We've been without cell or internet coverage since we left Caleto Lobos (just outside of La Paz). We're compiling some longer posts for the blog which we'll publish as soon as we get back to civilization. In the meantime, I'll send this mini-post over the Ham radio... just so you know we're still alive and having fun.
We spent the last few nights at anchor off of the tiny fishing village of San Evaristo. We scored some tasty fish, fresh off the boat from the local pangueros (panga fishermen), made a trip into the micro store (tiendita), went for an energetic walk and shared a few happy hours with two other cruising couples (Deb and Andy on S/V "Swan" and Judy and Bruce on S/V "Juce" - who've been down here cruising the Sea for many winters).
Last night, after having monitored the weather forecasts several times a day, we made a more-or-less group decision to up-anchor early this morning and make our way north to one of the several great anchorages before Puerto Escondido. The first challenge (at least for me) was getting up and ready to haul anchor at first light. The second challenge, we thought, was going to be dealing with the 30 lbs of sea grass that we had seen other boats lift up with their anchors. We were lucky... our anchor and chain came up clean as a proverbial whistle and we had everything secured in short order and heaved a hugh sigh of relief as we motored our way out of the bay. Our friends called us awhile on later on the radio and told us that they had not been so fortunate.
We carried on and had quite a pleasant day... with a bit of everything ... clear sunny skies, flat water and no wind; clear skies, hot sun, flat water and a perfect breeze(for 30 minutes, we had the best sail we've had for months)... and then came the dark, ominous thunderclouds, rain squalls and unnerving lighting bolts, flashing from sky to ocean about a mile or two away from our boat. After the largest and closest flash, we were amazed to see a little panga come speeding out of the mist very near where the lighting had just come down. The three fishermen waved and hooted as they came by us ... celebrating their near brush with disaster.
Finally, after about 10 hours of mostly motoring, we made it to Agua Verde... one of the most popular anchorages along the Baja. There's a community of fishing pangas, a restaurant and proper tienda on at the village, and active goat farming on the hills. The local goat cheese is reportedly available at Maria'a Tienda...so we'll be sure to make the trip.
Our plan, as always, depends on the winds. We may stay here a few days and when the time is right, we'll move on to Puerto Escondido to reprovision, do laundry and restock on fuel (and rum).
We've heard Escondido has internet, so we'll check our emails and upload our offline posts when we get there.
talk to you soon.
It’s Friday, February 16th, and we’re anchored in a picturesque cove called San Evaristo. We’re sharing the beautiful view with about 20 families who live in homes spread along the beach and the land just up from the beach. There’s a restaurant called Marco’s – and to us who haven’t actually been to it yet, it looks like a very old roof with royal blue tarps wrapped around the walls – there’s no sign of life today but there is a ‘Pacifico’ sign so there’s hope. We’ve heard the food is good and the woman who runs it is nice. There’s also a tienda (store) but there’s no sign of life at that either. And, there’s water available from their very own desalination unit, housed in a small white shed on the beach – but Antonio, the ‘water guy’ isn’t around. He lives in the small lime-green shack on the hill and his truck is there, but he’s not workin’. It’s possible many of the folks have gone to La Paz for Carnival this weekend and/but that’s ok. This bay is beautiful and well worth the visit. The scene along the beach is quite sureal (I’m not exactly sure what that word means, but if it means kind of unbelievable or something different than my reality… then that’s the word). The shacks are spread out along the beach and range from crazily leaning stacks of poles to reasonable shelters with signs of life. Up the hill behind there are larger homes, at least large by mexican standards. Most of the structures sport colours like yellow, pink, royal blue, lime-green and white. Several are used by the panga operators (fishermen) and their crews. The pangas run back and forth all day…some fishing and bringing back their catch, and others obviously visiting other communities to pick up cargo and passengers. Now before you get to assuming we’re filling our faces with fresh caught fish and lobster from all these panga/fishermen… let me tell you that we have yet to score even ONE lobster or fish. There’s a Co-op in place that has these fishermen literally tied to their rules… no selling of catches to travellers like us… they’re all spoken for. We’re told there are indeed those that will trade tho’, and we’ve got a stash of trade goods all ready. I just have to convince Kathy to put on her two piece and get out there looking ‘come hitherish’…. apparently my legs and luring looks aren’t quite what they’re after. None have stopped by!
There’s a flock of ‘local’ red-headed vultures (they look as big as or bigger than Sophie) that kind of hang out on the beach. I guess they’re waiting for the left-overs from the fishing panga’s but if their presence didn’t dissuade us from trolling Sophie along the beach, a few of the local ‘panga dogs’ certainly have. If the winds tomorrow morning allow, we’ll load all crew (PS included) into our little dinghy and go explore around the point looking for a sandy, empty beach for play.
We’re here because we’d been told it was a safe anchorage in a ‘norther’ and, indeed, there is far more protection here than anywhere else in the area. None-the-less you have to learn to be carefree and comfortable with your boat swinging at anchor in winds gusting to 20 and 25… and that’s at the best spot in the bay, in the shelter of a large rocky prominence. Luckily there’s no fetch so it’s all about the wind, and we’re getting used to that. The sun is marvellous and, because it’s too windy to bother going to town today (and because there doesn’t seem to be anybody home in town) we’ve declared this a day of rest on the boat.
We’ve tidied a bit, re-set the snubber on the anchor chain, changed the lines on the kayak to floating lines, read our books (I’m finally getting used to reading an electronic book… it’s a bit weird tho’), fished a bit off the boat (no luck), added some velcro to our heads curtain, redid the hand-line set up and generally relaxed as we’d been dreaming of doing. We’ll be here for the weekend as the northers are supposed to blow quite heavily all weekend as opposed to the light 25 we’re feeling right now. So, we’ll hang out tomorrow.. hopefully we’ll be able to get ashore for a little visit… apparently they serve ‘huge’ beers at Marco’s :-) and a walk about… Then, all going well we’ll wander further north on Monday morning… it all depends on the wind… and they call this wind… a ‘norther’. Later… CJ
Had an interesting night last night… anchored in Isla San Francisco. We were all ‘weathered up’ with information as to which way to expect the wind… and we’d studied the guide books and charts carefully… knew exactly where we were going to drop the hook. It’s a beautiful bay with lots of options and, to our amazement, it was empty when we arrived…so we could drop our hook absolutely anywhere…. Yikes, that’s a lot of choices! Anyway, just before arriving we’d been conversing with another boat on the VHF and didn’t they have yet another source for weather info. and didn’t their source disagree with ours as to where the winds would come from over-night. So what did we do? Of course… we quickly changed our plans and anchored according to this new information, completely disregarding all the info. we’d carefully collected.
I gotta say, these anchorages are not like those we’re accustomed to in BC. At home, we don’t even consider anchoring unless there is almost complete protection from almost every direction and then, only if there’s enough room for a good ‘swing’. Here, there is no such thing. Your choices range from ‘not at all’ to one end or the other of the anchorage for protection from the wind in one, maybe two, directions… but definitely not all. So yesterday, armed with the latest info. we chose to anchor at the south end of the bay in a much shallower area but somewhat protected from south winds by a small hook. Over-night, we did indeed start with a bit of the south wind predicted, but at 0200 hrs. the north wind (as predicted by our sources) arrived like a freight-train (it does that you know, you suddenly hear a roar and then in it comes) and stayed with us until 0730 hrs. when it stopped just as abruptly. The most wind we saw was 22 knots and we had quite a bit of wave action to go with it. Our trusty ground tackle held well and even though we saw 13’ at the shallowest, we never moved back… just up and down.
We’re having coffee now and the sun is finally up warming our cold feet and bruised egos :-) Very shortly we’ll leave and head over to San Evaristo for a few days of good protection from the ‘northers’ that are supposed to start tonight (our info). It has a small village with a school and we have some school supplies for the children…. oh yeah, and we’re low on beer :-) Bye for now. Will talk later. CJ
PS: Ironically one of the boats that anchored on the other side, where we’d meant to go, just moved over and anchored beside us. Maybe their ride wasn’t as smooth as it looked (the grass is always greener… even in the Sea).
Slipped the lines at La Paz… and voila! We’re ‘on the road again’. It’s Saturday, February 11th and we’re done with waiting to go. We…. [OK, wait a minute, I only just got started writing.. and I got called up on deck to see three Risso’s dolphins swimming by the boat, about 20’ away… just swimming slowly, together, by the boat.. it was awesome.] Now then, where was I? Oh yes, well… actually… it isn’t Saturday, Feb. 11th… it’s now Wednesday, February 15th… really… It’s been a few days since I’ve had time to sit and write… and so… I’m a few things behind…. please bear with me.
Saturday, Feb. 11th we really did leave La Paz… finally. We didn’t leave as early as we’d hoped to, actually several hours later than usual… for us. There’s always stuff to take care of, and check out, and well… good byes up and down the dock… so it was a little later than usual (sorry Dad it was so late it was actually 1210 hrs….not your usual 0600 hrs…. sorry), Anyway, we did leave and a few short hours later we were ‘hook down’ in a beautiful little cove called Coleta Lobos about 10 miles from La Paz.
Our friends Jeanne and Tom (SV Eagle) were there, along with John and Kittie (SV Time Piece) and we had a nice gathering in Shannon’s ample cockpit for happy hour. The next day Kathy, Sophie and I hit the beach in the dinghy and had a great time gambolling in the sand (yes gambolling!) and then we hiked and scrambled up a rough path/dry gulch kind of a thing… leading to a rough 4 x 4 (at least…might need 8x8) kind of a road… that led us to a view back over the anchorage and mangrove swamp…and out towards the highway (yes there were actually cars on it … well a total of 3 cars… that Sophie thought were ants…apparently she doesn’t have much depth perception)… So we felt truly initiated having survived the ‘in land hike’ and having truly ‘introduced’ our dinghy wheels to sand… lots of sand… (who knew you can use the outboard to carefully and slowly bounce along (on your dinghy wheels) over smooth sand, in slowly shallowing (is that a word?) water…. on your long way to shore…. over shallow flats? We did.. and it worked…and nothing broke. That day (Monday) we had a fun potluck dinner on board SV Eagle… and a good ol’ game of Farkle. The next morning both SV Eagle and SV Time Piece headed out to return to La Paz… and, that afternoon. we were joined by Jim and Karen and SV Sockdolager, a Dana 24 bound for the South Pacific. Overnight we were treated to our first experience with Coromuel winds. I won’t go into the details of what they are (you can always look that up) but I will say it was a rather sleepless night. You BC sailors will relate when I tell you we were anchored in a whole 12’ of water, on a lee shore, with 20-25 knots of wind crossing our bows. Nope, (or yup) I didn’t sleep much that night. But, again, we woke to another beautiful morning in paradise.
We left this little paradise on Wednesday morning, after coffee and a wonderful apple strudel on board Sockdolager (and we had a very interesting tour of all the neat things they’ve done to make life onboard their boat most enjoyable). We sailed for a couple of hours and then motor-sailed into a gorgeous anchorage called Caleta Partida. This bay is one of the largest anchorages in the area and separates two islands – Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida. It’s actually an old volcano crater, eroded away over the eons to become this half-moon shaped anchorage. Although winds can funnel through the gap between the islands, we were the recipients of a wonderfully peaceful sleep… no wind, and we awoke to a quiet, somewhat cloudy morning.
[OK, here’s where I want to stop for a minute and say something. We left Canada, near the end of August last year, on an adventure that had to do with sailing in warm water with horizons of white sand beaches. The dream held visions of warm water for swimming, great fishing, a beauty involving rocks and sand that I felt certain we would learn to love, lazing about on the sailboat, meeting the locals and absorbing their way of life, and miles and miles of beautiful sailing and scenery. So imagine if you can… that Kathy and woke up a couple of days ago… to find ourselves ‘arrived’… finally. It’s a sensation I have difficulty finding words for. Just this morning, as we worked our way north, it felt like we were in Georgia Straits…sort of… there weren’t many trees :-) and we were the only boat we could see. BUT, it didn’t feel lonely… it was what we’d left home to find… beauty, nature, and us. Hope that made sense…]
So here we are now, anchored in the most beautiful anchorage so far (I know, I know… they’re all beautiful). It’s called Isla San Francisco and it too kind of looks like an old volcano crater (but the guide books don’t mention that). It’s so neat we intend to stop again on our way back. This afternoon (after we set our hook) Kathy and PS (Princess Sophie) took off in the kayak while I jigged for nothing (that’s fishin’, not dancin’) in the bay and not far from the boat. Kathy and PS walked a long way along the beautiful white sand and pebble beach… I watched.. and they had a ball. Both came back to Shannon somewhat exhausted (Sophie more than Kathy). So for today, we thank those who care for and support us, we revel in the beauty that surrounds us, we enjoy the silence that can be heard when all we have to do is listen, we cherish all that we are experiencing', and we hope that by these words we are in some small way… sharing this experience with you. Thank you so much for joining us. That’s it for now…. tomorrow is a new day. CJ