projected. If anything, it just made us a little stir crazy. We stayed inside all day Sunday—I ventured out only to shower and collect our laundry and was almost washed away in the flooded street—and drank dark & stormy cocktails to pay homage to the conditions. The rain let up on Monday morning, the sun came out, and we stepped off of the boat, ready to explore.

San Jose del Cabo is lovely. The old town is colorful and quaint, full of art galleries and tequila shops and artisan goods. Garrett and I treated ourselves to a day that was reminiscent of our old lives; we ate a beautiful meal in the back leafy garden of a restaurant, did a tequila tasting with Casa Azul, bought a bottle of mezcal. It was perhaps a little irresponsible, to spend what we did while we’re trying to save what we can, but it was the change of pace that I needed. The next day, I was ready to step back into reality, knock out boat projects, and provision again for the weeks to come. After about a week in San Jose, Garrett and I cast off the lines and motor-sailed the short distance to our next location: Los Frailes, an anchorage in the Sea of Cortez.

It is gorgeous here. A long, white sandy beach that lays at the base of big green mountains, sprinkled with saguaro cacti and colorful homes surrounded by tall, lush palm trees. The rain we had a few days ago opened everything up, gave it all life. The water is clear all the way down to the sandy bottom, and we can see fish dart around under us. Last night, two eagle rays kept jumping into the air, flopping back down into the water with a big CLAP. We’re close to Cabo Pulmo Reef, the only living hard-coral reef system on the western side of North America. There’s a lot of sea life here, to say the least.

We are no longer sticking to a schedule, and for that we are both grateful. The only deadline we have is to be in Puerto Vallarta by December 21 for our flight back to the States for the holidays. Garrett and I will stay in Los Frailes for however long we want, then head up to Muertos Cove, then onto La Paz, and a few other destinations in the Sea of Cortez before we cross over to the mainland. It’s liberating, to have all of this time. It’s what we’ve been after all along.