August 19 – October 1, 2013
After a couple days of provisioning in BLA village, we headed to the far northern end of BLA to La Gringa for the August Cruisers’ Full Moon Party. We arrived a day early with Lady Carolina in order to scout the estuary and figure out the tides. La Gringa is formed by a point of land that is a hook reaching out and down to the southeast. There is a lagoon with a fairly narrow opening such that at extreme tide changes the water rushes in and out at a pretty good clip. The full moon party was a lot of fun but one of the highlights of La Gringa had to be the whale sharks. They are huge efficient eating machines and they are absolutely ambivalent about any human activity going on around them as they swim around sucking in all the tiny plankton, krill, and microalgae they can eat. Tim and Brenden (and many others in the anchorage) got in and swam around with them. They move pretty fast sometimes and it’s hard to keep up.
The day after the party everyone dispersed, and we stuck around one more day with Lady Carolina, and then we headed to Las Rocas, which is an anchorage on the west side of Isla Coronado (Isla Smith). Isla Coronado (Isla Smith) is a small island northeast of BLA, and I have no idea why it has two names. There is a dramatic symmetric cone-shaped dormant volcano on the island, which had a hiking trail to the top, but we never made it there since it was too bloody hot. Las Rocas had nice nooks and crannies to paddleboard around in as well as several nice places to snorkel. It was a beautiful anchorage, but there were no-see-ums there to deal with. This time Lady Carolina was anchored closest to land so they seemed to get the brunt of the visits from the tiny bugs. While we were at Las Rocas was when tropical storm Ivo was traveling up the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula, and we actually got a fair amount of cloud cover and rain for a few days. We had to run the engines to charge the battery bank for the first time (since we primarily rely on solar).
We left Las Rocas on Monday, Aug 26, and since there was fair weather in the forecast we headed back down south to Ensenada el Pescador, which was the anchorage that Carolina and I had walked to when we were anchored at El Quemado. El Pescador has a fabulous beach, and our first afternoon there the boys all played football, frisbee, and bocce ball. The next morning I enjoyed a fabulous run as well. Our fair weather didn’t last long, and we ended up getting blasted out of there with 20 kt winds from the East (straight into the anchorage) and rain. However, the wind died as we turned back into BLA and we ended up motor-sailing first to BLA village for a quick groceries run and then down to La Mona, which is at the very southern end of BLA. La Mona is dotted with houses along the shoreline, which are apparently mostly inhabited with “gringos” who leave for the summer to escape the heat. There were several other boats in the anchorage, and we ended up having a nice beach potluck with True Blue V, Sea Note, Drifter, Entres Nous, and Lady Carolina.
After we spent another couple of days at BLA village, we decided to venture out on our own for the first time in months. What would we do without Lady Carolina at our side? We didn’t go far, just to a small island about 5nmi to the northwest of the village, called La Ventana. It was a very nice, small anchorage, but our time there was tainted a bit because Alex had an ear infection that really flared up, and we had to head back to the village to take him to the medical clinic. Also, while at La Ventana we had our only almost real Chubasco of the season. Jake’s nightly radio Chubasco report put us all at high alert, and sure enough, in the late evening we had lightning all around us. The winds picked up around 11:30, and wouldn’t you know it, at La Ventana we only experienced winds in the high teens to mid-20s with gusts in the 27-30 kt range, while back at the village they saw sustained winds up in the high 30s. There was a lot of VHF radio chatter about how much anchor chain everyone had out and what winds they were seeing. Luckily, no one dragged, and everyone came through totally unscathed.
We couldn’t stay away from Lady Carolina for long, and after La Ventana we hooked up with them on the 35 nmi sail up to the northern end of Isla Angel de la Guarda to an area called Puerto Refugio. We were a four-boat caravan including Dazzler and Chara as well. It was a wonderful full day sail, and we all had our spinnaker chutes flying. Bob on Chara even popped two chutes (since Chara is a Ketch). Puerto Refugio is far enough north that it lays a little further off the beaten path. Not even all the boats that stay in the BLA for the summer make it up that far. It’s a beautiful area, rugged and secluded. We would have absolutely loved this place except for the daily thunder and lightning and, of course, the no-see-ums. We anchored in the middle bight of the east bay, and as soon as we dropped and I was sitting on one of the swim steps the no-see-ums started nibbling, so both we and Lady Carolina hauled anchor and moved out further away from land in almost 50 ft of water. That really didn’t stop them. Actual quotes from our logbook include, “No-see-ums are the devil,” and, “I am an anti-itch gel junkie.” The latter quote was actually the only thing written in the log one day. Finally, after 5 days we could stand it no longer, and we bailed back down south. We had a slow sail with little wind, so we stopped at a lesser-known anchorage (since it’s not in the most popular guide book) called Alcatraz. It is a north-facing anchorage, so we knew we could only stay for one night because the north winds were supposed to blow again. We hung out on Exodus with Lady Carolina, and Craig and Leanne from True Blue V. We learned that True Blue V had left San Diego heading south on the exact same day we did. It took us getting all the way up to the northern Sea of Cortez to run into each other.
We sailed from Alcatraz to La Gringa for some protection from the strong northern wind, and before we knew it it was time to head back to BLA village for the annual BLA “Regatta” and then down to La Mona for the September Cruisers’ Full Moon Party. It was Sept 19th and we were starting to get a much-needed reprieve from the sweltering hot weather. I celebrated one morning when the thermometer read 75 deg when I got up. While at La Mona, we realized Brenden’s birthday was going to come before we needed to go the BLA to reprovision, and Alex hadn’t picked out a gift for him yet. So, we took Exodus for a day trip from La Mona to BLA village so that Alex could get Brenden a present. We also hit a tienda or two, and I almost cried when I saw red, yellow, and yes, actually orange bell peppers. We stayed at La Mona a few more days, including a “progressive” party turned regular old boat party on Mai Tai Roa, and a celebration for Carolina’s birthday (she’s in her late 30’s like we are.)
Brenden really had his heart set on spending his birthday back at La Gringa in order to play in the lagoon rapids, but strong SW winds were expected, so we headed instead to Isla Mitlan. Isla Mitlan is a very small piece of land detached from Isla Coronado (Isla Smith) just north of the Las Rocas Anchorage. The angle of Isla Milan seemed like it would provide decent protection from SW wind and swell. We had a great day for Brenden’s birthday, but the next couple days the forecasted SW winds came more from the west and then the northwest, and it was uncomfortable bordering on unsafe, so we went back to La Gringa after all. The weather continued cooling off and at Isla Mitlan we needed sweatshirts for the first time in I don’t know how long, and at La Gringa the logbook reads “68 deg when I got up this morning!” The wind blew like crazy while we were at La Gringa, so we played a lot of cards. We taught the boys Hearts, and the first time we played Brenden inadvertently shot the moon for a come from behind win.
We made one final stop at BLA village for provisions, fuel, groceries, and internet. We were now on a schedule, because my sister Danna’s wedding was on Oct 20, and we were going to sail all the way up to San Felipe so I could take a bus across the border. I started tracking for a good weather window to head north, and we pulled out of BLA for the last time on Tuesday Oct. 1.
Gresham Family Exodus 