Santa Rosalia and Northers

Oct. 17th - Oct. 25th: Santa Rosalia is one of our favorite Baja towns. It just doesn't fit the mold. It was built by the French in the late 1800's for copper mining. Now the French like to live in French style, so most of the construction is clapboard "tropical". The town could be built in a jungle in Malaysia and it would fit. Except it's in Baja where there's no lumber, but that didn't stop them. It's really very neat.

There's also Gustav Eiffel's "modular" church that he built for a world's fair in the late 1800's and the mining company brought it down, just 'cause.

Finally, the town's people have a great sense of town pride, while remaining exceedingly friendly. They celebrated their 122nd anniversary as a town this last weekend with 3 absolutely lavish days of festival. Gotta love it!

Now for the other side: Hurricane Kiko had been building for several days off Acapulco/Zihautenejo and had a possibility of coming north up the Sea. Not a good thing. Net, we stayed in Santa Rosalia until we had a better idea of Kiko's course and therefore our options. Kiko decided to go out to sea to the west and that was good.

In the meantime, a very high pressure was building over the 4 corners area of the U.S. That usually portends Santa Anna's in Southern California (it did) and "Northers" in the Sea of Cortez (it did). The challenge was Kiko. Kiko has been acting as a vacuum cleaner sucking up air, while the High pressure over the 4 corners has been acting like a popped balloon. The effect was wind flying down the Sea of Cortez following Kiko.

We've had 3 days of winds in the 30's and 40's, much longer lasting than typical for a norther. To add to the challenge, the marina here in Santa Rosalia is a picture perfect place in calm conditions, but not well built for rough conditions. Net, in the worst of it, we were seeing water breaking across the docks which connected Wirewalker (the furthest boat out) to the shore. A little disconcerting. We had lines to all the dock cleats and also tied to the pylons, just to be sure.

Would we stay here again? In a heartbeat! We love the town and the folks in the marina here are as kind and helpful as you'll find anywhere in the world. What the facility lacks in structural heft, the workers make up in effort and support. They are great!

Bahia de Los Angeles

Oct. 11th - 15th, 2007: Another post under way. We'll add pictures when we get to a higher speed internet. By the way, if you double-click the pictures, you can make them much larger and easier to view.

We arrived into Bahia de Los Angeles, or Bay of LA, or BOLA on Thursday afternoon after a pleasant motor from Puerto Refugio. No real usable wind until the last hour or two when we were too lazy to raise the sails (Bill, not Diane). Our first choice of anchorage was Punta La Gringa in the northern portion, but when we saw it, it was open and a bit boring. We moved on. We finally settled into Puerto Don Juan, known as the "womb" of the Sea of Cortez. Absolutely protected from swell in the case of high winds/hurricanes. During our Hurricane Henriette over in San Carlos, there were 30 boats in Don Juan hunkered down just in case. All they got was 15 minutes of rain, to which they were more than pleased.

The next day, Friday, we sailed over to the town of Bay of LA. An easy 6 mile sail. We anchored and took the dinghy into shore where we met some "local" gringos who were over-the-top friendly, and perhaps a bit over the top, in general. Great people, nonetheless. They offered Diane and Bill rides to the gas station, store, whatever we'd need. We eventually took up the offer for fuel and got gasoline to fuel our dinghy engine and generator. By 3:00 pm, the wind started piping up to 25 knots. This
area is infamous for "Elephantes", very high local winds that can reach 80 knots under the right conditions. With the wind building, we decided to go back to Don Juan. Turns out to be a good choice.

The next morning at 5:30 am the wind really piped up. We hit the high 30's where it held until about 10:30 am. While we would have been fine at BOLA, it was much better to be in Don Juan for these winds. Diane and Bill decided to stay in the cove and take a hike. We hiked about 9 miles overland finding Bay after beautiful bay along the way.

The schedule (we never really follow it) said we should leave on Sunday to head to San Francisquito. There were reports of Whale Sharks at an anchorage called "La Mona" (female monkey), so we opted to stay another day and go there. No luck. Seems gringos in power boats had "herded" the sharks into a tight group so they could jump in and on the whale sharks. Now, whale sharks are very kind, but not stupid. They up and left so we had no luck in sighting these beauties. Our loss.

We did have a pod of dolphins who seemed to "live" in the cove. At sunset, they started swimming some distance from our anchored boat. We had on "Andrea Boccelli", which they seemed to like. With each circle, they came closer until they were right next to the boat, enjoying the music. From there, we think the music had it's effect because there was spashing and some amorous behavior that followed. We could have sworn they were smoking cigarettes, afterward.

Once again, the cruisers we met in BOLA confirmed our earlier learnings; cruisers are some of the friendliest people you'll meet; from Larry and Angie on Tao 8, to Wayne and Susan on Daydream, to George and Melinda on Southern Belle ... and many others.

All for now.

Puerto Refugio, Oct. 8th - 11th

Puerto Refugio: Only word for Refugio: WOW! Most of our cruiser friends have told us that Refugio is their favorite in the Sea of Cortez. We get it. The landscape looks much like Mars; very desolate and craggy, with sprinklings of Saguaro cactus. As you start to look closer, you get it. The colors are like nothing you've ever seen. Sunset and sunrise are spectactular. The blue/green water is amazing.

We took a hike up one canyon on Isla Mejia, which borders the northwest side of the cove. It was lush with cacti, and very dramatic. At the start of the hike, there's a small adobe monument which stands about 5' high. It's sort of a church, but sized more like a very large adobe dog house. There are pictures of the virgin inside, so it is a shrine of sorts. Seems during Hurricane Marty, in 2002 I believe, one of the boats in Refugio sank and the owners made it to shore and stayed in the shrine
until the weather settled. Interesting.

Diane has fished every day with a good deal of success. She caught two large triggerfish on Tuesday, which served as fish tacos that night. Yesterday, Wednesday, she caught two Yellowtail Jacks, which will provide fillets tonight (Thursday). We had to eat chicken last night as it'd been in the fridge for 3+ days, always getting bumped by clams one night, triggers the next, etc. A tough life, cruising.

We're currently under way to Bay of LA, and are thinking of spending the first night at Punta Gringa, about 5 miles north of the town of B.L.A. Tomorrow, we'll drop down to B.L.A., get some supplies, then head out to another anchorage.

Until later ...

Oct 8 - 10th: Gonzaga to Puerto Refugio

Oct. 8th: We set sail out of Gonzaga Bay about 6:30 in the morning to a beautiful sunrise. Within moments, our friends Jim and Darda were hailing us on the VHF radio wishing us fair winds and following seas. They are good people! As we exited the Bay we could feel the effects of the last 2 days of Norther, the seas were up; at one point we had a train of 10 footers on short period come through, but mostly it was 4-6'ers ... and very little wind. By 10:00 am the north wind filled in and we shut
off the one engine we were using, enjoying a crossing to Puerto Refugio under beautiful sailing conditions.

The crossing takes about 48 miles, all tolled, but it was nice and we were snug in our anchorage by 4:00 pm. There are 3 other boats in here, but we haven't had a chance to meet them yet. Cruisers are, in general, remarkably friendly and giving people, but also respectful of privacy. There's a reason people cruise vs. going to mega-all inclusive resorts. Both can be fun; one is more quiet than the other.

We tried to take a picture and "dumb" it down enough to send via ham radio. We got the "dumb" part done correctly (17K size) but haven't figured out how to place it into the text. We'll try that over the next few days.

We should be leaving tomorrow morning, early for Bahia de Los Angeles and hope to arrive about 3:00 pm or so. We haven't picked an anchorage yet, but we'll have time while sailing. Thanks all for following our blog!

Beautiful Gonzaga

Sept 26 - Oct. 7th: Yes, our current plans are to leave Gonzaga on Sunday, Oct. 7th. We will miss this place and our friends very much as hopefully the following pictures and stories will show.

Gonzaga is a bit magical. It's about 400 or so miles south of the Tijuana border on the Sea of Cortez side. You have to really want to get here to get here. The Baja 1000 goes through this place every November, so that should give you an idea of ruggeness.

Well, Jim and Darda Harrison found their little piece of paradise here. (That's Jim and Darda!). They named the place "The Parrothead Resort and Spa" and have entertained many people, including us, in grand and gracious style. Well, not exactly Hyatt Regency 'grand', but if you want that kind of grand, you're in the wrong place.

The sunrises and sunsets are spectactular, as the pictures attached should show. The water is beautiful and Jim and Darda have fully stocked all the play toys necessary to enjoy this, with kayaks, sailboats, windsurfers, dunebuggies, etc. for full enjoyment. It is an awesome place.


When we got here, we were greated by our many friends. We do not yet have a picture of all those who came down here, but we have it on good authority (Bill took the picture) that a picture of the group was taken. Once we have that picture, we'll edit the blog and add it.

We've also sailed over to Two-Headed Cove with the whole group to swim, snorkel and dive. A wonderful day trip and Wirewalker was more than happy to accomodate.

The picture below is of Bill enjoying the windsurfing toys here at Parrothead. It's important to note that the picture was taken microseconds before Bill went splat ... again.

And the wildlife accomodates also. The picture below shows a coyote just across the road from Parrothead and in front of the back bay.

Sunday, we will leave for Puerto Refugio on the northern end of Isla Angel de la Guardia for a couple days, then down to the Bay of LA for a few more days. From there, we'll head to Bahia San Francisquito and the 75 mile trip to Santa Rosalia. Once down to Santa Rosalia, we'll be in familiar cruising grounds from our trip up the coast last Spring and we'll move slowly but deliberately to Isla San Francisco, where we'll make the crossing to Mazatlan, the second week of November.

We'll keep the posts coming via ham radio, but there'll not be pictures again until we get to Mazatlan.

Gonzaga Bay

Sept. 26th - On: We arrived in San Luis Gonzaga at about 8:30 pm on Wednesday, Sept. 26th, after a 38 hour crossing from San Carlos. At this time of the year you can typically count on a southerly to help you sail north, as we were intending. Well, as Wirewalker luck would have it, the first norther of the season met us on the nose and we had to crawl uphill to Gonzaga. Also being a full moon, the currents in the upper sea played a bit of havoc with our speed; 8 knots on hour, 3 knots another.
It was all good and we made it to Gonzaga about 90 minutes after sunset, to the greetings of about 15 of our friends.

Well, almost made it. As we dropped the anchor in front of Jim and Darda's place, the anchor chose to separate from the chain and we had to scramble. Fortunately, our second anchor was available to hook us and we went ashore. The next day, 6 of us: Jim, Darda, Sandy, Gary, Diane and Bill donned dive tanks and began the search for the anchor. Success! Diane found it fairly quickly, along with the hardware that caused the problem in the first place. By Thursday afternoon, we were hooked up with
our favorite anchor and back to playing with friends.

There's a wireless sat signal ashore so we'll try to send a more formal update from there shortly.