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| Gran Sueno at Bahia de Los Muertos |
The day before we left to begin our crossing to Mazatlan, it rained the entire day. We started out on a walk that gray morning, but quickly turned around after a sudden down pour. We were soaking wet by the time we got back to the boat. We stayed inside the boat for the rest of the day. I wasn’t upset that it was raining, I was just disappointed that we had left our last day in La Paz to do a little more exploring instead of working on the boat which we did the entire time. But, Mother Nature had other plans.
We had a surprise visitor late in the afternoon which brightened up our gloomy day! Our friend, Jim Chisholm, who we first met when we started our cruise from San Francisco Bay to Mexico in 2015. We actually met Jim in San Diego at the Police Dock on a rainy day much like our last day in La Paz. The circumstances around our meeting had to do with a “floater” aka dead body he had found floating inside the marina that he alerted us to! We got acquainted right away and got in touch with the police/ambulance/fire department who took over the bloated bloke from there. From that point on, we became fast friends while we were docked in San Diego. We stumbled across Jim again later while docked at Cruiseport Village Marina in Ensenada and spent time with him there and also sailed out of Ensenada together. But that was the last we saw him, four years ago. So it was lots of fun catching up with him on our last day in La Paz.
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| Jim |
Also that last day while stuck inside the boat, I made lots of snacks for the next few days. I made half a dozen Ham & Cheese sandwiches and several PB & J sandwiches. I boiled up a dozen eggs, cut up some apples, carrots, pineapple, cheese and salami. Put together baggies of raw almonds and saltine crackers (just in case nausea should set in). I stocked the fridge with drinking water, Gatorade and 7UP. Rick saw what I had prepared and asked if we were sailing to the Marquesas. Haha!
The next morning, by 8, we said goodbye to Peter while he cast away our stern line as we left our slip. It was still a little gloomy out as we made our way through the 5 mile shipping channel.
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| Leaving La Paz |
The sun appeared bright as could be a couple of hours later. The seas were calm and not much wind. We motor sailed for most of the day. I was fine with the warm sunny calm day since our last sailing adventure was a bit rough to say the least.
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| Heading through the Cerralvo Channel |
On our relaxing sail, Rick decided to throw in a fishing line and not much later we had a FISH ON! Rick reeled the fish in and by the time it got up to the boat, we realized it was a Skipjack and ended up cutting him loose and throwing him back. We have caught Skipjack before and kept it, cooked it and we didn’t really care for it. So since we wouldn’t be eating it, we threw it back. I was hoping for a Dorado or a Bonita to cook for dinner!
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| FISH ON! |
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| Skipjack |
We arrived at our destination, Bahia de Los Muertos around 7p.m. It was dark. We saw maybe 6 other boats anchored there. A few we recognized from Marina de La Paz.
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| Anchored at Bahia de Los Muertos |
We had originally planned to just anchor for the night and then leave bright and early the next day for our crossing to Mazatlan. But, I thought it would be nice to hang out there for a day or two since we had never explored Los Muertos. Not that there is much to it, I just thought it would be nice for a change, not to rush our time in the Sea of Cortez…especially because we don’t plan to come back when the season is over. We plan to stay somewhere more south.
The only downside about staying a day or two is that our weather window would not permit us to leave any earlier than 5 days later. Another heavy wind and wave scenario was in the forecast. So…it was a long 5 days with not much to do.
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| Solastra |
We were able to dinghy to shore one day and check out the beach and a very cool restaurant/resort off the beach, called Gran Sueno. We made use of the internet and had a delicious lunch! After our lunch we headed back to the boat and on our way saw two whales! One of the whales appeared to be a baby and it was breeching and crashing down with a huge splash repeatedly. The whale behind this littler one must have been it’s mom trailing quietly along and so stealthily. And she was huge! It was sort of as if she was letting her little one parade around while she stayed back to keep a protective watch on her.
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| Poolside at Gran Sueno |
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| Delicious lunch at Gran Sueno |
That was the best of the days we spent in Bahia de Los Muertos! The other four days the wind was whipping through the anchorage along with some choppy seas. So we were pretty much stuck to the boat …even Harley, who was not happy. She was dying to get to the beach again…but it wasn’t happening. She had to do her business on her little fake patch of grass we have for her at the bow of the boat. She looked very sad.
While we were stuck on the boat, we just read, slept and ate. The less we did, the less energy we had. We didn’t even go out in the cockpit much because it was too windy and the wind would blow our pages in our books. We read a total of four books each during our time at anchor. (We load up on books when we are at Marina’s, and La Paz has the best selection and the most books we have seen).
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| Harley was here... |
In keeping in touch on our InReach (a satellite network that lets you send and receive texts and also tracks your whereabouts) with our sailing friend Peter and sailing friends Roxanne and Dean for weather updates, we finally chose what we thought was the best time to make the crossing to Mazatlan … 198 nm (38 hours @ 5 knots). We chose Sunday morning, the 20th, before light of day.
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| Never get tired of these.... |
Stay tuned for the Sail from Hell in my next blog post.
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