Well, we couldn’t get away with it forever - the wind had to come eventually. Geary the Baja weather guru, as well as our downloaded GRIB files, announced that we’d be in for a little blow for the next two days.

Since leaving La Paz, every day we contemplated how long our good fortune would hold. But with the weather so cantankerous this year, our 10-day run of good weather was a downright miracle. So I’ll gladly take 2 full days of hunkering down for moderately high 20-25kt winds as payment for our thus far pleasant trip. It’s WAY better than 7 days of wind for only 2 good days like our southbound trip late last year. Are things back to normal? We’ll see…

So, we high-tailed it out of Bahia Cobre for better shelter just 5 miles away at Bahia Salinas. Not to be confused with Punta Salinas (Saltworks Point) which we had just visited a week earlier on Isla San Jose, much further south…this is Bahia Salinas, or Saltworks Bay, on Isla Carmen.

No Letting Up
As soon as we arrive, the wind starts and doesn’t turn off for 48-hours. So we sit tight and wait it out. We read, write, watch TV shows and movies. I bake peach crisp. We don’t leave the boat until the 3rd morning. By then I am itching to get to solid land.

Bahia Salinas – a Natural Wind Tunnel
Turns out this bay is notorious for funneling wind though the long, low plain of salt flats, cutting a swath across the island with high mountains on either side…another “chute” of sorts; so winds are often higher here than anywhere else. We didn’t realize this until we listened to our VHF radio. The same day we were experiencing 20 kts, boats over at Isla Coronados only 10 miles due north, were reporting calm! What? Hmmm. Maybe we just need to leave and get out of this natural wind tunnel.

Miles and Miles of Salty Plains
On the 3rd morning, we finally ventured to shore to visit the defunct saltworks. Yes, another one. But this was a pretty large operation, with miles of crunchy, salty fields sprinkled with rusty equipment, a huge salt “lake” in the middle, several decaying buildings, a water tower and a small church that was surprisingly (yet, not surprisingly) still properly maintained and ready for service. There are even remnants of a pier and train track system used to haul the product from inland to the beach where it could be loaded onto boats and whisked away to the Peninsula to sell (remember we are on an island 30-some miles away from the nearest town of Loreto).

Bighorn Hunting
Several years ago, someone built a ranch house here that is now used as a hunting lodge for high-rollers pursuing bighorn sheep, like the one we saw on the mountaintop in my last blog. Since this island is one big craggy mountain with sheer cliffs and no roads, hunting these animals must be quite the challenging expedition.

Isla Carmen is a protected island and no one is allowed to walk inland any further than the beach areas, other than the few hunters. In the case of Bahia Salinas, a couple lives here to watch over the crumbling hamlet and maintain the lodge. You must request permission to walk their property. Our caretaker indicated that we could mosey wherever we desired; but he also said that other caretakers do mind and won’t let you any further than the beach, just like the rest of the island. So I guess your luck depends on shift change. Only the current custodian knows whether hunters are roving the island on any given day, plus we found target practice ranges near the salt ponds … so unless you are “gunning” for a Dick Cheney moment …ask before wandering very far inland.

Like Moths to a Flame
Every cruiser here has Heather Bansmer and Shawn Breeding’s “Cruiser’s Guide to the Sea of Cortez”. In this essential book are precise coordinates for good anchoring spots. Usually one, sometimes two per anchorage, they are indicated on the charts with a tiny little anchor icon. We have noticed over our two seasons of cruising here, that people tend towards those points, dropping their anchor as close as boatingly possible with little precaution for their neighbors. Drawn in like moths to a flame, they don’t poke around for other spots, they don’t look to explore the depths farther away, or even make sure of the surrounding swing room; they ride up to the spot and drop the hook, no matter who else is 100 feet away. This has happened to us on several occasions.

Bahia Salinas is wide open… huge. There must be at least one mile of perfectly good anchorable beach length, plus shallow depths at least a half mile into the bay. When we arrived, there was one other boat in all of this space. We are not immune to the draw of the anchor icon… we’ll drive to that spot first if it’s not taken, and then do outward circles looking for swing room on our plotter. We may or may not stop in that spot if no one else is nearby. But if there is lots of room in the bay, we’ll usually look for a place a bit farther away, just in case of this happening…

Table for Two?
This time, we happened to have plopped our anchor close to but not on top of the book’s icon. Well, we were there first. Then another sailboat (yep, those darn Canadians;) came in and proceeded to anchor right next to us, right on top of the preferred anchor point. Now, he wasn’t dangerously close, but definitely within calm talking distance. The point is, with ALL this room, a MILE of space… you can go ANYWHERE and you gotta anchor right next to me? Really? Are we dating? Should I make dinner reservations? You couldn’t even go another hundred feet to the other side of the anchor point, just to give you better swing room? Your spacing might make sense in a very small anchorage. But, here? It’s like a giant, empty Walmart parking lot, and the next arriving vehicle pulls in right beside your car, rather than a comfortable, one spot over. Inconceivable. (I don’t think that word means what you think it means…)

Stalker!
We left. But that’s because we were leaving anyway. The next morning at our sleepy little anchorage of Punta Colorada where we had the place to ourselves, we noticed our best friend rounding the corner. Stalker! We watched him intently as he proceeded to do the exact same thing, anchoring right beside us! Seriously. We left soon after he arrived. We were headed for Puerto Escondido anyway…but I secretly hoped he thought we were leaving because of him.

For a really great anchoring-on-top-of-me story, go to SCOOTS sailblog...scroll down to read the portion: How Not to Anchor 1/19/2016

You gotta love a ½ hour ride to the next anchorage – my kind of day. Round the corner on the far side of Isla Carmen, we pulled into little Bahia Cobre, just 3 miles away. A U-shaped bay with 20ft deep water all around, our view was backed by dramatic, high cliffs rising from the pebble beach. This spot was spectacular. And we had the place all to ourselves…for a little while anyway.  Another sailboat arrived during the afternoon, plus a couple fishermen spent the night in their pangas near shore. This is one off-the-beaten-path anchorage. Since it is about 25 miles from Puerto Escondido in the wrong direction (due east) for most north-south paths, most cruisers don’t venture out this far on a regular basis. But they should…

Best Snorkeling Ever
Just off the east point, lie boulders the size of SUV’s that have tumbled into the sea, providing one of the best snorkeling venues I’ve ever seen. We floated along this rocky outcropping all the way from the beach a ¼ mile to the point and back. Along our trek, dolphins swam into the anchorage; they were busy fishing and paid us no attention but we could hear their breathing from several hundred feet away while we swam. Every now and then, a ray would jump and splat. I’d quickly look up from snorkeling but never caught them in the act from my surface angle. But even rays and dolphins weren’t as interesting as the fish factory down below…

Fish Factory
Entire schools of fish by the hundreds floated along this boulder-strewn reef. Of course, there are your standard yellow & blue stripers and blue spotted pufferfish roaming the shallow spots. But in just a little deeper water, light grey ones (looks like some kind of angelfish) with bright yellow tails were schooling around in large packs! It was so mesmerizing to just float and watch these graceful creatures. Looking closer at these guys you can see they are actually spotted and have 3 distinct white dots near their tail that look to me like pinholes through their bodies.

Rainbow Colors
The most beautiful species were these large, 3ft grouper-like things, brightly painted with every color of the rainbow. Every so often, I found a pair incongruously mingling among the comparably smaller schools of yellow-tailed angelfish, so they must like each other. Preferring to swim closer to the bottom, they were always a bit too far out of reach for good pictures. My camera could not capture their iridescent beauty anyway, even after photo-shopping out some of the greenish underwater tones.

Feisty Fishies
Another feisty type sported a pretty light blue head and dark blue body. Seemingly loners, they did not swim well with others. Each was so territorial he had no issue with swimming fiercely at an entire school of yellow-tails to deter them from getting anywhere near his little hidey-hole. I captured an example of one protecting his rock-abode near the end of my video.

Schooling Silvers
On our way back to the beach I suddenly ran into a swarm of foot-long silver-colored fish. I have no clue to their type, but literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, made their way en-masse along the 20ft deep reef. Sometimes they would lackadaisically float as a group in the same general direction, teeming all over the sea floor like bees. Then, all of a sudden, a switch turned on. Either they got spooked… or maybe the General announced an alarming “Retreat!”… and within a split second, everyone had a single, overriding mindset… bolting out to sea like their life depended on it (probably did!). It looked just like the movie Finding Nemo… a fish super-highway with seemingly no end to the stream! The whole experience was so amazing I went for a repeat, swimming back from the boat by myself a couple hours later just to see it all again. (Plus, I got out of cleaning the boat’s hull.) My fish friends were all still there, in endless supply.

Bighorn Sheep
That afternoon, our new boat neighbor yelled over to us urgently: “Hey guys, look up towards the cliff!” Standing on top of this sheer mountain spine, was a bighorn sheep silhouetted against a bright blue sky. Looking all majestic, it’s as if some documentary director had posed him there for an episode of Planet Earth. So cool!

Spiteful Seagull
After snorkeling, we were sitting down below and heard a tap-tap-tap on the hull of the boat followed by an angry squawk. A seagull had been hanging around us ever since we had arrived, creeping closer and closer, finally hovering in the water only a couple feet away, squawking like he expected a giant feast. Well, eventually he got bold (or stupid) enough to start pecking at our hull! That’s it. We tried to shoo him away to no avail. Yelling didn’t work, neither did shwacking the area near him with an oar…nothing phased him. He’d fly 50ft away for 2 minutes, then come right back. The following morning we awoke to more tapping from our ingrate expecting breakfast. Brian flew out of bed and furiously squawked back at him. Literally… squawked. Time to go.

Paradise to Purgatory
We were leaving early anyway, Mr. Seagull just made it happen sooner. The wind had picked up from the southeast during the night and we’d just about had it dealing with the wrap around swell and rolling side to side. Here is another perfect example of why you just can’t visit every anchorage in one year. Winds are always changing - one day an anchorage might be just dandy, another day it might be hell or… could be both in the same day, you never know. In this case, it degenerated from paradise into, not hell but definitely somewhere near higher purgatory, quite quickly. Even though another day of perfect snorkeling would have been awesome, the uncomfortable boat motion wasn’t worth the stay. Plus, we needed to head to Bahia Salinas to gain protection from an oncoming norther anyway. So we left our seagull friend to pester the remaining boat and hoped he wasn’t dumb enough to follow us!

May 27th

Brian’s Birthday
This morning, while waiting for the wind to pick up, I made Brian canned corned beef hash and eggs for his birthday breakfast. How this can be his favorite breakfast, one can only wonder...

Once we got under way, our sail was nothing short of frustrating.  5-6 kts of wind from the NE in the beginning gave us a good sail at 4-5kts/hr. But it’s in the wrong direction… we had to tack way off our course. Then the wind died…then it came up again…then died to 2-3 kts. Why don’t we get out the code zero? That’s what it was made for right? Immediately, I mean not 30 seconds after Brian did all the work to haul the sail on deck, get it out of the bag, hook it up, and run all the lines… the wind picked up to 8 kts and increasing. What? Mad at his wasted efforts, Brian took it back down, the code zero too light for winds over 8.

We sailed nicely for a while with the 8 kts. Then it died, again. Then it came up, flipped 180 degree within 30 seconds to the SW…still in the wrong direction for our current angle. Then it died again… then it came back up to the NE, even stronger; we were flying at 6 kts/hr. We’ll get there in an hour! Sweet! Arrgggg... as we got 2 miles from the cove the wind died yet again. So, instead of bobbing around like a toy ship, we gave up and started motoring. By the time we got settled into the anchorage it was 4pm. We left at 9:30ish. 6 hours to go 11 miles...not exactly a birthday treat. This sailing thing is aggravating.

BEE-utiful Ballandra Bay
As soon as we set the hook, bees surrounded us and invaded the cockpit. We decided not to go swimming as we didn’t want our required fresh water rinse to attract them. Plans foiled once again. Such a beautiful bay; if only I could see it. I sit here below decks, looking at the bay out the window, waiting for twilight so the bees will go back to their bee homes and sleep.

Dinner: packaged chicken fried rice with a can of chicken and some green onion, cilantro, peanut butter, rice vinegar, topped with peanuts. More birthday cake…good thing I made it yesterday!

May 28th Bee-llandra Day 2.
Today we explored the bay via yak and paddled into a small creek. It felt like we entered a miniature Jurassic Park ride. About as wide as the yak is long (10ft), the tranquil, murky creek was lined by a rocky hill and scrub trees. Near where the creek petered out, it turned into hard-packed gravel and clear water. We tied the yak to a tree root and walked a few hundred yards, but there wasn’t much to look at, just more scrub trees. Plus we had been advised not to go hiking on the island since there might be people hunting for bighorn sheep. So we didn’t.

Today we made water. We don’t need the water, but we DO need to run the watermaker every 4-5 days, regardless of whether we feel like it or not. And regardless of bees. This is a downside to having a watermaker, you become somewhat of a slave to it, having to run it at inopportune times. What are you gonna do? I need my showers.

While the watermaker ran, I started washing clothes which I hadn’t done in 2 weeks. My lifelines, now littered on both sides with wet clothes, gradually became inundated by bees. These bees here are alcoholics…and we are their enablers. As soon as any freshwater appears on deck, they slowly came out of the woodwork. “Heeeyyy, buddy, what you got there??? Can I have me some of that?”
They got pretty fat and happy sucking freshwater off my clothes drying in the sun.

Fortunately, these bees were of the lazy variety. They didn’t get agitated unless I swatted at them, so we just let them bee…. walking slowly nearby when necessary. We hid below when I was finished while the bees took over for a couple hours.

Later, we went swimming for a bit but, again, as we got closer to shore we kept hitting the little jellyfish. So we swam back to the boat and took a shower… and of course the bees helped. Cold macaroni salad for dinner.

That night was amazingly still….not a ripple could be seen.  At about 3am I felt the boat start moving up and down slightly…we were getting some chop, then the breeze kicked up.  I went out on deck to see which way we were pointing and how fast the wind really was. Eh… only 8-10kts – sometimes it feels like more after suddenly increasing, having been so quiet for hours. Up on deck, I was stunned at the breathtaking night sky…so many stars. I could see the Milky Way, streaming across the galaxy like spilled milk.  Venus and Jupiter glittered intensely, lining up with a luminous 1/2 moon. Just as I turned to go below, a shooting star winked out the corner of my eye. I blinked and it was gone.