We left San Carlos last Sunday and took the longer route across the Sea of Cortez and down the Baja Peninsula. We are now a couple of days from jumping back across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. The northern crossing, which we made last Sunday, is about 75 nautical miles across, while the upcoming southern crossing is 190 nautical miles. We have made this southern crossing twice, and it will take about 30+ hours. We’ll start early in the morning on Monday from Bahia de los Muertos and arrive in the afternoon on Tuesday, if the weather permits. This is the season for “northers,” strong winds from the north that blow straight down the center of the Sea of Cortez. What we hope for is a “lighter northerly” that will help propel us across without raising large waves or Sheilagh’s anxiety. So far we have made this crossing twice under heavier winds in both instances.
Last Sunday we had a great sail across the Sea of Cortez with warm southerly winds, although northerly winds had been predicted. We saw flying rays – the ones that look like wet washcloths flipped like Frisbees across the water. We saw no whales, and only a couple of leaping dolphins from a distance. We pulled into a small bay at Punta Chivato that would protect us from the southerly winds we had been experiencing all day and tucked in for the night.
Just as darkness hit, the wind began blowing from the north and the little cove did nothing to protect us from the swells that resulted. It’s not a small thing to raise the anchor, motor around a dangerously rocky point, and resettle into a new cove – all in the dark. So we decided to stay there and endure the rocking and rolling. In order to keep from being thrown back and forth, I slept crossways to the length of the boat in the front berth, letting my head and feet go up and down with no rolling of the body. Sheilagh backed up to one side of the aft quarter-berth and wedged blankets on the exposed side to keep from being rolled out of bed. As it was, neither of us got very good sleep that night and were both in agreement to pull up anchor as soon as light dawned on Monday.
The next day was an easy motor/sail south to the larger protected bay called San Juanico. I caught a nap to make up for some lost sleep from the night before, but Sheilagh tried twice to catch some Z’s with no luck. We passed by the very large Bahía Concepción, where we had celebrated the 4th of July with some 40+ other cruisers on at least 20 cruising sailboats and power boats last summer. San Juanico is known as the location for the “Cruisers’ Shrine,” where cruisers leave something to identify themselves and their boats hanging on a scraggly tree on the north shore of the bay. We avoided stopping in this bay going north last spring because it didn’t protect us from the southerlies blowing at the time. This year we were moving fast and didn’t want to inflate our dinghy or go through the hassle of using the block and tackle to drop the outboard motor onto the dinghy – all just to leave our mark on a straggly tree. We enjoyed a blessedly calm night in flat water and woke up feeling much more rested.
We continued south to the hurricane hole, called Puerto Escondido, on Tuesday, where we caught a mooring for that night and the following night to give us a day of rest on Wednesday. Last spring we had to hike half a mile down a dirt road to a crossroads hotel and small store to get a good meal and some supplies – and then hike back. This time we found a small store in the marina along with a cruiser hangout that included a very nice restaurant. Apparently a young man, called Pedro, had made such a success of a restaurant further north in the town of Loreto that a jealous owner had fired him to save the money she had agreed to pay him for making the restaurant a success. So much for success! Now he is drawing customers from that location to his new spot at Puerto Escondido. The food was very good, but the service was even more so. We plugged into the internet to pick up messages, but had no blog created to take advantage of the opportunity.
We had to row our dinghy into the marina, because the outboard motor refused to work. I developed a blister on my right finger as I pulled the starting cable at least a hundred times to try to get it working. We discovered that the carburetor was spewing gas everywhere but into the cylinder, and we were not prepared to fix it at that time. Luckily Ray from “Emerald Star” gave us a tow back to our boat with his dinghy – luckily because the wind was blowing directly against us to get back to our boat, and I would have had blisters on both rowing hands if I had been forced to row against that 20-knot wind. Sheilagh, of course, pleaded her femininity as a reason for not taking her turn at rowing. When that didn’t fly, she threatened to stop cooking, and I gave in very quickly. The wind blew at 20-knots during the entire time we were in the hurricane hole, but the boat stayed nice and level in the protected water and we got a good rest.
Thursday we set out for the next stop at Puerto Los Gatos on a beautiful day that saw the end of the 20-knot wind that had been blowing for two days. We motored south for a day to get there and pulled into a pretty bay in the afternoon. There we found three other boats, several pangas, and about 30 kayakers with tents strung along the beach. I got energetic and inflated my kayak and took a turn around the bay to get the arm muscles back into shape. In the course of doing that I talked with some of the kayakers and found they were in two separate groups – Mary Aventura and Baja Expeditions. Both groups had very modern-looking two-person kayaks, one set was using pangas for support and the other group, a large motor vessel providing logistics support for the tents and food. Apparently kayaking expeditions are a big tourist-dollar-generator in this area of the Baja Peninsula. Those I talked with were quite envious of the life style Sheilagh and I are living, since they had only a week or two to have an adventure and then return to work.
As we were first anchoring, we were approached by a dilapidated panga driven by a rotund and jolly Mexican, named Manuel. We had heard stories last year of Manuel, the fisherman, who patrolled the Los Gatos area ready to sell fish and lobster to cruisers. We had bypassed this bay last spring, but as he approached we immediately remembered his name and occupation. He had a couple of fish he was selling, but we asked for lobster. He said he could get them, how many did we want, and he quoted us a price – all in Spanish. He asked if we had a beer we could give him, since he had a ways to go to get the lobster and he was thirsty. We gave him the beer and he motored south around the point to get our lobster. We had our doubts that we would ever see him again, but he was back in half an hour or so with three lobsters for the price of two and a second request for a beer.
The next problem was finding a pot big enough to boil three lobsters, each of which was probably below the legal size, but each with fairly long feelers. As we were discussing our options we were approached by the owner of a large fishing boat anchored next to us. He turned out to be an almond farmer from Modesto, who had bought the boat as a tax shelter and was about to head back to San Francisco where he kept his boat. Sheilagh mentioned our quandary as we talked with him and he told us just to chop off the tails, throw the bodies overboard, and barbecue the tails in our outdoor barbecue grill that we keep attached to the rail at the rear of the boat. That’s what we did, and the lobster tails were delicious. I did the dirty deed of cutting off the tails because Sheilagh couldn’t stand to look them in the eyes and do it. I just refused to look them in the eyes!
While we were coming down the coast we got in touch with some friends from the previous year, Dave and Merry of “AirOps” on the ship-to-ship radio. They were heading up the Baja Peninsula as we were heading down, so we made a date and place to meet here in Isla San Francisco. We had favoring winds all day and pulled in next to them at about 3PM. They immediately came over in their dinghy to give us a ride back to their boat, since they were aware of our outboard motor problem. It’s one of the pleasures of the cruising lifestyle to run into friends nearly anywhere we go, especially now that we are in our second year. We had particularly enjoyed Dave and Merry’s company when we were in Zihuatanejo last year, and it took us a couple of hours to catch up with what we had both been doing since then.
Later in the evening we hosted dinner on our boat. We provided the Arachera beef on the grill, while they provided the fresh salad and green beans. Both of us contributed wine, and both couples thoroughly enjoyed catching up on all the other cruisers we happened to know about as we went through both bottles of wine. We finally had to end our get-together so both of us could get some sleep before heading out in the morning. Naturally we cruisers were in bed by 10PM at the latest.
More later . . .
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