Into the Sea of Cortez

Leaving Cabo to get around the southern tip of Baja Sur towards the Sea of Cortez was uneventful at first – we got up early, weighed anchor, filled up with fuel before the rush and set off! We had to motor down the coast as the weather and sea state was calm & flat.

This all changed as we cleared the south coast to turn North – all hell broke loose! Our first Norther. The waves were not that huge but the frequency made them very steep, the wind was crazy (+25kts) and to top it all we had humpback whales breaching all around us – on our tack! Andy said he thinks they will get out of the way but I wasn’t so sure! Thoughts of whales hitting our boat filled my mind. Despite this, the breaches were pretty spectacular – probably the best & closest we’ve encountered to date. But you’ll have to take my word for it ’cause I was too scared to go and get the camera, Andy was hand steering and was hardly able to look!

We watched the miles to our destination slowly tick down on the chartplotter, and I was very happy to get to our anchorage, Looking back at the chartplotter track, it looks like we tacked about 20 times to get into Los Frailes for a much needed rest! We promised ourselves we wouldn’t beat into weather like that again!

After the recent beating, we wisely decided to leave at 10pm for an overnight and early morning voyage to avoid more northern winds. Smart move – we found calmer conditions for a night and day of much less eventful motoring to get further north into Ensenada de Muertos. After a short rest we got picked up by Allan and Alison and went ashore for some breakfast/lunch. The burger at Restaurant 1535 was fantastic! It had pineapple, cheese, avo, onions ….. much better than the scrambled eggs Andy had! I think he had burger FOMO!

We spent a few days waiting for a good weather window in Muertos taking the dogs to the beach, doing laundry, cleaning all the salt off the boat, wishing the water was a bit warmer to swim and happy to go back for another burger!

Here we also learned how not to leave the dinghy on an empty beach. Andy noticed from about a mile away that the dinghy was no longer on the beach but was now washing around in the surf, getting waves breaking over the motor…. He then had to do his David Hasslehoff impression – running down the beach for about a mile. Like David, but with a much redder face, no speedo and definitely way more out of breath! Anyway he got there without having a heart attack and managed to grab the dinghy before it washed out to sea! Crisis averted.

Now if there is surf we use 2 anchors to hold the dinghy in deeper water – bow out! Wiser folk have wheels on their dinghies so they can wheel them up the beach. If Santa is reading this….

A few days later the weather was favourable for us to motor up to La Paz, so we left on 23rd December to get to La Paz before Christmas, we left before the sun was up and were treated to another spectacular sunrise! We motored past Jacques Cousteau Island, stopped in a huge amount of jelly fish and saw our first mobula ray – jumping out the water!

There were a few places to stop if we wanted to but as conditions were good, we decided to go all the way into La Paz to anchor before dark and see what this infamous anchorage has in store for us! We have heard about the “La Paz Waltz” that causes boats to swing in all directions when the wind and current work against each other. Our buddy boat decided that a marina was a much better idea!

We found a spot to anchor just off the main channel (found out later it was next to the water taxi route so endless wake slapping against the boat) and put the dinghy in the water and went ashore! Marina de la Paz has a great dinghy dock and charges $50 pesos a day which includes filling water bottles, disposing of garbage and showers. We took the pups for a walk and I was in charge of finding a grocery store and map reading which as most know I’m not very good at! Andy stood outside with the pups and I tried to be a quick as possible which is hard so we could get back to the boat – we don’t like leaving it too long when we first anchor in case we drag or something worse!

2380 miles sailed to date!!