Baja Bound

Our time in Banderas Bay has come to an end for this season and we need to start heading north and into the Gulf of California. This year we will have crew for the two over night passages.

Sandy and Marc arrived on March 10.  We spent the next few days exploring La Cruz, Bucerias and Yelapa. We were having a great sail back from Yelapa when Derick noticed another tear in a recently fixed spot on the main sail. A quick call, its now 3pm on a Saturday, to Mike from PV Sails and he said he can fix it tomorrow. We had hoped to take advantage of the favourable weather window to start heading north the next day. Mike met us at the dock at 10:30 to take our sail to his repair loft, we spent some time checking out the La Cruz Market and within a couple of hours Mike had our sail repaired.  Big thanks to Mike for fixing us up on a Sunday so we could be on our way and at least get to Punta de Mita.

From there it’s a quick hop up to Chacala. We had to show Sandy and Marc the beach and restaurants as its always a great stop for garlic and coconut shrimp.

We left Chacala at first light for the first of our over night passages. 150 miles to Mazatlan.  We managed to sail for a bit, but it was mostly a motorboat ride.  We caught 3 Jack Crevalle fish along the way and arrived at El Cid Marina in Mazatlan in the fog 30 hours later.

We spent 3 days showing Sandy and Marc or favourite spots in Mazatlan. These include the Malecon, the Golden Zone and of course Old Town. The historical buildings in downtown Mazatlan are so beautiful.  The architecture, colours and lighting make exploring very enjoyable. We needed to do some provisioning while in town, so they got the tour of Walmart and Sam’s Club as well. No extra charge for these.

From Mazatlan it’s a 38-hour, 190 mile, crossing of the Gulf of California to get over to the Baja side. We crossed and anchored in Ensenada de Muertos. We went ashore and to an often-recommended little restaurant. Strangest restaurant experience ever. We arrived and the place was full, waited and shortly a table became available. While its being cleaned for us some other patrons grabbed the chairs for extra people arriving at their table. Restaurant finds us some patio chairs and we are seated. Long wait for drink order. Even longer wait for drinks to arrive. Longer wait still for food order to be taken. Food order never shows up. An hour and a half later we paid for the drinks and went back to the boat for peanut butter and jam sandwiches. To top off the night, when checking the engines in preparation for the next day’s trip, I discovered that one of the raw water, cooling pumps had a failed oil seal and now I need to change out the pump and clean up a bunch of spilled oil from the engine room. This was not one of my better nights.

From Muertos it was north and into the Islands around La Paz. First stop was Caleta Partida. We have anchored in here countless times and never had an issue. This time we dropped the anchor into a field of seaweed. Seaweed fouls the anchor, and it will not set and hold the boat in place. After two tries in this spot we moved to another spot in the bay and had no issue.

A couple stops later and soon enough our time with Sandy and Marc had run out. We spent the last few days with them in La Paz before they flew from San Jose del Cabo back to Vancouver.  It was great having them aboard for 17 days. We enjoyed lots of great restaurants, several varieties of tequila and many card games. 

La Paz is our last cell phone and wifi location for the next 7 to 10 days. After provisioning and a couple of errands we will be heading up the east side of the Baja coast towards Puerto Penasco.