Isla Coronados south anchorage is one of our favorites. Boasting crystal clear turquoise water, 15-20ft deep above perfect white sand, its nightly sunset spectacle is reason enough to stay another day. It provides good protection from north winds and decent blockage from occasional southern swell due to large Isla Carmen 10 miles to the south. At over a mile wide, it could probably fit an aircraft carrier. So anchoring is never a problem. During our four-day stint, we enjoyed the company of only 1-3 other anchored boats at any given time. Ahhh. Time to lay down the hook and relax.

What do we do for 4 days?
Well, each morning we listen to the weather radio net at 7:30am. We then eat breakfast and contemplate if we should stay or continue on to another anchorage. Eh…it’s nice here. Let’s stay another day. So we relax and read books and type blogs. On any given day we might kayak, or snorkel, or swim, or go to shore to look for shells (OK I look for shells, Brian just tags along). Throw in time for making lunch and dinner. And, as long as it has been sunny all day and our batteries are charged sufficiently, we can watch one TV show at night. Tonight’s showing? The Shield.

Cellular Servicio
Coronados also provides excellent cell phone service! The first we’ve had in several days…so we take advantage and notify our families we are still alive. Isla Coronados is a mere 6 miles east of Loreto and in direct view of a cell phone tower. My T-Mobile cell phone coverage is better on a deserted, desert island, mid-Mexico than pretty much everywhere mid-Michigan. Figures.

No Volcano Hike
I have always wanted to go up to the top of the volcano that is Isla Coronados. But, apparently it’s a fairly strenuous 4-hour hike under the best circumstances. After our botched Punta Pulpito summit, I thought it best NOT to insist we go on yet another Death March. Me: Too soon? Brian: Yah. The following day we talked to our boat neighbor who just tackled the volcano and confirmed the 4-hr time length; they ALSO encountered a rattlesnake on the trail. Hmmm. Maybe I don’t want to go up that volcano anyway…how about we just do some easy inland hiking?

No Hiking, Period
A well-defined trail, sand paths lined with volcanic rocks, stretch along the south spit leading over to the opposite north beach. Our kayak landing showed no sign of a trail link nearby; we hadn’t dinghied far enough west to find the connection. Strike one. So Brian scrambled up the short but steep embankment to search out a trail, but he quickly came back down. The area was strewn with tough scrub and spider webs. Strike two. AND he saw a spider so big even HE didn’t want to remain up there poking around. Those who know me know my planned hike was immediately and irrevocably cancelled!! Strike three! I’m OUT.

Reef Fish
Snorkeling the southeastern island point proved a nice day’s diversion. We found an easily negotiated kayak landing (now very important). And while we’ve never experienced any bothersome current from tide in the anchorage itself, it comes into play here at the point where all the water rushes along the east side of the island. So we stayed well west of the actual point and floated along nice and easy. Oh, and the water was an absolute perfect 80 degrees. Just to rub it in a little more to those of you living in snow right about now. :)

While the fish were often very small, we witnessed a good variety. After having decent internet connection, I was finally able to identify and sear into my brain many of the colorful and common reef fish we see so often: Yellow Surgeonfish, King Angelfish, Triggerfish, Panamic Sargent Major, Grey Bar Grunt, Cortez Damselfish, Cortez Rainbow Wrasse, Reef Cornetfish, Balloonfish, Pufferfish. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. It is hard to believe that over 900 species of fish ply the warm waters of the Sea of Cortez, the vast majority of which we will never see due to our inshore snorkeling constraints. And that’s fine by me. I have no desire to swim with those Hammerheads or Orcas in person… I’ll stick to my cute and harmless little reef fishies! ​

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!​

It’s the final day of prep for our 3rd season in the Sea of Cortez. Last step? Put the truck in a gated storage lot. Now, we’re all set to get out of dodge. But, without that easily-taken-for-granted means of transportation, our mindset is still consumed with its necessity.

The day before leaving, sans truck: “You wanna go to Hammerheads for iced tea?” “But, we’d have to waaaalk… it’s sooo far… and it’s sooo hooooooot”. “But they’ve got air conditioning.” “But I’d still have to walk in the heat to get AT the air conditioning.” It’s amazing how quickly not having a car affects your basic decision-making process on everything. We went… for you dear reader… just so I could upload that bottom-paint blog.

So, are we ready?
There are 4 areas of preparation we are constantly contemplating before any overnight crossing.

1. Is the boat ready? Have we done everything we can to make sure she is safe? Namely, engine maintenance: change oil, change impeller, check or change coolant, run engine at the dock, make sure she sounds OK and looks OK. Check for leaks. Check that solar panels, fridge, navionics and radios work, etc.
2. Is the weather ready? We read various weather documents and look for a window of 48 hours with less than 10-12knots. We prefer a mixture of minimal wind and some wind, so the seas don’t have a chance to build over time. (Preferably NO wind for me equaling flat seas, but Brian wants to actually SAIL this time…pooey.) Why 48 hours when we’ll only be doing a 24 hour trip?  In case we get stuck out there and have to fix something, we don’t need the added pressure to get to safe harbor with high winds bearing down the following day.
3. Are the pre-passage peripherals ready? Do we have all the food we need? Water tanks filled? Extra bottled water in case of emergency? Fuel jugs filled? Is everything on the boat in its proper place for sailing: jacklines out (lines run on deck that we clip to at night so we don’t fall off accidentally), lifejackets ready, pre-prepped cold salad for dinner (so I don’t have to use the stove), fridge arranged to quickly access needed items in case of high seas, route charted on chartplotter, put up leecloths (to keep us from falling on the floor when heeled over & sleeping), cool weather gear and blankets out (so we don’t have to go digging in the middle of the night for a jacket)? Kayak folded and stowed below? Dinghy tied down on top? Are we checked out of the marina? Is the blog uploaded ? J
4. Are WE ready? Mentally and physically? Does either of us feel sick or run down? If so, we don’t go. Prepping to leave on a big journey, especially one of several days at sea like the Baja Ha Ha Event, is highly stressful. It can cause frayed nerves and bickering in even the most adoring lovebirds. This is normal. There are a thousand things to do to prepare and a million things you can worry about; everyone is stressed.

But this time, miraculously, we are not stressed. Partly because we took our time getting the boat ready and we aren’t rushing around like crazy idiots trying to finish chores; partly because it’s our 15th night at sea so our comfort level is much higher - one overnight is now not such a big deal; and partly because we are just ready to get off the dock. While we don’t necessarily enjoy all of the aspects of night sailing, it’s a necessity to get to the good stuff. Like enduring LA traffic to get to Disneyland. Or the ½ hour wait for an In-and-Out burger.

The boat was prepared, and more importantly, we were prepared, mentally, for an overnight crossing. We felt great, we were super excited to be heading back out into the Sea once more. We were rarin’ to go.

Indigo had other ideas…
Bound for Punta Pulpito, 95 miles across the Sea of Cortez, we let loose the lines and quitted our cozy crib at Marina San Carlos at 9am, Oct. 30th.

At 9:15, we are in the San Carlos inner bay. While I steer us out of the bay, Brian checks the engine, as he always does, to be sure it is running fine after it warms up so we can push it to full throttle. He checks for excessive heat on the prop shaft with an infrared thermometer, as he has just tightened the leaky packing gland a few days ago. Then he checks the bilge, as we always do, to make sure we aren’t sinking. Except we ARE.

Abnormal Bilge Water
There is about 2 inches of water in the bilge. What? This NEVER happens. While some boats seem to have a propensity for constant water in the bilge, Indigo has ALWAYS been darn-near bone-dry in the slip; and we accumulate merely a thin coating of water if we’ve sailed all day. 2” of water in the bilge after only 15 minutes of motoring is a striking anomaly. It’s not the shaft packing gland, Brian fixed that the week prior and it is putting out only a minimal (and normal) drop or two. Maybe it’s that through-hull connector he had tightened and sealed, but no, it was fine too. This was a NEW leak…a slowish leak, but more than we’re comfortable with. Frickin’ boats and their holes.

So we motor into the outer bay, away from all the fishing boat and panga traffic, to shut down the engine and assess. Luckily, there is no wind and the seas are not rambunctious.

Rudder Post Packing Gland Leak
At 9:45am, with our motor still burning hot, Brian cramps himself down inside the engine room for a look-see, trying not to scald himself on the engine elbow. This NEW leak was coming from the packing gland where the rudder post attaches up into the boat. To be crass, if Indigo had a rear-end, this would be it; and her rear-end was leaking. Brian thinks the post ultimately needs new packing material (which we do not have and could not switch out at sea anyway). He could try and tighten the bolts as a temporary fix but access is nearly impossible and may not help. We contemplate.

Return or Go?
Should we return to the dock? While San Carlos is usually devoid of special boat parts, at least we will have the truck to go to the states and pick something up. On the other hand, we know we can get the stuffing we need in La Paz. But, if we keep going the way it is, will the bilge pump be able to keep up? Will it get worse? We have a very heavy duty manual pump that can suck out 1 gallon in a single pump, but we don’t want to use THAT if we don’t have to.

Mr. Fix-It
Before we make any decision, Brian tries to fix it himself, or at least minimize the water flow by tightening 3 bolts at the steering column. Well, no big deal, right? Just tighten 3 wittle bolty woltys. Easy, peasy, summer breezy! Nope. The problem lies in WHERE those 3 bolts are located. Time for some Engine Room Hot Yoga! “Hot Yoga” is actually a thing if you haven’t heard of it…yoga class purposefully done in a superheated room (up to 105 degrees), to induce maximum sweat equity and flexibility. No need to pay that instructor, I got your hot yoga right here.

New Yoga Position: Crouching Dragon.
Because he is trying to reach the verrrry far, far back of the boat, under the steering column, where no normal human should ever be forced to go…he must contort himself into an entirely new yoga position. I call it the Crouching Dragon because he looks like a dragon squatting at an angle, ready for take off… and because he is so hot he is practically breathing fire.

You Too Can Do the Crouching Dragon
Stand in engine room (about 1-1/2ft square), bend over to hangman placing your arms inside, slight crouch ‘til your butt hits the engine…dip your head down like you’re going under the bridge (under the hatch). Keep your back arched and your butt in the air because there’s just no room for it yet and it can’t touch the hot engine. Then, feet remaining still, crawl up on elbows at an angle into the bowels of the tiny space and slowly lower your butt into a 45degree-angled, fetal position crouch (except you're standing on tippy toes). With your head scraping the fiberglass above, booty abutting a hot engine, arms wedged in a triangle… desperately reach for those bolts in the vanishing V-space of Indigo’s rear. That’s it. Now hold. Keep holding...
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Do this in a stifling space the size of a mid-size moving box…with a scalding, hot engine….in humid, 94 degree weather… in a rocking and rolling boat. 

Good Thing He’s Not Claustrophobic
Once he was in there, he wasn’t getting out until he was finished. He could barely move. There have been cases of people getting stuck in their boats – arms, legs or spines not bending the right way to get back out. Talk about claustrophobia-inducing. If he wasn’t thinking this at the moment, I was.

Wake!
Knee-deep in his jail cell, I noticed a jerk powerboat zooming towards us, purposefully too close. (Why do powerboaters LOVE tormenting sailboats with wake-inducing drive-by's?) So I steered perpendicular to his inevitable wake to omit side-to-side motion. Because Brian could see nothing, I grabbed him by the back of his shorts and told him to hold on (so he didn’t lose his grip and fall against fragile or hot engine parts). Insert smattering of expletives here. In this tiny space, with the boat pitching for a half a minute…how he didn’t puke, I’ll never know.

Hotbox
I was mildly nervous, trying to be super-fast at finding tools. Not because we were sinking…it was a slowish leak… but because Brian was sweating like a banshee (if banshees sweated) and looked like he was about to pass out any second. At one point, he thought there was another leak – no, it’s just massive amounts of sweat pouring on top of engine parts from his poor, battered body sweltering in this triangle torture chamber… like those hotboxes used in the Vietnam war.

Can't Get a Grip
He couldn’t get a good angle or grip on the packing gland bolts, trying a variety of wrenches, sockets, and vice-clamps…sweaty hands and limited to zero mobility and visibility didn’t help. It took forever to adjust. Forever in a hotbox seems like an eternity. Funny thing was, there wasn’t much swearing involved on this project, other than the powerboat wake incident. He was too focused on getting the job done and getting the hell out of there to become irate. After 45 minutes in this horrible position, he tightened those bolts as much as was humanly possible and wrenched himself unstuck and into the open air where he sucked down a bottle of Gatorade in 2 seconds flat. All this for 3 bolts.

No Record of the Crouching Dragon
I did not take a picture of this awkward position… sometimes there is room for decorum, even by my standards. I mean, after reading this, don’t you feel bad for him? This was a semi-serious situation and I wasn’t going to make light of it by snapping a pic when he’s in the middle of a crucial problem, just for your benefit. Now, that’s not to say I didn’t THINK about it. But… I refrained…for morale’s sake. And I highly doubt I could goad him into performing a reenaction scene just for our curiosity.

The Chuck Norris of Engine Yoga
Today, Brian was to this problem what Chuck Norris is to any bad guy who crosses his path – he punched it right in the face and kept on walking. Bam! Brian stopped the leak and we continued on with our journey. We’ll buy new packing material and redo it in La Paz. Wait, does that mean he has to get up in there again? Shhh. Don’t remind him.

A Benign Crossing
While delayed by a couple hours, the crossing itself went off without a hitch. Although we had no moon, the stars were out in droves so we could discern a faint horizon. We started out with no wind, but by 1pm we had a perfect 9-knots and sailed with minimal effort and no wave action until 10pm. Then the wind picked up to 14-16 knots for a couple hours, but settled itself back down to 8-10 knots until pre-dawn. And while we got some lumpy waves afterwards and a banging boom for a couple hours, we can’t complain. Our bilge water level was back to normal due to Brian’s hotbox fix. And we sailed nearly the entire way, only using 3 engine hours of 24! Guess who was ecstatic!

Today is haul-out day! After two weeks of solid work, we are more than ready. A 9am appointment is the perfect time slot. No one ahead of us means we can motor over to the ramp at 8am, check in with the marina, have breakfast at Barracuda Bob’s and wait for the yard guys to show up. No rush.

The guys came right on time, but for some reason thought we had our own trailer (lots of smaller, trailerable boats here). So they had to go back and get the boat-lift. By 9:20, a tractor pushing a long, low-bed trailer sprouting hydraulic jack-stands came rumbling down the road to the launch ramp. Three handlers warped our boat along the quay, pushing and pulling and dragging Indigo up to the edge of the trailer, finally sliding her keel into the V-slot.

Tilted House
Indigo has always been hauled out using a Travel-Lift: a hulking, 4-legged, metal creature on wheels that uses two slings slid under the keel, lifting a boat up and out of the water. This is the first time we have been to a marina that used a boat ramp trailer – it made me a bit jumpy.

As the tractor rolled away dragging Indigo out of the water, up, up, up the boat-ramp, her bow lifted up out of the water at an awkward angle. In my mind…it’s a terrible, unnatural angle. I imagined her suddenly slipping backwards and hurtling back into the water, hitting her keel on the shallow bottom, sharply twisting over to the side, careening, shrouds snapping, the mast cartwheeling into the water... This moment was terrifying, I could barely breathe, my chest hurt, tears began to roll… like a parent watching their child plunging off the high dive for the first time. This is my house and my house is severely tilted. A house should never be tilted. Not like we haven’t been angled upward that much on a wave crest…still. You just don’t want to see that. Period.

Rollin’ Down the Highway
But after a few seconds, Indigo leveled out and continued to roll out of the water and on down the road. Whew…I started breathing again. My moment of panic subsided (I was not the only one panicking) and we walked behind her, following our baby.

Pickup Ride
After walking a few hundred yards, the tractor driver noticed us and indicated we should climb into the pickup bed of the leader vehicle. Wheeeee! Riding in a pickup bed! Like we used to do as kids… before multitudes of safety-conscious bans overtook our country. One of the best things about Mexico is their lack of laws. Why can't we just use common sense and evaluate our own risk? Pick-up bed + quiet road + 5mph + 10 minutes… pretty sure we’ll be OK.

Marina Seca
A half mile down the road is the Marina Seca (translated as “Dry Marina”). Our storage facility for the summer, it consists of two separate gated areas: the work yard and the storage yard. Any work on your boat must be done at the work yard; once your boat is hauled over to the storage yard you have just a few minutes to check on it but then you must leave. No one but Marina workers and recognized monthly maintenance guys are allowed in the storage yard.  This keeps out the riff-raff and prevents theft.

4 Hours in the Yard is Enough
We hoped to spend as little time in the yard as possible. Finishing touches included: tying down the sun cover tarps, finish securing the caprail cover, run fresh water through engine, close all thru-hulls, plug drain/vent holes with Scotchbrite pads (discouraging insects from taking up residence while allowing drainage/airflow), place mice & roach bait cups, double & triple check that we’d done everything on our list.

I spent two hours waxing the hull while Brian worked elsewhere. I did half the job from the ground, intending to use the ladder for the unreachable areas. But the rental ladder was the tall, non-adjustable, lean-to type; it rested up against the flexible lifelines and was too unstable. So, we gave up on the idea of finishing that one last project.

The other problem was, after being in the yard for only 4 hours in 90-degree heat, we were on the verge of exhaustion. The angle of the blazing San Carlos sun must be different in April. I have been severely burned once in the last 2 weeks (the gross, oozy-blistery-bubbly kind) and on the verge again today – I’d never been sunburned in Mexico prior. So coupled with the sun and the working and the climbing up and down a 20ft ladder all day, I was glad we hadn’t planned on taking the bus to Phoenix that same night. We were DONE.

Good-Bye and Good-Night
After waving goodbye to Indigo, hauled off to her final resting place for 6 months, we walked to the Marinaterra Hotel, a ½ mile away, lugging all our baggage (3 small bags and a laptop). We washed away all the unavoidable boatyard grime and watched TV for the rest of the evening sprawled out in a bed wider than our entire boat! But the monstrous lumpy mattress felt like cardboard (already missing my boat bed), voices of cackling children rang through the adjacent walls and the tiled hallway outside echoed every single footfall and murmur. Still, we slept like rocks, grateful there was no loud wedding mariachi band on the terrace that night.

Delaying the Inevitable
In the morning, we awoke from a dead sleep to the pleasant sounds of scraping furniture in the room above. Now we were awake, but we couldn’t move – everything hurt, down to the marrow in my bones and inside my veins, especially my wrists (wax on, wax off). Not to mention the near-sunburn. Brian made coffee and we just sat in bed watching TV until noon checkout time. We were loath to even step outside… not for breakfast, not for a lovely morning dip in the pool… quite the opposite of a “romantic hotel getaway”. We just wanted to hole up inside our little cocoon and not move a muscle until we were kicked out. The front desk called at 11:50 to “remind” us to leave. Believe me, I didn’t need reminding. I could have slept another 24 hours.

Waiting…and Waiting… and Waiting
Once booted from the hotel, we were homeless. Our next 2-1/2 hours were spent lingering over a long lunch (with our luggage) at Shots restaurant. In order to spread the love, we moved our butts a block away to Hammerheads (along with our luggage), lounging another 2-1/2hrs over beer and iced tea. At 5pm, our new friend from S/V Leaway arrived and we drove to Guaymas for yet another 2 hour restaurant layover! After dinner, Jim dropped us off at the Tufesa bus station at 7pm (thanks Jim!). Our bus was scheduled for 8:30pm…so we waited some more! Finally, after an entire day of loitering in various locations, we got on the bus and made a run for the border. Another 10 hours and we were back in the good ‘ole USA once again!

After 6 months of play, it’s time for 2 weeks of hard work. I know. We can’t complain… that’s not a bad ratio. This summer we have opted to take Indigo out of the water for the hurricane season. We learned the hard way last year… no one wants to live locked-away in an air-conditioned hovel in the stupid hotness of a San Carlos summer. We could be doing better things with our time. But why leave so early? Hurricane season doesn’t start ‘til June 1st, right? Well, Nov.-April is 6 months, and we didn’t go back home to extend our visas… simple as that.

Hauling Out
Our haul-out date was scheduled for Friday, April 22nd. We have hauled out many times, but we always had a house and a car to ferry back the stuff we were storing (sails, cushions, etc.). We could work at our own pace and then go home to sleep and eat in a serene, uncluttered, civilized space. Since we hadn’t done this before… prepping the boat for haul-out while living on it… we figured we should give ourselves a decent amount of time. Why stress ourselves unnecessarily? But how many days IS enough?

When List-Making Goes Bad
Leaving Puerto Escondido we began our haul-out chore spreadsheet. Day by day we fiddled with it, adding tasks and rearranging and adding some more. Our simple list became not-so-simple, the mountain of growing projects and sub-projects turned into an avalanche of letters, spilling down off the page with ampersands and bullet points running for their lives. Aaaakkkk! Our simple list turned into 4 pages of pre-haul prep. That’s right… FOUR PAGES… the source of imagined ulcers and not-so-imagined nervous ticks. The closer we got to San Carlos, the more fidgety and worrywarty Brian became; even I was getting nervous we couldn’t do it all in two weeks.

15 Days of Prep
From April 7-21st, with only a couple days of playing hooky, we worked every day: sometimes only a couple hours, sometimes 4 hours, sometimes 8. Every day we tried to tackle at least one project. Working this way, we never felt rushed, even on the last day.

Constant Chaos
Living in constant chaos for 2 weeks is not my idea of fun, but it’s necessary. We must LIVE with the things we are storing, like sails and dinghies and kayaks and big bins. Despite the accomplished feeling after completing a task and removing this or that (like solar panels), it still has to go SOMEWHERE. My favorite gripe: our 3ft-sq. solar panels. Their temporary home is on the floor leaning up against the life raft/footstool, constantly in the way. I am forever snagging a corner, initiating countless close-call collapses. Fortunately, it’s not rainy or hot yet here in San Carlos, so we can pile most large items on deck while we labor below. We get good at shuffling objects around. I can’t even count how many times we moved those sail bags!

Living on the boat while prepping requires a specific mindset.
1. Ignore the clutter.
2. Be meticulous about making a list.
3. Pre-determine when to do what. Certain things need to be done before others, and many tasks can only be completed during the last few days. Spread-loading those chores is key. (Good advice in general, but especially on a cramped boat.)

What Prep DO you DO?
Maybe you are wondering…what the heck DO they do to the boat before it gets stored? So I wrote down our progress by the day, including some extra snippets, so we could remember just how long everything took and when we accomplished what… for future reference and to belay your persistent curiosity.

April 7
- Clean main sail (scrub while hoisting it in the slip - requires zero wind, early a.m. is best)
- Watermaker pickle (flushing out seawater from filters)
- Trip to Walmart  w/ S/V Angelina - buy huge cleaning bin (doubles as a liquid storage bin)
- Trip to Construama - buy 4ft of 5” PVC pipe for our experimental cap-rail cover
- Met Dan and Deb from S/V Caper! These guys are famous to us, having hailed originally from our Marina at Camp Pendleton. It took us two years to finally run into them!

April 8
- Clean genoa (scrub while gradually unfurling at the dock, dry)
- Blow up & clean kayak, wipe-on 303 plastic UV protectant (hereafter known as simply 303)
- Give away extra dinghy motor gas (don’t leave fuel jugs filled on deck during summer)

April 9
- Take down genoa, fold on dock (harder than it sounds, the thing is huge)
- Wash staysail, dry, take down, fold (sails are done, yay!)
- Wash lines: jib sheet, staysail sheet, both furler lines, staysail halyard, kayak tether
- Lay out all 300ft of anchor chain, wash, dry, put back into anchor locker
- Wine and snacks with S/V Sea Dancer

April 10
- Dinghy - blow up, scrub, dry, 303, dry, fold into bag; oars – clean/303; dorade vents - clean/303
- Brian climbs the mast to remove blocks & 3 halyards to wash, run temporary lines, wrap deck light
- Clean more lines - 6 dock lines, main halyard, jib halyard, spinnaker halyard (can I be done yet?)

April 11
- Change oil in outboard engine, remove from stern, run in fresh water bucket, add fuel Stabil
- Change oil in generator
- Bimini solar panels - remove, wash, spray Eisenglass protectant, store below
- Lazy day! Exhausted from line cleaning yesterday!

On Washing Lines:
We met our neighbor Shadowfax at Hammerheads today. They asked us: Was that you on B dock washing all those lines all day yesterday? Me: Yes, for two days actually. Them: Ah, we heard about you. Me: Excuse me? Them: You’re making all the women look bad, washing all those lines! Me (laughing): OK, I won’t do it again I promise! Two days of line-washing is as much as anyone needs.
 
FYI: lines, halyards and sheets = ropes. I must have been the talk of the docks; but when lines can stand up on their own, it’s time for a good scrubbing.  I had to wash 6 dock lines (attaching the boat to the dock), 4 halyards (holding up each sail), 3 sheets (controlling the lower portion of each sail), 2 furler lines (to roll up the genoa and staysail), and miscellaneous lashing ropes. All are soaked in a bucket with mild detergent, brush-scrubbed, agitated with my clothes plunger a couple hundred times, then plunged/rinsed another couple hundred times until the water runs clear. Depending on length, from 25 – 80ft, some ropes must be done in two or three sections. Oy, my back!

Why don’t I use a washing machine? Believe it or not, machine washing is a controversial sailing subject. Many people do, but I've read that the wringing motion can cause the inner core to poke through the outer sleeve; even if this doesn’t happen, the twisting motion could degrade strength. Since our lines are very expensive, we won’t take the chance… so I AM the machine!

April 12
- Clean entire cockpit, wash bimini & dodger canvas
- Polish cockpit stainless: wheel/binnacle, back rails, monitor & fin, winches, radar
- Wipe 303 on plastic bits: winch grips, wheel, monitor knobs, antennae, radar dome, chartplotter
- Cover winches with fabric (others use aluminum foil to protect items from sun damage, but we are trying this breathable, reusable fabric that our friends on S/V Cuba Libre told us about)

April 13
- Dodger & bimini – spray w/Fabric Guard (retains water-repellency)
- Polish more stainless: all stanchions up to the bow pulpit, ladder, boom vang, granny bars
- Take laundry to hotel - 2 loads is $161 pesos/$10 (I’ve had enough hand-washing lines!)
- Cleaned out about 1/2 of my food bins

April 14
- Wash top deck, side decks & bow
- Acetoned spots of tape residue left by teak painters
- Polished more stainless: bow pulpit, anchor windlass, cleats, anchor holder, jib & staysail furler
- Fiberglass polish - top deck & sidewalls (smooth fiberglass surfaces of the deck, avoiding non-skid)
- Picked up laundry
- Food giveaway – usable items offered to nearby boaters like sugar, coffee, etc.

April 15
- Fiberglass polish – entire cockpit
- Cleaned out food storage cupboards & bins w/ bleach
- Decided what to keep to eat for next week, made a donation food bag
- Finished fabric-wrapping exterior items: winches, grabrail, roller furlers, misc.
- Vacuumed / mopped floor, shook out carpets & fridge pad, set in sun to air

April 16
- Bathroom day: completely clean toilet, bleached floor pan, counter & other bits, polished stainless. (Half a day’s work)
- Wrapped main sail (our mainsail has non-removable battens, so storing it below is pretty much impossible since it’s an unbendable 15ft-long massive hot dog)

April 17
- Change engine oil
- Finish putting the “head” back together (sailor’s-speak for “bathroom). The head is now off-limits – to the marina we go!
- Tired. No more work today.

April 18
- Cover our newly varnished cap-rail - cut fabric into strips, cut PVC into over 30 pieces, run lines, place fabric & tie to boat (this took all day, but mostly because we hadn’t done it before)
- Clean fridge - give away perishables (mustard, mayo, etc.), defrost, bleach interior, dry overnight
- Start packing bags for our trip home

April 19
- Put dried fridge components back together
- Verify haul-out time w/ marina office
- Talk to/hire maintenance guy - $25/mo to check/fill batteries, unclog cockpit drains, check bilge, re-secure tarps, look for bugs/rodents. (They also take my food donation items to a nearby orphanage - win/win!)
- Remove bed linens, take to laundry
- Clean stove with stainless polish

April 20
- Wash sink & clean drains w/ baking soda, hot water & vinegar
- Picked up laundry
- Washed hull
- Trip to Guaymas w/ Jim from S/V Leaway to pre-purchase bus tickets for Saturday then a wonderful dinner at his home overlooking the ocean

April 21 – Final Day! Now it gets real…
- Take down bimini & dodger canvas, polish stainless underneath canvas
- Finished up fabric coverings: teak, windmeter/AIS
- Fill gigantic storage bin with all-things liquid (we’ve heard horror stories of oil jugs bursting in the severe summer heat, even LED wax candles can melt – don’t want to come home to a surprise mess)
- Add water & chlorine to tanks: 10 gallons each, no more using water on the boat
- Stuff V-Berth: fridge insulator pad, bimini & side solar panels, bimini & dodger canvas, cockpit cushions, pillows. Blankets/quilt stored in plastic bags.
- Dinner with S/V Leaway at Soggy Peso

You Mean There’s MORE?
Lots of projects were on-going processes, like: cleaning out every single food storage bin after using up contents; relocating items to a spot less likely to get overheated (for instance, my Kindle moved from its spot against the hull into my clothes closet); deciding what to throw away or keep food-wise and where to store it. And then there’s countless minor to-do’s… mundane chores, like washing the wastebasket.

No Fuss, No Muss
We are so glad we gave ourselves over two weeks to get everything finished. Having done it once now, we could reasonably accomplish our lengthy list in 9-10 days without any stress. But, everyone’s boats, and therefore task lists, are different. I spoke with a liveaboard couple who routinely preps at the dock in only 1-2 days before hauling. Impossible. Yet another couple goes right from anchoring directly into the boatyard, I assume finishing everything while living on the boat in the yard. No marina days? Inconceivable! Their lists are obviously severely abridged. With so many things to think about and prepare (and so much dock water required for cleaning!), if we tried that, only one of us would be coming back to the States!

The Last Night
That final night we slept on the side sea-berths. Our comfy V-berth was filled to the brim. The kitchen was closed for business. The bathroom, blocked shut by a sail bag. The floor and cockpit, piled high since we needed some sliver of space to sleep. Finished with our mountain of chores and imprisoned in our respective sea-berth-coffins… we iPadded in place for the rest of the evening.

April 22nd: Haul-out Day!
To be continued…

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!

That ONE thing you don’t have a spare for is always THE thing you lose or break.

While using the kayak is easy everywhere else, getting from the mooring area to the dinghy dock in Puerto Escondido is just too far a trek for Big Red. So we blew up the dinghy. Intending to add gas to the outboard engine, Brian removed the gas cap. Just as he was contemplating how tenuous that little gas cap retainer cord looked, hoping it wouldn’t break…ploop…the chintzy, plastic yoke broke and our poor gas cap went tumbling into 50ft of water, gone forever. Shi#$%!! Shi#$%!!  Shi#$%!! …is all I heard coming from the dinghy.

Spares Anyone?
If Brian had room for a spare engine, we’d have one. This “always be prepared”-mottoed man has darn near every spare part imaginable.. spare belts and ropes and hose connections and filters and hundreds of pieces of hardware and plastic thingys, normal boat stuff right? But we even have spare rigging, a spare windlass motor, an alternator, chain and cables in case the wheel assembly breaks and dozens more important items...just in case. Who brings a spare gas cap? Not even this guy. Why would anyone?

No gas cap, no dinghy.
You can’t run the engine without the gas cap or pretty soon you’ll end up with no gas (and with gas spewed all over you). More importantly, you can’t store the engine on the back of the boat (where it gets wet when you are sailing) without a gas cap. And just putting a plastic baggie with a rubber band over it probably isn’t the best idea. Plus, the incentive for NOT having to kayak the half mile to shore is pretty high. Brian went to the haulout facility in Puerto Escondido, but no joy. We didn’t want to pay for an $80 taxi ride to Loreto just to NOT find our obscure part, so Brian put on his MacGyver hat. What's the phrase...necessity is the mother of invention?

The Gas-o-Lipiec Cap
Thus was born the now trademarked Gas-o-Lipiec Cap: a fine custom piece of workmanship if I do say so. Brian cut some Plexiglas in a semi-roundish shape (he was sooo irritated he couldn’t make it perfectly round), covered it with a piece of rubber gasket material, drilled a hole through both, added a bolt and wingnut, then cut a small, rectangular piece of metal with a hole to act as a grabber/sealer on the bottom. He did all this in the cockpit with a hacksaw and a drill. Not bad for an hours work. All the while, every 2 minutes: “God, this would be so much easier if only I had my (insert tool) router/bandsaw/sander/drill press…” So glad we DON’T have room for THOSE spares.

Our ad-hoc cap worked as advertised. When we got to San Carlos, we inquired about spare gas caps. Ordering one would take a week. Well, we know what THAT means…a week is probably a month. Forget it. We’ll leave it “as is” for the summer and bring a new one back down with us next season.

Chores and Chillin’
We rested in Puerto Escondido for 5 days. Our weather there was great, though windy most afternoons. We did laundry (so I didn’t have to hand-wash on the boat); got fuel; bought a few staples at the tiny marina store (bread, chips, more cereal-we eat a lot of cereal, milk, onion, cucumber, tomatoes, potatoes); ate several restaurant meals; partook in the COK (Circle of Knowledge) where you hopefully leave the circle more informed (rather than more confused); met more cruisers; I made brownies; got some decent internet where I finally wrote and uploaded several blogs; and most importantly, took real (hot and long) showers.

Sleeping Like Babies
We spent a couple more days in PE than necessary… but one of those days, well, we just didn’t feel like doing anything…so we didn’t. Plus, the unspoken truth is…we sleep 10-times better in Puerto Escondido than when we’re at anchor. I know you never should trust a mooring ball - it’s a false sense of security because they do fail. These balls are newly installed, only a couple years old now. But the distinct advantage to these particular moorings is their judicious spacing.
a)  We never worry about anyone parking right on top of us and swinging into our boat, as we always do at anchor. Even our stalker friend from the last blog can't be a space-invader here!
b)  We don’t worry about neighboring boats’ rode/chain combo or anchor not being strong enough and dragging in high winds (although we would worry in really high winds - during hurricane Odile, most disasters here occurred not due to breaking moorings, but due to the boat’s connector lines chafing right through).
c)  Extended spacing breeds good social etiquette: when I can hear your entire conversation like I am IN on the discussion…you anchored too close. This doesn’t happen in PE.

So, mooring in Puerto Escondido is the next best thing to being in a marina. Except it’s better because it’s QUIETER! No dock creaking, restaurant music blaring, squawking pterodactyl condo pets, tourist boat departures or daily bingo announcers. Just the music of the midnight stars. (Too cheesy? OK, maybe a little). In other words, we slept like babies.

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!

Fantastic Sealife at San Marte
Most boats skip right over Bahia San Marte, favoring the more popular Agua Verde to the north or Los Gatos to the south. Last year we had to forego anchoring here when we passed by as it is open to south and east winds and not great for strong northerly winds either. This time we got lucky…yet another blessedly calm evening. How long can we maintain this splendid weather pattern?

Shark-Fin Soup
We arrived late afternoon, hopped in the ’yak and paddled over to chat with a newly-arrived boat who we met previously while at Marina Palmira. While kayaking around the anchorage, we witnessed for the first time, strange fish that swam at the surface of the water. Their sharp, silvery dorsal and tail fins stuck up in the air like mini-sharks. We could never get close enough with the kayak to see what they looked like other than seeing their fins and that they seemed to be 1-2 ft long. Hundreds of them darted around erratically, not sitting still for good photos. It was too late in the day for snorkeling, but I’m not sure I wanted to get in the water with quite so many of whatever they were anyway!

Volcanic Dentures
An hour before the sun set, we beached and walked a craggy, volcanic reef comprising toothy, stone shafts thrusting out of the water at a severe angle. It almost hurt your feet to tip-toe on these rows of blunt, up-ended denture-like rock shelves, even wearing good-soled water shoes. Reaching the opposite beach, we scrambled up a steep incline of sharp rock and petrified shell shards to get a good view of the bay (so steep we nearly caused a small shell-slide making our way back down). Sharp, ankle-twisting reef rocks and challenging cliff-top access made this shore visit not so friendly. But WORTH it….

Mobula Ray Shuffle
As we took in the spectacular view of Indigo from above, all comfy-cozy and nestled on her hook in calm waters, we got an unexpected private performance! With the sun behind me, I caught the best photos yet of mobula rays doing their famous ‘jump and splat’. For several minutes, I just stood there in awe and kept clicking as ray after ray took flight. I took so many pics, (36 to be exact) it was impossible to decide which ones to show here. So I didn’t decide, I just included anything that came out decent. Call it a “Study in Rays”. Later on, back on the boat, I caught a video of the rays poking their little wingtips up out of the flat water at sunset. It never gets old.

We did not stay an extra day, but I would have snorkeled if we had…San Marte, with its extensive reef, is just begging to be snorkeled.  Next time…

Punta Perico
From there we traveled up to Isla Carmen, anchoring in Punta Perico for the night. During that long, 30-mile day, we observed dolphins, a couple turtles and a whale that spouted once but never saw again. Here and there, we’d notice a sea lion basking in the water on its back, arm fins straight up towards the sky and feet flippers too, like some dogs do when they sleep… they were just floating along, taking a nap.

In the morning, we got up early and kayaked along a sheer wall, striated with multiple layers of various rock and sediment. We even caught a glimpse of a pod of dolphins swimming around in the anchorage while kayaking! We’ve witnessed so much fantastic sealife this trip… more than last year…but the best is yet to come! Tomorrow, actually!

Los Gatos
This is our second time in Puerto Los Gatos. A 30 mile trek from San Evaristo, it makes for a long day of traveling. So by the time we arrive, no one has the energy to go ashore. I love the red rock geology here so much I made Brian stay a full day this trip so we can explore the center portion of the bay tomorrow.

Fresh Ceviche
That afternoon, a local panga fisherman drives by, asking if we want to buy any fish. Si! I purchase a fresh Cabrillo, he fillets it right there in his boat and places it in my container. I make ceviche: combine diced fish, 1 jalapeno, ½ cucumber, 1 tomato, red onion, juice of 2 limes, salt, pepper, chili powder. I let it “cook” in the juice in the fridge overnight. It’s a great lunch with tortilla chips or crackers.

Cilantro-Deficiency
Ceviche is much better with cilantro, actually everything is better with cilantro… but I don’t have any. Why? Because everything is better with cilantro…and the entire past year I always had cilantro on board… it’s cheap here and I used it in everything…so much so that I made Brian so sick of it he won’t even allow me to buy it anymore! And now he mentally equates fresh parsley with cilantro too, even though they taste completely different. SO, I can no longer have anything remotely leafy and green aboard the boat. Sigh. Soooo sad. There’s only one good thing about my lack of fresh herbs: they took up a ton of room in my teeny fridge. I guess there’s that.

Red Rocks and Snorkeling
The next morning, I made a big breakfast (since we weren’t sailing anywhere) and had a great time exploring all day. We hiked among the gigantic and mysteriously-shaped red rocks lining the waterfront, scampered along the pink sandstone shelf worn smooth away by eons of wind and water, and climbed a unique gully comprised of slippery, sand dune on one side and rocky ravine on the other, meeting together in a V-shape.

Among the waterfront rocks, there’s a perfect, pink sand beach…just right for donning snorkel gear and entering its shallow, sandy water with fins. Snorkeling along the center reef we observed quite a few small fish, but most notably, some beautiful purple sea fans flowing gracefully in the “breeze”.

It’s all Downhill from Here…
Later, we kayaked over to a nearby catamaran to say hello. They were a Swiss couple and had been cruising around the globe for over 15 years. From Europe to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal to the South Pacific, back up to Alaska and down the California and Mexican coast. When asked which was their favorite place - The Sea of Cortez! Well, I guess everything is downhill from here…

When he mentioned the reason, it struck me as thought-provoking - most everywhere else has trees. In the Sea, there are no trees to hide the geology and he thinks that’s why he likes it here best. It made me ponder… Trees are like clothing, outright hiding the underlying landscape; buildings of course destroy and cover the ground they stand upon; grasses and leaves are akin to makeup, further obscuring any unique geology. Most of Baja has no trees, grass or buildings, nothing to hide its wondrous variations in landscape.

Naked Baja
The stark nakedness of the land here in Baja California is truly awe-inspiring. There is peacefulness in such pure, undisturbed desert. Each anchorage freely supplies a bounty of unique shapes and colors and textures …raw geology. You can still feel the cataclysm of lava spewing and sizzling into the ocean, the massive upheaval of shifting tectonic plates shaping these incredible hundred-mile-long, mile-high mountain ranges, the force of wind on a smoothed-out sandstone slope, the relentless pounding of surf into perfect white sand beaches, the eons it took to petrify a shell fossil, the compression required to embed giant boulders into cement, the roiling action of the sea hollowing out a reef system, the power of ancient glaciers that scraped out rock-strewn valleys and sliced off sheer cliffs and carved out the picturesque bays in which we are now anchored. Because there IS nothing else to distract you. No trees, no buildings, no cars, no freeways, no people, no cell phones, no internet. Just raw geology… in all its un-manicured glory.

Punta Salinas – Abandoned Salt Flats
After our delightful stay at Isla San Francisco, we ventured over to Punta Salinas for a lunch stop at an old salt mining operation. Centered on Isla San Jose, we hoped this new anchor spot was situated far enough away from the dreaded, biting jejenes at this island’s south tip. We strolled along the beach, poked around the decaying buildings and paused for a photo op in front of a rusty, decrepit pickup. I climbed a 10ft high salt pile that had hardened solid, fossilizing into what felt like gripping a heap of sharp ice crystals.

And Today the Weather Dictates…
But the wind was picking up. Here is a great example of how weather dictates everything we do. Anchored on a lee shore with wind driven waves building across the channel towards us, Indigo was bouncing out there a little too much for comfort. Not to mention the notion of a wet and wild ride back to the boat, kayaking directly against the wind and waves. So we unfortunately only spent about an hour on shore and did not venture inland into the miles of checkerboard salt ponds. This salty maze looked like an infinite place to explore and we hope to be back.

Whale Sightings!
On our way across the channel we caught some whale action! As a group made their way south, we saw spouts every few seconds. When you can see the white geysers from 2 miles away… THAT’s big. We’d seen several whale spouts in the last couple days, all in the San Jose Channel area, but were never close enough for good photos. (The only whale shots I’d ever caught were from our Mazatlan to La Paz crossing.) Later on in the week, a small one blew a few hundred yards away as we sailed near Isla Monserrat, but he spouted only once and we never saw it again.

We’d heard stories of countless whale sightings this spring: one had a pair visit their anchorage in the middle of the night, scaring them out of a sound sleep; another accidentally sailed right into the midst of a pod… then again while kayaking, the same couple witnessed several surface only a couple hundred feet away. All instances were way too close for comfort.

Awe and Anxiety
In discussing whales with other cruisers, the general consensus seems to be 1/4 awe & 3/4 anxiety. Seeing dolphins or manta rays is always cool; seeing a whale prompts that same instant “cool!” exuberance, but is quickly tamped down by an underlying sense of “crap”. While you want to see them up close to experience that ‘National Geographic moment’, you really don’t want to see them up close. Period. It’s fine and dandy to go whale-watching… on a tour ship… ‘cause it’s not your house.

Indifferent Cows
Whales are like sleepy-eyed, cud-chewing cows standing on a car-lined road, completely disregarding surrounding anxious drivers. Furiously, yet fruitlessly, the motorist honks his feeble horn, hoping to annoy them enough to reverse their ingrained inertia. Consider your anxiety level increase as a motorist if that cow was now a gigantic bull that had the potential to run full speed right into your slowly moving car like a deer attracted by headlights or maybe even just because he was mad (look at what happened to Captain Ahab)… or maybe said bull decides that your nice, shiny, perfectly-painted BMW looks like THE perfect scratching post (the horror)… maybe even, just because this particular bull species has a propensity for jumping up and down, he accidentally lands on top of your hood, smashing it to smithereens. Bull: “Oops, my bad.”

Whales seem to ignore moving boats; they don’t particularly care if you are in their way. And why should they, we’re probably like cockroaches to them, we’re so small! While relatively rare odds, there are plenty of stories spanning the centuries of these giants scraping alongside ship hulls, nudging boats from underneath, flicking their flukes dangerously close or swimming full bore into vessels… even breaching right on top of them. And unfortunately, a slow sailboat just cannot move fast enough to dodge such a gigantic mass, even if you see them first. Just a small bump could cause a crack and sink a boat. One cruising boat apparently ran into a whale and sunk 30 miles outside of San Carlos just a couple weeks ago! So while it would be great to have cool close-up snapshots, that sunken boat report made us very nervous…we can only hope our whale friends stay far, far away.

San Evaristo
After sailing across the San Jose Channel, we landed at San Evaristo. Our second time anchoring in this small bay with a teeny fishing community, it’s a favorite of ours due to the shelter it provides from wind waves. And because of the fish tacos. Lupe and Maggie Mae’s restaurant/home makes the best fish tacos in all of Baja.

30 Knots
That night, we were blasted with an unpredicted 30 knot westerly. While blustery, this was an onshore wind (fortunately for us) so we had no uncomfortable fetch (no wind waves rolling in offshore to generate bounce). But the lack of fetch didn’t mean we slept well. The noise generated by 30 knots of wind is quite something. Plus, we had a banging halyard that could not be fixed in the dark, and then there’s the remnants of our no-see-um bites that still itched like crazy. Despite these minor issues, we were supremely relieved to have left San Francisco’s exposed west anchorage the day before. We later heard accounts of a really rough and rolly night there in those same 30kts winds; so uncomfortable that some boats vacated in the middle of the night, motoring around to the east side of the island for better protection.

Flakey Flurries
By the time we got up in the morning, the westerly wind had decreased to a nice 12 kts. We rounded the corner of the little bay into the San Jose Channel thinking we would get some good sailing; and we did – for literally one mile. Then it stopped. Dead. 12-knots to zero in an instant. Where’d the wind go? We waited a bit but eventually took down the flapping sails and motored on for another couple miles. Then it came whipping up again (17 knots); soooo, we started sailing again. We then noticed another sailboat just ahead of us rolling his sails up. Huh? But it’s plenty windy to sail!? We snickered a bit and kept sailing. Sure enough…our brisk breeze petered out again a mile later, right where the lead boat had given up. No longer snickering, the lightbulb finally went on...

Looking closer at the mountain terrain, the wind was funneling down through the sheer passes and out the valleys like a bobsled chute. On either side of the two valleys – zero wind. It’s also probable we caught more wind passing those “chutes” so close to shore than if we had angled away towards the center channel. Every day, the Sea teaches us a lesson it seems: in sailing or anchoring, in weather phenomena, in ocean water patterns, in nature’s infinite wonders…but mostly, of nature’s unpredictability!

Isla San Francisco in the Sea of Cortez is a cruiser’s desert paradise. This perfect crescent-shaped anchorage, with a white and pink sand dune beach, glittering turquoise waters over a shallow sandy floor and exquisite rock-cliff faces in a myriad of subdued reds, creams, greens and pinks jutting upwards from the sea… well, it’s about as picturesque as one can get. Given the fact that this island is the cover shot of our illustrious guidebook, it’s one of the most popular anchorages here for sailors, power-boaters and charter-boaters alike.

In the morning, we bolted from our horrifically buggy anchorage at Bahia Amortajada and headed to the north end of San Francisco (paradise is a mere 2 miles away from hell) where we did a mid-morning stop, walked the shell beach and watched several duck families cross the channel. We then rounded to the west end hoping to secure a spot in one of the most sought after anchorages in the Sea of Cortez. Getting into this small, secluded bay when there is no southwesterly coromuels, and when it isn’t tooo crowded, all depends on luck. We had to anchor around its stone-strewn eastern backside last year during the coromuels. This year we got lucky on both counts; not much wind and not too packed! Juuust right.

After lunch, I goaded Brian into hiking up to the top of the south cliff for our day’s shore excursion. This view was worth an entire year of cruising. Yes, it was THAT good. The pictures speak for themselves. I could spend two weeks just hanging here, hiking and rock-hunting and kayaking and snorkeling…it just doesn’t get any better than this. Too bad we need to keep moving north. But you can count on it… we’ll be back.

Napping El Nino
El Nino seemed to be taking a nap. Thankfully! Sometimes being wrong is magnificent. Our ongoing weather anxieties included the dread of having to deal with and work around week-long strong north winds on our trek back to San Carlos. But during the first two weeks of our trip meandering to Puerto Escondido, we were blessed with exactly 11 days of perfect weather and only two back-to-back days of 25kts. THIS is what the weather is SUPPOSED to be like! Now we’re talkin’!

Bahia Amortajada
The 3rd night of our trip north brought us to Isla San Jose and the south anchorage of Bahia Amortajada. A long, pretty beach and expansive shallow lagoon, perfect for kayaking and wildlife-watching, beckoned. It was the first anchorage since we left La Paz that we had completely to ourselves.  (Now we know why.) We anchored in lovely water and kayaked to the beach. The guidebook suggests navigating into the lagoon at high tide to avoid fighting the current; we happened to arrive at low tide - but the book doesn’t mention that low tide is so low it’s impossible to get in. We didn’t want to portage our kayak, so we ended up strolling the beach instead. The sun was out, the day was hot and bright, all was well with the world.

Swept Away
Back on the boat I decided to cool off in the 70degree pool water. It looked so inviting I just jumped right in…and was immediately swept 15 ft to the back of the boat. Startled, I quickly swam against this current and clung to the ladder, feeling the water rushing along my legs. What the heck? I’d never felt such movement before and should have known better. Indigo had stubbornly been pointing east out to sea, paralleling the bottom of the island, despite the several directions of light wind we had that day. We wondered in passing why this was so, but didn’t really think too much about it, didn’t feel the current when kayaking. Not until I was IN it. The current that flows down along the outside of San Jose must curve and funnel right in between San Jose and Isla San Francisco. We watched some flotsam pass by at an incredible rate and now I will be watching for flotsam speed BEFORE I jump into anything. Later, we heard a story from another boat who swore the current is so swift flowing in and out of the lagoon that it was impossible to kayak into during mid-tide, they couldn’t make any headway and gave up.

Land of a Thousand Bites
Don’t let the pretty pictures fool you…
While daytime was sublime, dusk brought a living nightmare. Silent but deadly swarms of teeny, no-see-um bugs called jejene’s (pronounced hay-hay-nay’s) flew out of the mangrove lagoon and attacked. Worse than mosquitoes (you can actually see and swat mosquitoes), these beasts are less than the size of the head of a pin. Almost impossible to see and lightning-quick, they therefore cannot be killed. How can you kill something you can’t see! They got everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

Sleep was impossible. At least with attacking mosquitoes, you can duck under the sheets – these got INSIDE our clothing, INSIDE the sheets! We tossed and turned and itched and scratched until I wanted to cry. Had it not been for our good screens (we think they only got in when we had to go outside), we’d have been mobbed…taken alive, probably perished.

We’re Getting Outta Here!
The morning sunlight did not dissuade them from crowding into our shady cockpit at first light. Unaffected by burning mosquito coils, the ONLY thing that got rid of them was LEAVING. But we regretfully took some with us. It wasn’t until 2 days later we felt they had all left the boat. But the itching remained a constant reminder of their terror attack. We sustained 2 more sleepless nights of less frequent biting and 5 days of furious scratching. After that, our irritation finally subsided enough to inspect with a more detached eye. I counted over 50 welts on one leg alone, that I could see. Multiply that by 4 extremities and add some for the head, neck, stomach…yeah…that should give some indication as to our sheer madness. Calamine lotion and poison ivy itch cream did little to relieve; I used face mask to dry them out, dabbing each welt with white paste - I looked like a spotted snake for days afterward.

Steinbeck Warning
I should have listened to Steinbeck. He wrote about this vile creature at Amortajada in his book, Log from the Sea of Cortez: “We were anchored quite near San Jose Island and that night we were visited by little black beetle-like flies which bit and left a stinging, itching burn. Covering ourselves did not help, for they crawled down into our bedding and bit us unmercifully.” This phenomenon is still absolutely true 76 years later. Fortunately, we have not experienced these little buggers anywhere else. The term “Amortajada” means shrouded, as in a funeral shroud… if you stay long enough that’ll be your fate.

You Can Visit, Just Don’t Stay
For the love of all mankind, do NOT attempt to anchor there overnight. While the guidebook specifically informs about jejene’s, their claim that mosquito coils and bug spray can be easily used as a deterrent defies our experience.  If you absolutely must see the lagoon, abridge your exploring for a short daytrip. Then run right back to San Francisco or San Evaristo well before the sun goes down if you want to save your skin…and your sanity… for the next week. You couldn’t PAY us to go back. Ever.