| 20th March 2008
Isla San Francisco to Loreto Baja California On the morning of the 20th of March the wind evaporated and we moved off early from Isla San Francisco for a short motor northwards to La Amortajada, a low lying peninsular that protrudes from the southern part of Isla San Jose. Here there is a large Mangrove Lagoon where exploration is possible by dinghy; we anchored to the north of the peninsular at the mouth of the inlet that allows access. It was a beautiful morning, calm and clear; perfect weather for this trip and it was good to get started early as the afternoon usually brings breeze to the San Jose Channel area and this anchorage is a little exposed to the north. Our dinghy is well suited for this kind of work and we can usually get up small mangrove channels where other tenders fear to go; we have the option of motoring, rowing, paddling and poling and can move about in less than three inches of water. This sort of mangrove is a great habitat for breeding fish, many species of birds, crabs and all manner of insects but to really appreciate it, you have to stop the motor and drift along quietly; then, if you are lucky, it is possible to spot some interesting stuff. Unfortunately in this modern world of instant gratification, patience is not a readily available commodity and most visitors tend to zoom into the mangroves in high powered inflatables, scaring most of the wildlife away, then, having not seen anything in their limited time frame, they zoom out again. Normally we don’t have too much problem with this and the wildlife seems to adapt also, however this day we managed to meet a tender from one of the large charter yachts at anchor in the bay whilst transiting one of the narrow creeks; the boat had a crew member in charge and we really thought such a person would have some competence if not a little common sense, sadly neither prevailed and he passed us at high speed, only a few feet away and dragging a huge wake which half swamped our dinghy and literally threw us sideways into the mangroves, he didn’t even have the courtesy to stop and make sure we were all right! I was not impressed and it reminded me of why we like to cruise in areas that are far from the beaten path; unfortunately however, this sort of thing is becoming more common as tourism stretches out across the globe to offer the average person something different and more memorable than whatever the last vacation was. We were very lucky that our cameras and gear survived our encounter intact (thank goodness for waterproof bags!) and we returned to our boat with only the edge taken off what would otherwise have been a very nice outing. As the first hint of breeze arrived from the north, we pulled up the anchor and motored across the San Jose Channel to Evaristo Bay which lies on the Baja mainland, nestled under some magnificent bluffs, reminiscent of what you would expect to find in the Grand Canyon, this is a starkly scenic area which is very photogenic, especially when bathed in early morning sunlight. Although there was very little wind in the forecast and very little evident out side of the San Jose Channel we still managed to see a couple of gust of almost twenty knots when we crossed the middle, the peaks of the island and the bluffs along the mainland conspire to make this a perfect funnel, we were fortunate to get across before any commensurate sea built up. Pre 1982, Evaristo was an almost deserted bay however shortly after that time they put in a road (of types) and with accessibility the bay has become quite busy, some of the fish camps have become more permanent and tranquillity has departed. Fortunately there is a small northern bay with room for just a couple of boats, separated from the main bay and this has no access from the beach where the road comes down. The Cruising Yachts tend to hang out in this part where they are out of the way of the fishermen, who tend to zip in and out of the main bay at all hours going about their business; it is quieter and a little safer out of the firing line! We noted that the music on shore, which was not too intrusive, stopped in the early evening leaving us with some luxurious peace as we sat out under the stars watching the full moon cast shadows on the impressive landscape. During the late afternoon I’d spent a little under an hour in the water, working on the bottom of the boat which had become quite fouled. The water temperature was still in the low sixties and even with a moderately good wet suit, it was still very cold; I was probably in a little too long and narrowly avoided hypothermia, it took a while to get my core temperature back up even with the assistance of the late afternoon sun. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to believe that in just a few months the outside temperatures are supposed to be so hot you need to jump in the water to cool off but the water temperature is so hot it provides little relief……….. If that is going to happen, I wish it would hurry up! We are also waiting for the water clarity to improve, we keep on being told how wonderful the water clarity is up here but as yet we have been struggling to get over fifteen feet. The fishing could improve somewhat also…… we must have got something today as we lost a lure, it seemed to have been a victim of a Barracuda attack however, that was our first strike since leaving Costa Rica! We look forward to improvement as we move north and as time marches on. We left Evaristo early the next morning and had the pleasure of watching the sun rise over Isla San Francisco to illuminate the steep rocky bluffs on the mainland, bathing them in a reddish, morning glow. For the next twenty miles, as we proceeded north, we were entranced by this stark, rugged yet striking vista; unfortunately we were reduced to motoring on a calm sea and didn’t even spot a ripple on the surface until mid morning. Although we’d been watching carefully, we somehow managed to miss a large grey whale that appeared as if ‘out of nowhere’, close in front of our bow. I think we were equally shocked; as we threw the helm over; he blew and went under to re-appear, some distance off, headed east. We gave chase but to no avail however a little breeze sprang up from the northeast so we stopped the motor and sailed for a while, enjoying our big, Light Weather Genoa. It was lovely to be sailing and the light conditions were perfect for us, however it didn’t last more than a couple of hours; we were forced to start the motor again and complete our journey under power arriving in the south-western anchorage of Isla Monserrat at 1600hrs. There was just one other boat in the bay but there was plenty of room and though the bottom had lots of weed there were plenty of patches of sand that one could drop the anchor into, the water visibility was improved here and we could see quite clearly down to seventeen feet. This turned out to be a very restful spot, a little bleak ashore but with a neat little beach affording dinghy landing and some places to walk. By the time we’d got everything stowed away it was time to sit in the cockpit and relax whilst watching the sun go down, we’d had a great day but it was a little disappointing that we’d not been able to sail a little more. Next morning we listened to the weather forecasts by the time we’d got this out of the way the sun had warmed things up outside and I decided to have another go at cleaning the bottom, removing more of the fouling lower down the keel and cleaning up the centreboard which Paula lowered whilst I was in the water. This time I was out after thirty-five minutes and didn’t get as cold as I had on the last occasion, I didn’t get it all clean but we were just about there; it is amazing how quickly the barnacles attach themselves and the weed starts to grow! The effect of all this growth is felt more on smaller vessels than on large ones; our boat requires very little to drive it through the water and conversely it requires very little to slow it down…… We heaved up our anchor late morning and motored out some way before we found a little north-easterly breeze, after which we sailed until the wind collapsed in the mid afternoon; after sitting around with the sails flopping for a while, we decide to motor the remaining distance to the nearest anchorage which was on the northern part of Danzante Island. This is not a good area for late arrivals as there are many rocks scattered around at ‘just below surface’ level and the charting is ‘extremely poor’ with the British Admiralty sometimes two miles adrift from the GPS positions; this due to the last Admiralty Surveys being carried out in the late 1800’s when they relied on Sextants and good Chronometers to derive accurate positions. The problem was they set their Chronometers at Greenwich and then had to sail half way round the world to get here and that took a year or more, needless to say, by the time they arrived the Chronometers were usually a few seconds out (or more!). Four seconds of error in time would make them a mile out in their Longitude so I guess they actually did quite well, all things considered. I have however noted that they were equally out in their Latitude at times so maybe the bunch that got to chart this area were ‘short on water, heavy on Rum’! As we moved into the channel between Isla Danzante and Isla Carmen we got wind, it was on the nose and climbed quickly to twenty knots; strangely however, we could see it was still calm behind us, calm ahead and calm on either side of the channel. This was a new experience for me; I have seen weird phenomena before but to have such an amount of wind in such a small area and surrounded by calm….. Well, that was different! We soon rounded the north end of Danzante and it went flat calm again for the remaining half mile or so to our anchorage in Honeymoon Cove. There was one other yacht at anchor in the middle of the cove but we managed to use our shoal draft to advantage and nip in close to shore in the northern part, it was a lovely setting and when the other boat left the next morning, we were able to enjoy the solitude of the place. Our biggest surprise was when a pod of Dolphins came into the cove to fish, only yards from our boat they circled their prey, noisily smacking their tails on the water to herd the smaller fish into a tight ball which they could attack easily. A couple of them jumped clear out of the water to land on their sides causing even louder smacking and no doubt encouraging the herding instinct of their prey. It was a fantastic display to watch as the evening sun set slowly behind the jagged mountain peaks that stand proud over Baja’s eastern shore only a few miles away. Apart from walking ashore and a considerable period of ‘beauty appreciation’ we also got some work done, I managed to do some painting and varnishing then completed the cleaning of the hull; the water was still cold but by keeping my sortie down to thirty minutes, it was bearable. Paula spent most of the time on the sewing machine and in the evenings Paula would download all our pictures and video and we’d usually go through them together, editing out the ‘not so good’ and having a laugh at the ‘bloopers’. Paula is also working on putting a slide show with video segments together that she will burn to a DVD, there is a surprising amount of work that requires to be done if this task is to be achieved with any degree of professionalism and she has managed, within the confines of a small cruising yacht, to produce some really great videos of our previous trips. We were quite happy in our private little cove, our only visitors being canoeists who generally passed by in groups of half a dozen or more; one group stopped to have lunch on the pebble beach and a couple of the more hardy remained for the night and erected a small tent. In the northern bay, where there was a sandy beach and a good spot for swimming, a local family had set up a temporary ‘Fish Camp’ and the whole family was out for a couple of days, camping and sleeping rough; I noticed that they went to some lengths to carry their garbage bags inland and secret them away from their camp! On Tuesday the 25th March we moved across to Puerto Escondido on the Baja side, it was only four miles so we motored to charge up the batteries and the computers; on arrival we found some space in The Waiting Room, a nice sheltered bay outside of the main Puerto and set two anchors to stop us from swinging into the moored boats, of which there were about a dozen. Soon after we were secure we were visited and welcomed by one of the local yachties; he was Canadian but had been maintaining a boat here in Escondido for the last fifteen years and spending much of his time in this area.………Looking around the bay, it was clear that most of the boats that had put down moorings here had also put down routes; as in La Paz and much of the Baja both Americans and Canadians have moved in, buying properties or boats and spending much of their retirement south of the boarder. It was nice to be welcomed and we were soon impressed with the spirit and camaraderie of this group of ‘escapees’ who have built up their own little community thousands of miles from any place they could call home. Armed with instructions and new found knowledge we went ashore in the dinghy and had a very successful afternoon; we checked in with the API representative and paid our anchoring fee then secured showers from the Marina Office (nice showers too!!). After that Paula took care of the Laundry whilst I picked up five gallons of fuel, all of which was available on the dock; we had a very successful afternoon and returned on board just before the sun vanished behind the mountains. I took the dinghy and picked up some water from a tap at the API office, we had been assured that this was good drinking water and after testing it we topped up our tanks; not all the water around the Baja is drinkable but most of it is, recently they have discovered that much of the peninsular has subterranean reservoirs just a few meters below the parched surface with huge reserves of good fresh drinking water. Our second day in Puerto Escondido we decided to head into Loreto, the local ‘big’ town about ten miles north. We had been able to establish that there was a bus that went passed on the main road at 0830hrs, this and much more information came to us via the local radio net on VHF Channel 22 which takes place at 0800hrs each morning here. We went ashore leaving plenty of time to walk up to the main road (which takes about twenty minutes). Tying the dinghy up at the dinghy-dock I was almost given a heart attack by one of the local seals who surfaced just a few inches from our stern just as I was securing the outboard; there is nothing like a big dark shape, emerging from the water close by, to get the heart racing! The bus still had not put in an appearance at 0900hrs and we were thinking of giving up when one of the locals, headed into town for breakfast, stopped and offered us a lift; it was just as well they did as I discovered later that there was no north bound bus till later in the day, the bus we’d been told about was southbound and we did see that go past almost on time. Loreto is a quiet Mexican town with basic necessities, a couple of small supermarkets, plenty of restaurants and bars, some quite good hotels and a few places to do internet. We were not very impressed with the quality of the fresh vegetables and fruit; in general everything was twenty to thirty percent more expensive than what we'd paid in La Paz, however we did get everything on our list! They have obviously been working on the towns 'tourist image', the streets were quite clean and there were some nice pedestrian areas with well trimmed trees giving shade and adding a splash of colour. There were a few boutiques and handicraft shops with the usual tourist items except that there was a Mexican Carpet maker, complete with an antique design loom, set up outside his shop where he was working away at a traditional design. This was really interesting to see and gave a full appreciation of the work involved in producing one of these fine items; you will note I said "antique design" when referring to the loom, that was because it had received many modifications and replacement bits over time but these were probably just to keep it going, it was at least traditional. We walked along the Malecon and examined the Small Boat Harbour, this had been built to accommodate the local fishing Pangas and would be rather tight for a boat like "Mr John", however it was a place come ashore in the dinghy and get shopping done so long as the conditions permitted anchoring outside. After a good look round the town we caught a bus back to the Escondido junction in the mid afternoon; it was a nice day out which we both enjoyed, the bus fare was only two dollars each and the ride alone well worth it as the road follows the coast and passes some nice vantage points with great views across to Isla Carmen. On the road back to the dinghy dock we were again given a lift by one of the local community of expatriates, everyone helps one another in this environment and it is perhaps this that contributes to why so many people come out here to live; the communities are small but the feeling of community is very strong, a thing that is sadly being lost in much of the more developed world. The next morning I went out and bought myself an extra insurance policy……. When cruising away from 'civilization', away from help, boatyards, marinas and chandleries, one has to rely on having good anchor gear and we have always had great faith in what gear we have; however it never hurts to have a little bigger anchor than what you think you need. It materialized that a boat in the anchorage was selling a good sized anchor and over two hundred feet of heavy nylon line at a fraction of its replacement value so after some discussion….. ie. Don't we really have enough anchors and gear already? I went over and made him an offer which was accepted so quickly I really felt I should have started lower……I guess he was happy and we got a great deal, so we now have some serious anchoring kit on board, we have two anchors rated for boats of between fifty and seventy feet in length! The following morning we went ashore and tried using the Wi-Fi at the 'Marina' Office, after much frustration Paula did get one short e-mail away but it was very hard work and we eventually gave up and returned to the boat where preparations were made to leave the following day. We are moving north rather quickly but that is due to our visa’s running out 5th May which we have to deal with. In the meantime we keep plodding north wishing the water would hurry up and warm up. More later as we venture further into Baja. John & Paula |
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| View from Isla Monserrat |
| Leaving Evaristo Bay |
| Sunrise at Evaristo Bay |
| View from Isla San Jose |
| Isla San Jose |
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| Isla Danzante |
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| Puerto Escondido |
| Loreto |
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