The point of Punta Gabriel was pretty rolly with some nasty waves and currents, but Rog powered through and we settled in the small bay/lagoon off of Bahia Francisquito. For the first time in our entire cruising life, we were in the same time zone as the kids in Rocklin. Makes home feel even closer! After a good full day of rest, we decided the lagoon was just too small for comfort and we headed out to the spacious bay. We still have not seen any other cruisers. We have the place to ourselves.
I have had two goals for the Sea of Cortez. I want to swim with sea lions and whale sharks. We headed off to Isla Partida to check off at least one of these items at Isla Roca, a small island off of the northern tip of Partida. With sea lion and boobie chatter keeping us company throughout the night, we took a dinghy ride out to Roca first thing in the morning while the sea was calm. Just as we arrived, there was quite a commotion in the water. Our best guess was that a couple of pilot whales had come by for breakfast. Needless to say, the sea lions were not very social and avoided all of our attempts to get close. Added to that, the water clarity was absolutely awful. I donned my snorkel gear and got in the water, but couldn’t see more than 12 inches from my face. Oh well.
We did get a lot of company from the local bird population. They floated behind the boat and didn’t seem at all afraid of us. We thought they were juvenile boobies, but then decided they were maybe petrels. The cliffs surrounding the anchorage were covered with guana but luckily did not smell or draw flies.
From Partida, we headed into Animas Slot, a small anchorage on the Baja. I had hoped to do some snorkeling here, but the winds early the next morning had us going in circles and the captain wisely suggested we move on to a larger anchorage. We went 2 miles further north to Bahia de los Animas passing a number of weekend sport fishing boats. As we explored this anchorage, we found the remains of a dead whale on the beach.
A coyote was exploring the beach as we arrived by dinghy, so we stayed in the water. Mostly just bleached bones now, there isn’t even enough of the whale left to draw many flies. I was able to find a whale bone small enough to bring home to Max and we continued exploring by dinghy. The locals had built a short wall to close off a small inlet during low tide. Known as a fish weir, the fish can easily swim into the area during high tide but their escape is cut off at low tide and then they are easy pickings for the local fishermen. The entire area is about 3 feet deep but we were able to get the dink in and I snorkeled the edge, finding a couple of great sand dollars.
We had planned on hitting a few more interesting anchorages on our way north towards Bahia de Los Angeles (BLA) but we were having a fun sail on the beam as we left Animas, so we continued north to Puerto Don Juan. Our petrel and pelican friends kept us company almost the entire way, flying past the boat and landing in the water ahead of us. They would wait until we floated by, then would take flight again to catch up. They didn’t head back home until we rounded Punta Pescador, over ten miles away. On the way around Punta Don Juan, we actually made contact with another cruiser. Lady Lexi was on her way south from Refugio and gave us a shout on the radio. We tucked into Puerto Don Juan, thanking our stars we weren’t Lexi heading straight into the wind. An hour later, Lexi came into Don Juan, deciding to spend the night and let the winds die down. As Rog and I were just getting ready to watch the sunset on the bow, Nonhi, crew from the Lexi, had swum to our back steps. We chatted with her for over an hour hearing her incredible story and promised we would try to keep track of her as she headed to Rosalia. They left early the next morning and we were alone again. We did hear of another cruiser who grounded his boat on the beach just north of Francisquito and was trying to figure out what to do. The Sonrisa Net came to his rescue, contacting the Mexican authorities. They helicoptered him out off of the beach and he is now in BLA. Always sad when a cruiser has to abandon his boat. Later we found out that he was able to get a few things off and a crew was able to get the boat off the beach for salvage. He will head back to Southern CA. From Don Juan, we scooted into the Bay of Los Angeles, our ultimate destination. Although we have seen whales, dolphins, sea lions, birds, and countless fish, we are so disappointed in the water clarity that we are not interested in heading any further north. We anchored off of the BLA Village and were able to head into town to reprovision at a wonderfully well stocked store.
The town was a dusty Eastwood kind of town with a fair amount of tourist traffic. Campers and surfers like this town and there are quite a few hotel and restaurants for them. The place had a unique charm. But it also gets a strong wind that tunnels through the mountains. Back on the boat with fresh produce and ice, we pulled anchor and headed over to La Mona where I hoped to sight a whale shark. The next morning, Rog motored to the northeast end of the bay and then we were able to do a 3 knot jib sail back towards Gecko Beach. We saw the tour boats come and go before we sighted our first whale sharks about 500 feet out. We continued moving along slowly, then turned to sail back out of the bay. I had convinced myself that seeing them at a distance was going to satisfy me. But Rog was persistent. Then we saw a whale shark about 500 feet dead ahead. Rog aimed at it and I madly shot pictures as he came into view. Before I knew it (and before I could zoom the camera back to normal) he was directly in front of us.
He looked right at me, leaning over the bow, and then swam under our starboard hull. I would guess he was about 15 to 20 feet long and I was stoked! I failed to get a good picture of him, but I saw him up close and personal. Although it would have been fun to have been in the water with him, we didn’t have a chance.
Fully satisfied now, we had a motorsail over to Isla el Pescador. We had a delightful evening watching huge schools of small fish dance around the boat. Once the birds found them, we had another hour of watching the fish dive and scoop up their dinner.
We were watching weather closely and saw a window of northern winds for the next few days so we decided to cut our trip short and head back down south while we had favorable winds. We had dreaded making the whole trip with wind on the nose. So the next morning, it was back to Francisquito. We had a full moon now, so we pulled up anchor at 1am and left for Rosalia. Punta Gabriel was flat calm this time and we had beautiful flat seas for the first 7 hours. Then we hit San Carlos Bay and poor Rog had to hand steer through the rough seas. The waves sometimes crashed over the top of NEOS and the whole boat got well salted. It was probably our roughest passage on the Pacific. Thankfully, it only lasted about 4 hours. Once past the bay, we were again in calm waters. We got into Rosalia and I dutifully reset my clocks….the wrong direction. I thought it was 2pm and it was actually 4pm. Luckily, I contacted Naomi and Andrew on “Amizade” and they corrected me. So it was a mad dash off of NEOS and over to the fuel dock to get our gerry cans filled. We were their last customer of the day! We took the fuel back to the boat, then headed over to visit with Amizade. We took a quick trip into town to hit the produce stand and to look unsuccessfully for flower pots. Our aloe vera had tumbled on the passage and the pot had split. We chatted with Amizade for about an hour and then did the social circuit, stopping by Camelot and Ocean Echo on our way home. Rog emptied the gerry cans and we had our earplugs ready to get a good night’s sleep. Not only is this a noisy city, but the marina was hosting the high school’s all night graduation party. The music started at 9pm and didn’t let up until 4am. With the earplugs in place, we slept through it all.
We still had a northern component to the wind, so we kept boogying. We had made the decision to try selling the boat ourselves this Fall, so I outlined a plan to get some exposure on You Tube. One of the videos will be “wildlife sightings on the sea”. Just south of Rosalia, we were greeted by a huge pod of hundreds of dolphins coming towards us. As we passed through them, quite a few turned and played on our bow for about 30 minutes. It was a fantastic show and I caught a lot of it on video. We made it down to Santo Domingo, and then to La Ramada the next day. Last time we passed La Ramada, there were 5 boats in the small bay. This time, we had it all to ourselves. After so much passaging, I made the request to relax for a few days and not move on until after my birthday. We explored Punta Basilio for 2 days. The entire area has been surveyed with property markers. So far, there are only about 3 homes built, but it looks like the entire place will be developed. Our first hike, we took the wrong road to get across to Juanico and ended up at the top of the hill overlooking everything. It was a great view. As we hiked back down, Rog happened to notice that the road was littered with Apache Tears. Small rocks of obsidian, there is an Arizona legend that says that these are the tears shed for the brave Apache warriors who jumped off a cliff to their deaths rather than face capture by the US cavalry. We grabbed a handful only to discover over the next 2 days that this is the only spot left to find them. Other cruisers had found them on the beach, but we never saw any there. The next day, we hiked to the beach on Juanico and over to the cruiser shrine. This is a tree decorated (and “decorated” is a loose term!) with mementos from passing cruisers. We had written our name and date on a piece of bamboo and hung it on a branch before leaving.
Mother Nature vacationed with us, as we had two days of a wind with a southern component. La Ramada opens to the north so we were well protected. On the next day, the northerly component returned and we headed south to Isla Danzante. When we got there, someone was in our favorite little cove and the other bays were filled as well, so we went further down to Candeleros for one night. The next day we had planned to go to Los Gatos, but the wind was fairly strong and almost on our nose, so we tucked into Agua Verde. We spent a couple of days here, waiting for the winds to die down a bit. This gave us a chance to head into the small pueblo in the bay. I was able to pick up some produce, we had an interesting lunch at the only restaurant, and then we bought a block of ice and headed back to NEOS.
From Agua Verde, we headed down to Los Gatos. On the trip north, we had anchored in the northern lobe (Gatos). This time we anchored in the southern lobe (Toros) and with the calmer weather, we were able to head into the beach and explore a bit. After 2 days here, we headed down to Amortajada. We had been told not to miss this spot. After having some trouble getting the anchor to set, we relaxed for 2 days. (After our third unsuccessful anchoring attempt, Rog pulled the anchor all of the way up and found that a huge rock caught between the fluke and the shank . Once we removed the rock, we had no trouble anchoring.) Our first night brought back memories of Manjack Cay as we were bombarded with noseeums (the Mexicans call them jejenes). Out came the mosquito coils, the Panama Nopikex soap, and we slept indoors with the fans on. The next day we pulled out the skin suits we had bought in Mazatlan and were completely covered for the trip into the mangrove lined creek. We spent a couple of hours exploring the area and ended with a nice hike on the beach.
From Amortajada, we crossed Bahia de La Paz to Isla Partida. We anchored in Ensenada Grande after a fairly bouncy passage. Unfortunately, our original aloe vera plant (given to us by Roi Soleil in Manjack Cay) jumped off of the boat and bobbed away. Major bummer after six years with it, but we do still have a pot of its offspring. We are now within one day of La Paz so the captain is breathing easier. He was a bit worried about a hurricane coming into the Sea early and now feels much more comfortable. We are close enough to our marina to get protection now. Dora passed below the cape this month, as most hurricanes do until the water in the Sea of Cortez reaches the high 80’s. That doesn’t usually happen until August or September.
We spent the rest of July lazily enjoying Isla Partida and Bahia Gallina on Espiritu Santo, heading into La Paz the afternoon of the 31st. We are amazed at the charter sport fishing boats in the islands. Not a lot of cruisers, but plenty of tourists. We have been pleasantly surprised with the weather. Sleeping outside, we still use a blanket in the early mornings and the breezes keep things fairly pleasant during the day. Early afternoons are the warmest and the fans in the boat keep us cool then. Much easier summer than Puerto Vallarta was! And we sure don’t miss the lightning and rain.
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