Vamos a Barcelona

New Year's Day was a perfect day for sailing! With our La Paz friends, Patricia and Manuel (siblings of Maripaz), and Fernanda (Patricia's daughter) and friend Aldo, we sailed out the channel and into the bay with plans for lunch in Bahia de Balandra (Balandra Bay). We made it as far as Caleta Lobos (Sea Lion Cove) where we dropped anchor and enjoyed tacos, drinks and good company.




Manuel has a good touch for the helm, keeping us well on the wind. He also has aspirations of going to Barcelona ...where his son will soon be married... It was all we could do to convince him that Spain was really too far away and a bit off our course!

La tripulacion de Odyssey

Feliz Navidad y Feliz Ano

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!



This photo is from our journey to Beijing, China in August, where all the family was together.

We celebrated Christmas 2008 and New Year's 2009 in La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico with friends from Alameda, California (Doug and Carla Scott [Moondance] and Steve and Ana Hall [No Worries]) and from Portland, Oregon (Patsy Verhoeven [Talion] and Delphi and Mike Godsil [Trig]). There were lots of parties, excellent food, fireworks, games and fun...all good parts of the celebration. We missed the family...

Downwind Sailing

For some reason, our photographs just do not capture the nature of the sea. You must need a wide-angle lens, or maybe an action shot with sound to catch the full impact of the waves and wind!



Leaving Isla Danzante, we picked up weather and for the next three days enjoyed some serious sailing in a winter "norther" typical of the Sea of Cortez at this time of year. The winds were consistently 15 to 20 knots, and for several hours each day, 20 to 25 with gusts to 30.


The seas pick up wave strength and height as the winds come down the Sea, so by the time we got into Isla San Francisco on Friday, the 19th, we were seeing consistent 5 to 8 foot swells with a few 10-footers thrown in for good measure. Our boat usually goes about 5 knots per hour. At one point, Marv saw the knot meter reading 10.99 as we came down the front face of a big swell. For us, that's fast! We tried to take a picture...but it doesn't look like much! Trust us, we deserved the ibuprofen and sleep when we were successfully at anchor!

Honeymoon Cove

What a lovely spot! A tiny rock-lined cove on Isla Danzante, deep at the entrance then gradually shoaling. There's not a lot of room to swing around on the anchor, so we set a stern anchor in about 5 feet of water and our bow anchor 20 feet deep. Twenty knot winds came up in the night, but we rode them out easily. The rocks along shore provided excellent snorkeling and half-a-dozen porpoises entertained us with their leaping, diving, and tail-slapping antics. The eco-tour ship, National Geographic Seabird, anchored farther out in deep water and shared the entertainment with us.

Los Coronados

Another change we've noticed from last spring...the water is clearer around Los Coronados than it was before! If I remember correctly, we arrived here earlier this year just as the giant red squid were dying...and the water was very cloudy. This time, it was clear enough to see our anchor 15 feet below, comfortably buried in the sandy bottom.

Desert Flowers

One of the advantages of coming into the Sea at the end of the rainy season is enjoying the greenness of it all. Compared to last spring, the hills are covered with a blanket of green...grasses, flowers, new growth on the cacti and shrubs.







The flowers are stunning in their contrast to the rocks and dust. It is still clearly a desert area, so we appreciate the transient beauty of these fragile plants even more.

San Juanico

We left San Carlos on Sunday, December 14, and ended up in Bahia San Juanico the next day. Our "plan" was to go across the Sea. The wind led us to San Juanico, where we slept for a few hours, kayaked into the laguna, and went for a hike to find a geocache and to enjoy the desert flowers.