Isla Espiritu Santo

The Honcho remained in La Paz three days longer than planned due to strong northerlies that blew 25 to 35 knots down the Sea of Cortez May 2-4. On Tuesday, May 5^th we cleared Punta Prieta and headed toward Puerto Balandra, planning to anchor there for the night, before heading north to Isla Espiritu Santo. There was still a large swell left over from the northerly blow which made Balandra an uncomfortable anchorage.  So we continued north across the San Lorenzo Channel and up the west side of the island. We looked in at Bahia San Gabriel on the southeast corner of the island, but being open to the south and west, it is not a good place to be when the Coromuel winds blow, so we continued north another four miles over a lumpy sea to a small inlet called Ensenada de la Raza, which is well protected from the north swell. 
The Honcho coasted into the cove and prepared to anchor in about 18 feet of water. As we rounded the boat into the wind and came to a stop I pressed the switch on the anchor windlass and nothing happened.  As it would soon be dark, I quickly got out the spare chain and rode and within a few minutes we were safely anchored in the cove and sitting in the cockpit with a glass of wine and watching the sunset while I pondered the windlass malfunction. We were planning to spend the next six weeks anchoring in at least a dozen places and I did not relish the idea of using our backup ground tackle without a windlass instead of the high strength chain in a bunch of remote places.  So, reluctantly, I decided we’d have to return to La Paz to get it repaired.

After a peaceful night on the backup ground tackle, early the next morning we headed back to La Paz, taking a berth in the Marina de La Paz, which is right near downtown, where all the stores and chandleries are located. I tore into the windlass and quickly discovered that the wiring had corroded and used the rest of the day to find some heavy gauge marine wire and rewired the system. We spent the night in the Marina and departed the next day, anchoring for the night in Puerto Balandra.

The next morning we got under sail around 1100, bound for Caleta Partida, which is a beautiful anchorage nestled between the northern tip of Isla Espriritu Santo and the southern tip of Isla Partida. It was a beautiful sail under light winds and a perfectly flat sea.  We came to anchor in three fathoms in the southeast reach of the bay, where there is good protection from the Coromuel wind, which amounted to about 20 knots that night.

We spent the next couple of days exploring the bay and a couple of nearby coves. I took a lot of photos but the camera can’t really capture the stark majesty of the scenery here. The landscape is desert, with a variety of cactus and other flora. The sea is filled with a variety of tropical fish and other sea life, which makes snorkeling a fascinating voyage of discovery every time we don mask and fins.  With temperatures on the boat in the eighties, and warmer ashore, our routine is to go ashore in the early part of the day, take a swim and siesta during the hotter midday, and, as often as not, socialize with the other yatistas who happen to be in the anchorage around sunset.  

On Sunday, May 8^th, the Honcho cleared the mouth of Caleta de Partida, short tacking in a light westerly breeze, on a course toward the small Isla San Francisco, about 21 miles away.  As the day wore on the wind shifted first to the northeast, then south, and eventually died and we motored the last seven miles, anchoring at the Hook at 1445.  Along the way we caught two small skipjacks, which we released, and narrowly avoided hitting a Blue whale that, seemingly oblivious to the Honcho, crossed our bow about 40 feet away.  The Blue whales, of which we’ve seen a few since entering the Sea, are different from the exuberant Humpbacks that we experienced earlier in the year.  Reportedly the largest animal ever to live on this planet, the northern hemisphere Blue can reach a length of about 100 feet and weigh up to 400,000 pounds. It feeds by taking a massive gulp of seawater then using its tongue to force it out through its baleen which acts as a strainer, thus capturing tons of krill and other small sea life.  While capable of high speeds, they usually travel at speeds of four knots or less, so the Honcho, which moves faster than that, must take care not to overrun one of these animals. 

It was a pleasant passage to Isla San Francisco, where we remained a few days enjoying the hiking, swimming and company of friends.  

Bahia Santa Maria

The Honcho remained in San Jose del Cabo for several days to refuel and provision. This would be our last stop before heading north around Cabo San Lucas and Cabo Falso on the long windward jaunt back to California. The next city we will visit is Ensenada, about 800 miles north. This leg of our voyage will be the most challenging as it is all upwind, with only a very few places to stop and rest along the way. Our course will be generally northwest, directly into the prevailing northwesterly winds, so instead of shorts and t-shirts, we’ll be in fleece and foul weather gear most of the time while under way.

We departed San Jose on June 2^nd, at 2100, choosing this hour because it would place us at Cabo Falso around midnight. That is typically when the wind begins to lighten and we hoped to get a few miles up the coast before the wind builds back up to its typical 20-25 knots during the afternoon.  Cabo Falso collected its toll from us by delivering 25-30 knot headwinds as we rounded the cape, but after a couple of hours of that, the wind settled down and we experienced light 12 to 18 knot headwinds for the next 155 miles or so to Punta Entrada, which marks the entrance to Bahia Magdalena, or Mag Bay, as the yatistas call it. After rounding the cape, the seawater temperature began to plummet, going from the high 70’s to high 50’s in a day or so, bringing the air temperature down as well.  We entered Mag Bay at 0830 and motored toward Man-O-War cove, about eight miles up inside the bay, dropping anchor there at 1030 in twenty feet of murky, smelly water. 

Mag Bay was in the midst of a red tide of sorts, with millions of crawdad-like creatures that the locals call ‘Langostinos’ dying off. Their rotting carcasses filled the water all around us and created a powerful stench in the air.  To top off the situation, we were immediately swarmed by thousands of flies. We quickly fitted bug screens on the hatches, but still had to hunt down at least thirty of the pesky rascals with fly swatters.  I had hoped to run our watermaker at Mag Bay to top off our water tanks, but the water was so polluted with dead Langostinos, we not only didn’t make any water, we didn’t even launch the dinghy and go ashore during the two days we spent there. It was blowing 25 outside the bay so we were content to hang out on the boat until that wind calmed down, which it did in a couple of days.

We left Man-O-War cove early in the morning on June 6^th, glad to get away from the reeking air, foul water and flies of Mag Bay. We cleared Roca Vela and set a course for Bahia Santa Maria, about 14 miles distant in about 10 knots of northwesterly wind.  As we approached Cabo Corso at the southern end of Bahia Santa Maria, the wind and seas began to build, and within a few minutes we had a 20 knot headwind and 6 foot seas.  I altered course to sail further into the bay, thinking we would get a little protection from the high hills at the northwest end of the bay, but the winds and seas continued to increase until we finally made it to the anchorage in the northwest corner of the bay, where we got the hook down in 20 feet of roiling water and 30 knot winds.

We’ve remained at anchor here, staying mostly inside the boat while the wind howled outside for three days in the 25-35 knot range, with occasional gusts to 40. With little to do besides checking for wear on our ground tackle and making sure things were secure on deck, we spent those days reading , watching movies and monitoring weather forecasts on the internet and the HF radio. The weather began to ease yesterday and it looks like we’ll have a nice window to make our next passage north beginning on Saturday night, June 11^th.  Our plan is to clear Cabo San Lazaro around 0100, then work our way north toward our next planned destination, Turtle Bay (Bahia San Bartolome), about 225 miles distant.  Rather than banging straight up the rhumbline, we’ll sail a course well to the east where we can expect lighter conditions.  This course gives us the option of ducking into San Juanico, Abreojos or Asuncion, which are small anchorages along the way, in case the weather turns against us.

There are several other boats here in Bahia Santa Maria with us, all waiting for the expected weather window. Among them are the following:

Manta 42 Catamaran

Norseman 447 cutter

Catalina 400 sloop

Seawind 1000 Catamaran

Catalina-Morgan 45

CT-54 ketch

The Cape

After San Juanico, the Honcho hurried south to La Paz where we spent a couple of days to refuel and reprovision. On May 28th  we left La Paz for Puerto Balandra, a favorite of ours, where we spent the night tucked into the southwest cove. The Coromuel wind blew hard all night and into the next morning, but by 1100 it had settled down to a 15 knot southwesterly and we got underway, bound for Ensenada de Los Muertos, on the east side of the cape. Our course took us north, then east through the Canal de San Lorenzo and then southeast through the Canal de Cerralvo. There the wind turned southeast, exactly the direction we wanted to go. It brought with it a southeast current of about a knot, so it was a slow passage through that channel.

The Honcho arrived at Los Muertos about 2030 and got the anchor down just after the sun set over the mountains. The southeast wind died at night but the swell didnt and we spent a fairly rolly night in the anchorage there. We were on the move again at dawn, bound for Bahia de Los Frailes, about 45 miles down the coast. After the sun rose, the southeast wind returned and the Honcho punched into it for about eight hours, arriving at Los Frailes around 1700. Los Frailes is open to the southeast and thus was not a suitable anchorage with a fairly heavy southeast sea rolling in. We gave it a look and decided to continue on to San Jose del Cabo.

An hour or so later the wind turned around and blew 20-22 knots out of the northeast, bringing a following sea with it and we made a quick passage to San Jose, arriving in the harbor after dark, about 2115 on May 30th.  It was a moonless night and we had never been into the harbor. On top of that, the harbor is new and our charts dont show it. We pulled out the I Pad with its Navionics navigation software and used it to navigate the last mile to the harbor. I think that software is based on satellite photos instead of charts that were originally made back when the Spaniards were running the show around here, and are very accurate. In the future well convert all of our navigation gear to this technology.

We are now in San Jose del Cabo, refueled and ready to begin the last portion of our voyage, the 900 or so miles up the west coast of Baja to Long Beach, CA. With northwesterly winds dominant on this coast, which is exactly the direction we want to go, well sit tight here in San Jose and wait for those winds, which have been blowing hard recently to lie down a bit.

Our course on the first part of this passage will take us northwest along the Baja coast to Man-O-War Cove, inside Bahia Magdalena. Then well head for Bahia Santa Maria, Bahia San Juanico, Punta Abreojos and Turtle Bay, where well spend a few days.