Hurricane Rick was more than a day away from the Mexican tourist resorts of Baja California on Monday but the 13-foot waves it kicked up
already killed one person in Los Cabos, which lies almost directly in the
storm's forecast path.

Los Cabos' civil defense director said a 38-year-old man was standing on a rocky point fishing when he was swept away by one of the big waves on Sunday.

Bystanders went to help the man, but by the time they got him out of the water he was dead.

Tourists leaving Los Cabos on Monday reported rough seas with large waves.

"I'm glad to be going home," said Dick Haze, an American tourist from Phoenix, Arizona.

Storm shelters were being opened at local schools and patrol vehicles were making the rounds of low-lying neighborhoods with loudspeakers urging people to evacuate.

As of Monday evening, the eye of the storm was located about 305 miles south-southwest of Cabo San Lucas.

Rick was already whipping Socorro Island, about 300 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, where about 100 people from the Mexican navy and other government agencies are based.

The mainland base that commands the detachment said navy personnel on the island reported heavy winds and waves, but no damage or injuries.

Meteorologists on Monday did downgrade the storm to a Category 1, reporting winds of 85 miles per hour.

At their peak last week, winds raged at 180 mph as a Category 5
storm, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Forecasters said the weakening Rick was likely to continue past the Baja peninsula and slam into Mexico's mainland somewhere near the resort city of Mazatlan on Thursday.

Rick was the second-strongest hurricane in the eastern North Pacific since 1966, when experts began keeping reliable records, meteorologists at the Hurricane Center said.

The strongest was Hurricane Linda, which generated maximum winds of 185 mph in September 1997.