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.