After a night spent crossing the sea, our destination, Punta Pulpito, was sublime. Two nights. Middle of nowhere. No other boats. Flat water. Blue skies. Upon our early arrival, we spent the day snorkeling and napping (since we don’t get much sleep on an all-nighter). Waking the following morning, it was so calm I thought we were still in our San Carlos slip. Love that feeling!

Sea Fireflies
Miles from civilization and light pollution, we were enjoying the velvety black sky, glittery stars and a bug-free evening at Punta Pulpito when we looked down and saw something unusual surrounding the boat. Dozens of small, circular clouds of green phosphorescence appeared and then disappeared. At first glance, we thought they were mobius rays floating and diving causing plankton to be disturbed and illuminate. But studying the phenomenon further, we noted a glowing pea-sized ball floating to the surface. Immediately upon surfacing, it began erratically circling and zigzagging in on its track, all the while emitting a pea-sized trail of phosphorescence. Like it was peeing phosphorescent goo. Its busy-work ultimately created a 6”-12” glowing green circle that hovered for a few seconds, dissipating with the luminous ball falling back into the depths. Bizarre. And stunning.

Shrimps and cephalopods (like squid) emit glowing clouds, but I’ve since googled this phenomenon and due to their size and shape, the closest I can come up with is that it was a species of ostracod. Dubbed “sea firefly” or “marine fire flea”, I can only describe it as an organism within a translucent “shell”, like a firefly trapped in a bubble. I happen to prefer “firefly” as opposed to “flea” since imagining those things tangled in my hair snorkeling is not something I wish to dwell on. These bioluminescent fireflies arise from the sea floor at night and emit their phosphorescent mucus to a) attract a mate, or b) deter predators (shock and awe). Hey it worked for us! We were most-definitely shocked and awed. We’ve not seen such a display before or since. It seems every anchorage holds something new and wondrous.

Landing Challenged
It is a challenge to get onto land here; there seems to be no natural landing due to massive rocks lining the shore. Scraping an inflatable kayak along barnacle strewn boulders wasn’t an option. So we had to find flatish rocks on which to stand in about a foot of water, lift the kayak by its handholds and tandem-boulder-hop to shore, slipping on algae-slime while trying to avoid sliding into crevices where twisted ankles and chomping eels lurk.

After a minute, we set the ‘yak down on a flat rock while I took the paddles higher up on shore and out of our way. I turned around to head back the few feet to continue carrying. I had my hat on, my head down looking for footing… and promptly ran right into the ‘yak with my head. What the??!! 

Brian did not think to tell me he had picked up the kayak all by himself and was carrying it overhead. The brim of my hat hid his actions from my view; the dipped kayak hid my path from his view. And thus, like star-crossed lovers, or colliding asteroids, we met…Wham! I rammed its bow with my face. Pause…picture that…

OK, now for the consequence of our miscommunication... Upon my unwitting head-butt, Brian lost his footing and he and the ‘yak toppled backward into the rock-strewn water… where he miraculously regained balance on a fortuitously located boulder, juuuust barely saving himself from breaking an ankle and the kayak from damage. Quite the Laurel & Hardy scene. Whew. Let’s just say we are probably never going to shore here again.

Why DID we go to shore? Three reasons.

1. Because it’s there. Because we didn’t the last time we were here. Because I hadn’t been off the boat in 48 hours. OK, that’s technically 3 reasons right there.
2. An enormous vein of obsidian rock can be found along the point; it’s visible for several miles out to sea. So this is a great spot for finding small bits of obsidian (so-called “Apache tears” according to the guidebook) which litter the dirt track “road” out to this point. Larger, peach-pit-sized shards of the black and shiny glass rock are also easily found. I could have stayed there for hours rock-hunting.
3. I’ve stated before that Punta Pulpito means Pulpit Point because it looks like a preacher’s pulpit jutting out from its connecting low-lying land spit. I wanted to hike up to the top of that pulpit. It’s only 475ft high. What’s the problem?

The Pulpito Death March.
Why do you want to go up THERE?  It’s not like you ever want to climb Kilimanjaro or anything?
He’s right, I’m not one to climb actual mountains. But just because this looks like a mountain, you can’t equate this teeny hike with Kilimanjaro. I mean, come on. But I do like a hike with a purpose, and the view from the top of that thing looks awesome. SO we’re going.

You’ve just heard the saga about getting to shore - so we’ve already started out on a low note. And it gets worse from there…we go the wrong way. I should know by now to start from the lowest lying base of the hill and hike the ridge all the way up. Instead, I start from the middle. The valley leading up to the ridge doesn’t look all that steep. Except when we finally get to the point where we need to scale the hillside, it’s near impossible to climb. Actually… not near-impossible. Just. Impossible.

The rocky hillside is one big potential landslide. Akin to hiking a sand dune, one step up equaled only a quarter-step gained. Scattered shale and sharp broken bits of rock slid down at each step up, enveloping our feet in a half foot of debris. Outcroppings that appeared as safe footholds instantly gave way under our weight. Our Keen hiking sandals were no match for the constant rock shards that tumbled into our shoes, ground under our soles and wedged between our toes. Ouch! Scrambling up at a faster rate only made things worse.

But the ridge is only just right there! We try to crawl up another shorter-looking slope to no avail. The gravel invading our sandals is shredding our feet; we remove our shoes and dump a pound of pebbles every few minutes. On top of the rock slides, we are over-heating in the severe sun. We are both panting and wavering in the heat. Brian has already guzzled down his water and mine is mostly gone. We decide to call it quits only half-way up…and begin the slide down.

Someday …I’ll get up there…when Brian’s memory fades about my head-butting-kayak incident and this hike from hell. I did get a couple good pictures from half-way up though!​

The morning after our bumpy bash, we started out towards our next intended anchorage, Punta Pulpito. Our original goal was to stay out another week and then cross to San Carlos. But the weather forecast today and tomorrow looked good for doing an overnighter; the next few days after that (when we wanted to do our crossing) indicated more high winds and accompanying miserable seas. Ugh.

Not Your Normal Jump
Punta Mangles is not the normal “jumping off point” for a crossing to San Carlos. The direction from here to there is due north - we’d be heading right into the prevailing wind and waves. If you saw the video from my last post of us bashing into short-period waves, imagine doing that for 24-hours straight. NOT fun. So, most people cross the sea from farther north to get a better angle and a better likelihood of sailing instead of motoring. But, you STILL have to travel 60 miles north-northwest along the coast just to GET far north enough to cross at that better angle. It would take us two days to travel those 60 miles further (one short day, one long), then we’d cross the sea in a 75-mile overnighter just like last year; as opposed to a 100-mile single shot from Punta Mangles…less miles and days spent overall, but more potential of being caught in unpredictable seas during this longer passage.

Switching Angles
In the end, a decent enough weather window overrides everything. Our angle to destination would probably require motoring the entire 100 miles (Brian HATES motoring). Despite this fact…I’m just going to go on record…Brian was the one to suggest this strategy! Once we made the decision, we switched our angle and headed across the sea to San Carlos, 100 miles away.

Switching Mindsets
To date, we have completed 8 “passages” - this will be the 9th. A passage, in my mind anyway, is anything that involves sailing/motoring continuously for one or more complete overnights...dusk ‘til dawn. Including our initial Baja Ha Ha rally from San Diego to Cabo, over the past two seasons we have completed the following passages: 3 straight nights at sea, 2 nights, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 and 2. An overnighter is no longer this scary monster requiring self-induced panic a week in advance. This time, I easily switched my mindset from anchoring in a few hours to an all-night crossing and I was OK with it…pretty good (for me).

Prepping Dinner in the Morning
As soon as we angled away from land, I went below to make dinner… in the morning! I happened to have leftover cooked quinoa… so I cut up some veges and cheese (of course), threw in a tuna packet, mixed a salad dressing and threw it back in the fridge. Anxious about a repeat of yesterday’s severely choppy, mid-morning bash, I felt the need to prepare dinner now, during morning’s flat water. It paid off later… big time.

Standard Sea Lunch
The crossing started out fine, but late morning again brought increasing wind and waves. Not quite as bad as the day prior at 20+knots, the reduced 15-17 knots sustained rather uncomfortable seas for much of the day until well after sunset. The sea state was bouncy enough that going below to fix lunch was not high on my to-do list. So I reverted to our “standard salami sea lunch”.

In the gallery beneath this post is a photo of our typical “I don’t want to go below” lunch…pre-sliced, pre-packaged salami (easily obtainable at any Mexican grocery store), cheese (duh) and Saltines (you can find them everywhere in Mexico, it HAS to be this country’s official cracker). Maybe I add an apple or some carrots and peanut butter, if you’re lucky. This is my go-to lunch when we don’t feel like eating much and, more importantly, when I don’t want to be downstairs preparing food in a jolting galley.

I can quickly grab my cracker bin, haul the salami package and a cheese wheel out of the fridge (pre-positioned and easy to access), add a knife (with blade sleeve) and cutting mat, and bring it all in the cockpit in just a couple minutes. Right there on the seat, I leisurely slice & dice, using the cutting mat as our plate. We eat this lunch so often (I don’t think it’s THAT often) that Brian has declared we are not allowed to eat Saltines or salami in the RV for the entire summer. Booo. He can’t ban cheese though…he knows better.

Dark Skies
After our tuna-quinoa dinner at sunset, the seas calmed considerably, eventually smoothing out to a sheen during the night. Whew! Flat seas always evoke a great sigh of relief. While we had no moon by which to steer, millions of diamond-stars glittered in the dark sky. It took me a while to realize that the massive transparent cloud looming overhead was actually the Milky Way. What a beautiful sight!

A moonless passage in the Sea allows for an unparalleled view of the night sky. Other than a barely-perceptible glow from Guaymas and one other town, there is zero light pollution. Gliding along, we literally witness the circulation of the earth and the passage of time as one constellation dips below the horizon and another pops to the surface. The weather in the Sea of Cortez is usually so crystal clear that I’m often perplexed when a new, bright star comes into view at the horizon line: is it a star or a ship? I keep an eye on it to make sure it continually rises higher, not brighter/closer. Of course…there’s a cool app for that too. Sky Guide

Mysterious Sea Creatures
OK, so I am on watch at around 3am, Brian is sleeping below. It’s flat calm and completely dark except for the glowing stars overhead. Suddenly, I see a huge shape stream UNDER the boat. Yes, UNDER. How can I see said shape, it’s pitch black out? (Brian: Yeah, you’re blind as a bat, you see bugs and spiders and all sorts of things that aren’t there due to your eye-floaters, no WAY you saw anything in the water.)

Well, I wasn’t sure I did either. It appeared as a gigantic blob of faintly illuminated smoke streaming fast perpendicular under the boat. A lighter blue/black just discernible enough amid the murky water but nothing broke the surface. It must be a phosphorescence trail of something, but what? I neither saw nor heard dolphins swimming nearby, plus it was way too big for that. The shadow was as long as our 34ft boat, but only about half as wide, maybe 5ft. The first thing I thought of was a cloud of pee, ‘cause, well, that’s what it looked like! Did a whale emit this as it swum beneath us? I know I’m stretching. It would have dissipated and hung around, plus there was no smell (I assume it smells?). Maybe a tightly packed school of fish streaming phosphorescence? But it was so uniform in shade, it had to be one object. Maybe it was a small whale?

I waited and kept looking and looking…and it happened again, this time running parallel to the boat! So happy it was NOT my imagination! But now I am paranoid and alert and standing up on the seat leaning against the dodger to get a higher view of the surface. I saw these sea monsters a couple more times and finally slowed the boat slightly, afraid I’d run into whatever they were. A little bit later, Brian came up on deck and I reported my sighting. Totally did not believe me! I went below to take a nap and he saw nothing during his watch. Of COURSE!

“Once again we have defied death and made it to safe harbor” – Michael :)
Well, we didn’t hit any whales… I never figured out what those watery ghosts were… we didn’t have to bash into choppy waves the entire way… and we even got to sail for about 3 hours in the wee morning hours. I’d call that a successful passage!

As the sun rose, Indigo pulled into an anchorage just 6 miles north of the marina and all of us quickly fell asleep. After our nap, we took the kayak to an early lunch at Bonifacio’s on the beautiful sandy beach of Playa Algodones to celebrate our victory. The next morning, we headed into Marina San Carlos to begin the tedious process of getting the boat ready to leave on the hard for the summer. The fun’s over…now the work begins!

Sometimes the Sea just kicks your butt a little, just to remind you who’s boss.

Leaving Puerto Escondido, we headed north to Isla Coronados on March 31st. Highish winds were in the forecast again, this time 3 days worth. Rather than waiting it out in Puerto Escondido, we felt that we needed to get a leg up the coast and headed to the island the day prior to the winds. Had there been a forecast for 30 knots, we’d have stayed put, but only 20kts were scheduled. We can handle that at anchor as long as it’s blowing in the right direction. We would wait out the incoming weather and be ready to sail north the instant it passed.

“I love it when a plan comes together” (cue A-Team theme song)
The waiting part worked as planned. For 3 nights we parked the boat at the south anchorage on Isla Coronados and waited contentedly for the perfectly predicted wind to blow itself out. This is a truly beautiful spot. Most of the anchorage is 15-20ft deep with lovely, clear waters over a sand bottom attached to a reefy/rocky/shelly beach. We were here last year and find it one of the more easy places to set anchor since it is wide open with no rocks to avoid. Like Bonanza or Timbabiche, we could anchor here in the dark if needed. While we were plenty comfortable on the boat, we did not venture to shore…too windy (I’m sensing a theme here). But we were visited by more dolphins and rays and ducks, so we were never bored.

Heading North
On April 3rd, we decided to leave and head north. Winds today were supposed to be light in the morning with no more than 10 knots in the afternoon. Our original plan (as of 3 days ago) was to stop 15 miles north at Punta Mangles (Mangrove Point), having never been there. But the wind would be coming from the northeast today and we felt the small land mass creating the shallow L-shaped bay would not give enough protection for this direction. So as of this morning, after looking at the weather, our new plan was to travel to San Juanico, 8 miles farther for a (supposedly) easy 23 mile sail. Plans change. Every second.

Sea Lesson #1: Don’t Cut Corners
After raising anchor, we travelled west and I hugged the shallow southern coastline of the island too close. There is a long spit of sand that juts out from the end of Isla Coronados to the southwest. The spit continues underwater as a narrow sand bar for several hundred feet and is actually pretty visible when the water is dead calm (it wasn’t today). It is also precisely delineated on our IPad charting software, Navionics. I KNEW this, had the IPad in hand, but was paying too much attention to our chartplotter, which does NOT show the spit.

I thought I was fine, until I wasn’t. I cut the shallow area too close. OK, I ran it over. Our depth sounder instantly went from 20ft to 8. Stomach meet throat. Brian nearly had a heart-attack. Luckily, it was only for an instant as I ran over the last little tip of it, the boat never touched bottom. Close call. But I should have been more careful and maneuvered farther away instead of cutting my line towards the channel so close just to save a little distance.

After that sketchy beginning to our day, things got worse…

We got an early start because the winds had been picking up rather early in the morning and calming down in the evening. We wanted to get a jump on our day heading up to San Juanico, 23 miles away. I am always suspicious about travelling the narrow channel between the Baja Peninsula and Isla Coronados. This channel forms a deep drop-off shelf diving from 40ft down to 900ft in the time you can say “Oh Crap”. Every time we go through it, I worry whether there will be some weird tidal surge or wacky wave pattern. We got neither. Light winds and no swell. Whew, easy peasy all the way to SJ, right?

Sea Lesson #2: The Sea Can Kick your Butt Whenever it Wants
About 8am everything was perfectly normal. Having passed through the channel without event, we were motoring due north and the light wind was coming from… due north. Standard. No point in sailing. Then, at 9am the wind picked up to 15-knots. Hmmm, this is new, a little early for so much wind, and not forecast. We had slowed considerably due to the massive current that always seems to flow in this area. Our typical 5-knots turned into 3.5 knots.

Whitecaps Dead Ahead
At 10am I saw a distinct line of whitecaps ahead, as far as I could see. Here’s my “Oh, Crap” moment. No getting around it, as soon as we entered the zone things degenerated quickly. This unpredicted 20-knots proceeded to kick us in the rear.

Suddenly, we were bashing. 4-5ft waves at 2-3 seconds. Slam and slam and slam and slam. As fast as you are reading that, that’s as fast as the boat catapulted up and down. Our bow crashed into each oncoming wall, slicing it clean in two. This is the great thing about Indigo, she slices and dices quite masterfully and we rarely have breaking waves over the bow come crashing onto the deck.

Hobby-Horsing Around
However, because we are on the small side, I think we feel these close-together waves a little more acutely than longer boats. They call it “hobby-horsing” as the boat pitches forward and aft just like a wooden toy horse. Don’t bother going below in seas like this, it’s unthinkable. No lunch today.
The longer we were out in this crap the more worried I became. Not only were we going directly into the wind and waves, and against an already strong current, each successive wave slammed us slower, and the big ones would cause us to stop almost completely. Our knot-meter showed us driving at 2 to 2.5kts average and very often slowing to 0.8 after hitting a wall of water! We’re going to get there… at midnight?

Bashing Buffalos
We tried motor-sailing out to sea for a while just to get away from the coast; maybe it would be better farther out. It probably would have been, eventually, but the crashing and the slamming and the pitching kept getting worse. To distract myself, I tried to take a video, just to see if it could capture the sheer angles in which we were being thrown about and Indigo plunging into these nasty short-period waves. The mere act of holding onto our pitching home one-handed while filming was a challenge. THIS is what it was like to be bashing headlong into buffaloes. And I didn’t like it, not one bit.

It’s actually pretty amazing that such a small amount of wind can create such a mess. We do everything we can to avoid sailing in 20 or more knots of wind, but sometimes you just can’t beat Mother Nature. Many west coast sailors think we’re wimps for avoiding 20-knots. But 20-knots here in the Sea of Cortez is a far different animal than 20-knots off the coast of San Diego, heading out for a day-sail or racing off the coast of San Fran. We spoke to one San Franciscan couple who purposefully crossed the Sea in 20-knots of wind thinking it would be just like back home – a piece of cake; for 24-hours they bashed in waves worse than this (accumulated waves are worse and higher) – a humbling experience, they said they’d never do it again.

Gimme Shelter
We decided to forego San Juanico and instead turned inland again heading for Mangles (our original, original destination). We were hoping for some shelter, ANY shelter at this point. We could see it. It was right there. But still 7 miles away. Arggh. SO close, yet SO far. Luckily, our sail angle towards this new destination was much better and we gained some more speed, making it to the anchorage in a couple hours. Whew. Now, we can relax, right? Right?

The Sea is not done with me yet…

Sea Lesson #3: Fun with Wind and Anchoring
The high NE wind waves had thankfully abated inside Punta Mangles anchorage. We weren’t sure they would, we were really only crossing our fingers that we’d be better off in here than out there. Luckily, the far point provided just enough protection from the onslaught. Thank God. But the wind was still howling through the valley and across the short stretch between us and land making anchoring super-fun.

Speeding up Backwards
We motored around the small space, avoiding rocks and sea-grass areas. When we finally picked a spot, I tried to head forward into the windy frontal assault, putting the boat into neutral with the goal to slow us to less than 0.5kt before we get to the spot where we want to drop the anchor, like normal. Problem was… I sped up…backwards… and to the left.

As soon as I slowed even a little, the force of the wind blowing right at the nose of the boat caused our bow to immediately fall off the wind. Whoosh. Phooey. Now I’m essentially pointing 45-degrees to the left of where we want to be and being shoved back out to sea. With no steerage even at low RPM, I gun the engine and make another attempt.

Hand Signals Save our Sanity
Let me interject something here: I think after 2 seasons we have gotten pretty darn good at anchoring. We can even do it in the dark with minimal stress (turning our spreader lights on so I can see Brian at the bow). We use hand signals for forward, reverse, speed up, speed up more, stop, neutral, what’s our depth, etc. Aside from me shouting depths as we do circles like a dog before we decide where to plop, these signals save our marriage.

Shouting Match
Why? Because we’re not yelling at each other the entire time. When one person is on the bow and the other in the cockpit 20ft away, you have to shout so the other person can hear. When it’s windy often you have to yell things twice. And when there are other boats around it just sounds really terrible….

”Go forward! Keep coming! Left! More left! Left, left, left!!! Now right! Straighten out. OK, Slow! Slower! Slow DOWN! What’s our depth? What? DEPTH! 20ft! How about now? 17ft! Are we stopped? What? ARE WE STOPPED? Yes, Drop it! (Drop chain) Hit the anchor watch button! (I go hit the button, we wait for the anchor to catch and boat to swing) OK, reverse! More RPM. More! OK, Neutral!”  
Whew. I get all anxious just writing that exchange.

Now double that abbreviated conversation/shouting match for any normal day and quadruple it for windy days. And as women we don’t always differentiate between shouting to be heard or shouting from frustration. OK, maybe it’s just me. Shouting is shouting and doesn’t set so well afterward. So signals save sanity. 95% of the time.

…Back on the Boat
SO right about now Brian is frantically pointing to the right like a madman (telling me he wants me to go right) and the boat (because I can’t control it) is going left. Because there is no hand signal for “Hey, where u going?!”, Brian shouts it over the cacophony and throws his hands in the air like WTF? Like I was trying to do another silly circle. I couldn’t keep the bow pointed into the wind. Each time I motored up to my spot and slowed, the wind slapped me to the side, like it was annoyed at me for even trying. Good thing we were alone with no other boats to witness this clown show.

Ever motor at 3.5 knots in order to set anchor?
Frustrated, I finally realized (without any help, thank you very much) that I had to motor into the wind at a full 1500rpm JUST to keep the boat going at a half a knot and to keep the bow from being pushed to either side. In no wind 1500rpm means we are moving ahead at about 3.5 knots. That’s how hard I had to gun the engine to keep us from ‘falling off the wind’. Yet another lesson from the Sea of Cortez.

We didn’t go to shore… again, (4th day in a row, almost a record). Normally I would have been anxious to get off the boat, especially because this place looked pretty cool to explore. But I didn’t care at this point. We were exhausted from the day’s events: almost hitting a sand bar, then getting caught in an unpredicted bash and then my anchoring fiasco.

Can I be done with the lessons for one day? Dammit!