Our bad timing is unbelievable. If it wasn’t so serious, it’d be funny.

Exactly five days after buying our new sailboat, we suddenly have something much more serious to worry about than how to get the boat from Mexico to Seattle: a hurricane.

Hurricane Jimena howled up the Baja coast today with sustained winds of 145 mph, heading in the general direction of the sailboat we purchased just five days ago.

The storm came close to being a Category 5 hurricane, the highest level of intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale, prompting the Mexican government to declare a state of emergency for Los Cabos and the Baja California Sur state capital of La Paz. Rescue workers are preparing for disaster relief operations, and as many as 10,000 people could be evacuated from homes in low-lying areas.

“This phenomenon is unprecedented. In the history of the peninsula, we have not had a storm of the force of Jimena,” Jose Gajon, director of the Baja California Sur civil protection service, said in a local radio interview.

The storm today weakened to a Category 4 hurricane and according to the Los Angeles Times‘ Outposts blog, is no longer expected to hit Cabo San Lucas. The center of the storm is instead expected to brush Magdalena Bay on the Pacific side of the Baja early Wednesday and make landfall north of that port city later in the day. San Carlos, where our boat is moored, is on the inside of the peninsula, on the east coast of the Sea of Cortez just south of Guaymas.

A map on the National Hurricane Center’s website indicates that San Carlos is just barely outside of the danger zone. We’ve been told it’s unusual for San Carlos to be hit with a hurricane, but it’s certainly not unheard of— in 2007, Hurricane Henriette slammed the Mexican mainland with winds of 75 mph between Los Mochis and Guaymas, a stretch that includes San Carlos. Given that most San Carlos is at sea level, flooding from Jimena is a concern.

Being so far away just exacerbates the worry. At least during storms in the Northwest, we’ve been able to go down to the marina and check on our boat. It’s extremely unsettling to think that our expensive new floating home is more than 1,500 miles away.

One thing we’ve learned during the process of buying this boat is the invaluable benefit of having someone on the ground when you’re purchasing a boat from far away. Surveyor Allan Smith has been a godsend, helping us with everything from hotel recommendations to insurance. Today, he’s checking to make sure there’s no water in the boat’s bilge, arranging for someone to remove the sails from our boat and ensure that the dinghy is adequately secured on the foredeck.

Having lived in Mexico since the early 1990s, Allan knows about storms and didn’t seem particularly worried when I spoke with him this morning.

“It’s nice and calm and quiet,” he said. “The palm trees are barely moving.”

However, Allan added, he’d just received an email from a friend in La Paz, about 200 miles away across the Sea of Cortez, who said the wind was blowing at 50 knots. Still, he advised me not to fret. His boat is in the same marina, just a few docks away, and he wasn’t taking it out of the water. The marina is very protected, he reminded me.

“I think we’ll be okay,” he said, then added, chuckling, “Hopefully this is not the future of your boating experience, right?”

Right.

We’ll rest much easier after the storm has passed. In the meantime, it could be a long, sleepness night.