New cruising friends!

After a few days at anchor in the La Paz channel, we moved into the dock at Marina de La Paz and connected with new friends from Portland, Pete and Rose Ann Thomsen, who were spending a week or so on Talion, Patsy Verhoeven's Gulf Star 50. We did some hiking, and dinghied over to the Mogote, a large sand spit north of the marina and anchorage. A fellow sailor from New Zealand had careened his boat on the ebb tide and was waiting for it to lean over further as the tide receded so he could climb in the water and clean the bottom. It's a bit more complicated than diving and scrubbing the bottom and definitely more work than hiring a diver to do it for you!

Christmas Dinner

The gentleman in the Scottish tam is an accomplished ukelele player and quite a good friend.

Chris Bennett and his fiance, Rani, introduced us to Jo and Rob from Blue Moon and Randy and Gina from Balena. We shared Christmas dinner with them at the Singlar Marina, a two mile hike west of the marina where we are staying...excellent food, good company, lots of laughter and a bit of music.

Effects of Hurricane Jimena

Blue sky: San Juanico December 2009
Cloudy sky: San Juanico December 2008

The same spot.

Last December, we kayaked into the estuary from the bay, finding egrets, cormorants, and pelicans as we passed by.

This year, a 10-foot high berm has closed the entrance, extending the beach all the way to the crags and shutting off the estuary, now a salt-lagoon drying in the sun.

What happened as the year passed? One major meteorological event was Hurricane Jimena which came through this area at the end of August/first part of September 2009. The wind, waves, rain, and floods could have all contributed to the shifting sands of this remote beach. It would have been fascinating to have been on the spot to see the change!

Back to the Baja -- San Juanico

From the boat, we dinghied into shore and hiked up to a geocache on a ridge just above the north anchorage. Many thanks to the crew from Don Quixote for putting the cache in a sturdy plastic container and under a well-camouflaged pile of rocks!



From the cache, we descended to one of several roads that wind through these hills. Some lead to recently built homes; the one we took wandered south to private property with one small house and a corral, unoccupied. There is evidence of visions of future development--rough roads, cleared spots that overlook the sea (the perfect place for a house). The views are amazing, as this shot of boats at anchor illustrate. Odyssey is the one in the middle. We walked for a couple of hours, then turned around, leaving the miles of road further south for someone else to explore.

Bahia Algondones again

Shrimp boats (camaroneros) on the Sea of Cortez are big and colorful. We've noticed one fleet is centered in the waters north of San Carlos, south of Kino Bay. They tend to anchor in "shallow" (40-80 feet deep) water during the day and go out into deep water at night, but we often see them motoring back and forth from Guaymas. These two graced the north part of Algodones Bay as we set out on our crossing to San Juanico from Marina Real (San Carlos). There were several more just outside the entrance to the Bay.

I don't think they feel the choppy waves as much as we do. It seems that the waters around San Carlos are often turbulent, confused seas, tossing and tumbling us, giving us a bit of a rough start to the trip across the sea. Marv was sick, I had taken some Bonine, so felt bad but not THAT bad!

We left at noon on Wednesday and, after a night cork-screwing through 3-5 foot swells (with an occasional 8-footer thrown in) and 12-20 knot winds, we arrived safely in Caleta San Juanico, putting down the anchor at 7:30 AM Thursday.