October 1 – November 2, 2013
Our summer in the sea was over, and it was time to head… North? It’s not a common direction to be heading from BLA, but that’s what we did, and it was for one reason only. Danna’s wedding was in Las Vegas on October 20, and there was no way I was missing that. My preference would have been to head south to Loreto and fly from there. But unfortunately, it was just a week or two too early for our comfort level to head south (early relative to the end of hurricane season). Many of the cruisers were heading south and some had actually left already, but like I said, it was too early for *our* comfort level. So, we settled on heading north to San Felipe so I could take a bus to Mexicali and then either rent a car or walk across the border. Since I grew up in El Centro, I was no stranger to Mexicali. In fact, I found it quite humorous that on my cruise around the world I was bussing around my old stomping grounds: San Felipe to Mexicali. Very few Sea of Cortez cruisers make it all the way up to San Felipe, in fact, the authors of our guidebook didn’t even venture that far up. And when we got there we figured out why. First, sailing in the far northern sea can be a bit harrowing. Second, San Felipe, relatively speaking, isn’t really that nice. Sure, it’s a nice vacation spot for folks from southern california wanting to get away but not too far away, but compared to the many other places we had been on the Baja Peninsula it just didn’t compare. However, it was a safe place for Tim to stay with Exodus while the rest of us headed home, and it’s kind of fun to be able to say we circumnavigated the Baja peninsula.
Puerto Refugio
We left BLA village with Lady Carolina on Oct 1 headed for Puerto Refugio, which was a natural stop between BLA and San Felipe. It was about 45 miles away, and we had been there before but didn’t stay as long as we would have liked due to the rampant no-see-ums. We had heard from other cruisers that this time of year, when it has cooled off a bit, the no-see-ums wouldn’t be so prevelant, so we happily headed that direction. We got a bit of late start, so we didn’t make it all the way to Puerto Refugio the first day. We stopped at Alcatraz for one night. The sail from BLA to Alcatrz was kind of crazy. We went from moderate winds to absolutely nothing, and then not 10 min later we had 25 kts and had to reef the head sail. We also lost our big trash can overboard and were much too slow to retrieve it before it sank to the depths. We pretty much failed at that man over board drill, although most of the time was wasted debating whether we should go back for it, which I’m guessing we wouldn’t have done if it was one of the boys that had fallen over.
Our sail from Alcatrz to Refugio the next day was pretty uneventful and we joined Charra in the Middle bight of the East bay. After being in BLA village for several days the guys were all itching to get in the water with spears and guns, and I’m not kidding, they suited up and dropped the dinghy in record time. Bob and Joyce were having us all over for dinner on Charra that night, and they asked about taking fish out of the freezer just in case, but we (Carolina and I) were pretty confident they wouldn’t come back empty handed. And they didn’t. We had a great evening eating, drinking, and talking, and Joyce brought out a deck of cards for the kids, so they could stay entertained as well.
There was a big Northern blow in the forecast, so we either needed to leave the next day ahead of it to get to the next anchorage north up the coast (at Bahia Willard) or wait it out at Refugio, which doesn’t really have a stellar anchorage for north wind protection. We decided to stay at Refugio to enjoy the anchorage and hanging out with Lady Carolina just a little longer. Where we were anchored in the East Bay was wide open to the north so we moved over to what is called the West Bay, but it’s really just the channel between Isla Angel de la Guarda (the huge island) and a much smaller island that we had to pass through to get to the East Bay. When we first moved over there it was pretty rolly from the SW swell, and we thought it would settle down once the wind shifted to the north, but it was strong enough to bend around the point and come through the channel as well. Both we and Lady Carolina moved around within the channel a couple times trying to find the best, most protected spots. While dropping anchor one of those times, the windlass stopped working again (see more info below). Unfortunately because of the strong wind and swell we didn’t really do much while at Refugio until our last two days, but those days were amazing, and more than made up for it. We hiked up on some of the hills and had some amazing snorkling. One day we had a family snorkle, and I called it “land of the minis.” The fish were all very striking with many different colors, but they were all very very small. Not too far away, though, were some bigger fish and Tim and Brenden encountered a school of Yellowtail (mmm… sahsimi). We have a great video of Tim spearing a yellowtail, that one day I will have enough bandwidth to load to facebook . As he was pulling it in it got away and Brenden was johnny on the spot in the background and shot it through the eyes before it got too far. Our last night at Refugio we had desserts and drinks on Exoudus with Lady Carolina to say good-bye and to celebrate our successful summer in the sea (no tropical storms and no chubascos). It’s too bad that because the wind had died the no-see-ums actually found us and we all got eaten alive that night. We toughed it out though and hung out playing cards well into the night. We weren’t going to see Lady Carolina for about 6 weeks, which would be quite strange considering we had been pretty much inseparable for 4 months.
Passage to San Felipe
The passage from Puerto Refugio to San Felipe was about 111 miles, and we planned to go straight there rather than stop at any of the few anchorages along the way simply because with the anchor windlass issues, we didn’t want Tim to have to lower/raise the anchor manually. We had been tracking for a weather window and we left in the mid morning on Oct 8 when the wind was supposed to be high teens low 20s from the SW. Since we were heading NW this would give us a strong beam reach. That’s not exactly how it worked out.
San Felipe
The relief I felt when we pulled into that marina will always result in me having a soft spot for San Felipe. Yes, it was a safe haven, but actually it wasn’t much else. One of the first things to notice about San Felipe and the far northern sea are the immense tide swings. Around the full moon the difference between low and high tide can be up to 22 feet! The harbor is dredged but there are severe shoals, one being right next to the marina berths. The marina was a small, Fonatur (government run) marina, and we were the only cruising boat there among local fishing boats and a couple of research boats. The marina wasn’t connected to running water, so they had a well that was periodically filled. They were very conservative with the water, and they shut it off every evening around 5pm when the guys were off duty. When I first went up to use the bathrooms, they were locked, so I went to the marina office to ask about it, and he said, “yeah, now that you guys are here we will leave those unlocked for you.” They had laundry facilities that kept eating my tokens, but I figured out they left the top unlocked and I could reach the mechanism to start the washer without a token. I gave up on the dryers and dried our laundry in our cockpit. Overall, the Fonatur was comparable to the one we stayed at in Santa Rosalia, however, it was less secure because the dock entrance was outside of the gated marina area.
The marina was located a couple miles south of the town of San Felipe, and we enjoyed walking along the beach at low tide to get there. Well, I know I enjoyed the walk. Alex and Brenden only complained a little bit, so overall, not too bad. San Felipe has a small malecon lined with restaurants and shops, and our first day there we landed at the Taco Factory, which was nothing special, but it’s always fun to eat out after being away from civilization for a couple weeks. The town is very tourist oriented, but it seemed misplaced because it wasn’t exactly hustling and bustling with activity. We found a pizza joint owned by a Canadian where we could watch the Dodger game, and he told us this is one of the slowest times of the year.
Provisioning in San Felipe wasn’t much different than anywhere else, but there were small things that made you realize how close to the border you were. Like lemons. They had huge, juicy lemons, which we hadn’t seen at all anywhere else in Baja.
Although there weren’t a lot of other boats at the marina, we did meet a few interesting people. The same morning we arrived, a very small (19 ft) sailboat pulled into a slip across from us, and the guy got out and went directly over to hang out with the Mexican guys who were working on the research boat. Later we talked to him and had him over for dinner, and he was a single hander who was going to sail the Sea of Corez for a few months. He had launched his boat in BLA and headed North to San Felipe. Like us, he had read that the Northern Sea is a road less travelled, and that drew him to it. However, he was at anchor off the coast just south of San Felipe during the storm that we experienced, and he had a pretty harrowing night at anchor. So, he was rethinking his plan. He was there in San Felipe with us for about a week and ended up loading his boat, Updog (What’s Updog, I don’t know, what’s up with you?) back onto the trailer with intent to drive down to La Paz, relaunch, and cruise around there for awhile. We never heard from or saw him again, so we hope had a satisfying experience, regardless of what he ended up doing.
We also met the scientists who were conducting the research. They were studying Vaquitas, which are small porpoises who only live in the northern Sea of Cortez. They are endangered due to fishing nets, so the research effort is to try to assess the size and health of the remaining population. They had a very successful expedition a few years ago, but this time, mostly due to the weather, they hadn’t seen a single one. They gave us some literature and coloring books for the boys, and Brenden became quite interested in the plight of the Vaquita and did one of his science projects on them.
While we were in the states, Tim befriended one of the guys that worked in the Marina, whose English was spotty at best, but better than Tim’s Spanish, so I can only imagine the extent of their conversations. Of course, everyone speaks beer. He had worked before at a cook in a restaurant, so he showed Tim how to cook shrimp. He also showed Tim around the town, and by that I mean mostly the bars. When we were back and we went out to dinner, a bartender at a restaurant came over and hugged me like we were old friends!
I’m very happy we went to San Felipe for many reasons, but when it was time to leave, we couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I think the thing we absolutely liked the least was the bird poop! The marina is in the flight path and it was near impossible to clean Exodus fast enough to keep up. Good riddance, stupid pelicans! We left San Felipe on November 2 with a plan to stay nearer to the coast this time. We were hoping to get to Puerto Escondido in time to catch up with Lady Carolina, and we were looking forward to stopping a few places along the way.
Gresham Family Exodus 