Gresham Family Exodus

March 1 – April 25, 2013

Our route so far has been reasonably paced down the Pacific Coast of Baja California and around the cape up into the Sea of Cortez.

We navigated out of San Diego at night on Thurs, Feb. 28 bound for Ensenada.  We weren’t sure we would actually stay in Ensenada, but we wanted to clear into Mexico there so we would be able to stop if we felt like it along the way down the Baja coast.  It took roughly 12 hours to get to Ensenada, so we arrived with plenty of daylight to make sure we could get through all of the formalities.  The clearing in process was confusing at first.  First of all, we didn’t know where we could park the boat, and we were getting no response when hailing the Port Captain on VHF 16.  Finally, we enlisted the help of a local marina and after that, it went fairly smoothly.  The Port Captain, Immigration, Customs, and the Bank are all in one office building, so there was no trekking back and forth across town required.

We ended up deciding not to stay in Ensenada, since there was no anchoring allowed in the harbor, and having just left home, we weren’t exactly ready to stay in another marina just yet.  So, we left Ensenada after being there for all of about 4 and a half hours.  Our next stop was Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay), and it took about 3 days to get there.  This was longer than it took us during the Baja Ha Ha in October, mostly due to lack of wind after leaving Ensenada.  This was the first time in a while that we weren’t in some kind of hurry, so we weren’t frustrated by just drifting along without much wind.  And there were whales everywhere!  You couldn’t look outside without seeing a spout of water or a fin or a fluke.  We didn’t get much school done those first few days.  We were just soaking it all in.

Turtle Bay is a small fishing town and we enjoyed relaxing at the anchorage.  We were able to pick up fresh veggies and milk and we enlisted the help of some local boys just finishing baseball practice to help us find a restaurant, where Brenden had “the best bean and cheese burrito ever!”  After three days in Turtle Bay, we left on Thursday afternoon, and we decided to go on to Cabo San Lucas without another stop along the way.  We arrived in Cabo Sunday morning, March 10 after having strong winds behind us most of the way.  Cabo was fun because it was familiar to me and Tim but new for Alex and Brenden.  We anchored in the bay and we were close enough for the boys to kayak to the beach and play in the water while we stayed on the boat, so they enjoyed Cabo much more than Turtle Bay.  Being a larger town, we were able to take care of laundry and some light provisioning, but after four days we were definitely ready to leave the spring break scene behind.  We left on Thursday before sunrise, and from this point forward we were in new territory.  Also, from this point forward we haven’t had any passages longer than half a day since the anchorages are so closely spaced.  We have enjoyed moving slowly and exploring them.

Our first stop around the tip of Baja was Bahia Los Frailes, where there was a long stretch of beach, excellent for barefoot running.  Again, the boys were able to easily kayak to the beach and play in the sand and water, and there was also a campground there and other kids to play with.  We also had our first cruisers “happy hour” with another cruising couple preparing to make the jump across the Pacific.

After a couple days, we departed at night so we would arrive at the next anchorage, Bahia de Los Muertos, around sunrise.  There was no wind, so we motored the whole way, and I had the second watch, so I slowed down so we wouldn’t arrive while it was still dark.  We only stayed there for one night because the beach wasn’t as nice for playing or running.  The boys actually dumped the kayak trying to launch from the beach to get back to the boat.  However, we did enjoy a nice, huge lunch at the restaurant there and a pleasant walk around some tide pools.  It was also the first time we were able to get decent wifi from the boat so we were all like addicts getting our fix.  I spent all evening uploading photos to Facebook.

We raised anchor the next morning and passed through the Cerralvo Channel and the San Lorenzo Channel.  We didn’t go all the way to La Paz just yet but stopped at Puerto Balandra, and it was absolutely amazing.  It was by far the most beautiful anchorage yet.  There were several white sand beaches and shallow turquoise water stretching far offshore.  We stayed several days, even though our first evening we had our initiation to the night time corumuel weather “feature” of the south sea.  There was great shallow snorkeling and I even managed to get another run in on one of the longer beaches in the bay.  We were sad to be leaving a nice anchorage to rejoin civilization, but we needed to move on to La Paz and take care of several things.

The channel leading into La Paz is narrow, so it creates a relatively strong current as the tides go in and out.  A very large cruising community exists in La Paz, and we plugged in immediately joining the morning VHF cruisers net our first morning there, and we were able to easily find out which boatyards had facilities that could haul out a boat as wide as ours.  We arrived in La Paz on a Thursday and we were on the rails and Abaroa Boat Yard on Saturday morning.  We were living “on the hard” until Wednesday, and by then we were all ready to be back in the water.  Tim worked around the clock on boat projects and the boys and I continued our school routine and made several trips to the store for provisioning.

After the haulout we stayed one night in the anchorage and then couldn’t get out of La Paz fast enough.  We headed to Isla Espiritu Santo, an island to the north of La Paz, where there is beautiful anchorage after beautiful anchorage.  We decided to start at the bottom and work our way up.  So, we stayed the weekend at Bahia San Gabriel.  Our first day there the Ranger boat came to ask us for our permits since all of the islands in the Sea of Cortez are part of the national park system.  We said we would like to purchase them, but they told us we had to get them in La Paz, but since the office is closed they said it was OK for us to stay until Monday or Tuesday.  At Bahia San Gabriel we went on an absolutely miserable hike across the island.  The beach on the other side was very nice, but nobody thought it was worth the desert wasteland we hiked across to get there.  I’m bummed it was that bad because now I don’t think the boys will voluntarily go on any more hikes with me.

On Monday we made a day trip back to La Paz to get permits, which ended up taking me and Brenden several hours and a long taxi ride all over town.  This was my first real “no one speaks English and I don’t speak Spanish” moment, but we got through it with the phrasebook and Google translate on my phone.   I purchased annual permits, since the price payoff point was only about 5-6 days, and that means we can stop at any of the islands without having to worry about it again.  We arrived back at Isla Espiritu Santo at night so we went back to the familiar spot we had previously anchored, and we ended up having our worst night yet at anchor.  Bahia San Gabriel is a South West facing anchorage, and the wind kicked up from that direction so we had no protection from wind or swell.  It was almost worse than being underway.  We moved around the corner the next morning to the bottom lobe of Puerto Ballena.  It had a little more protection, but the wind died later that morning, so it didn’t really matter at that point.  We stayed just one night and then scooted up to Ensenada del Candalero.  Here there are camps on the beach out of where they run kayak tours around the island.

The next stop was Caleta Partida, which was our favorite anchorage on the island.  It is actually an anchorage wedged between Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida, and there is a very shallow strip of water between the islands.  It offered little wind protection, in fact in North winds they kind of funneled through the landforms of the two islands.  However, it offered plenty of swell protection, so we had comfortable nights at anchor.  We took a dinghy trip between the islands and around to the other side to visit some sea caves the guide book talked about.  The water visibility was amazing and we all had a great time snorkeling.  On the way back it was pretty much low tide so we had to walk the dinghy through the islands since the outboard would have dragged on the sand.

After a few nights, we decided we needed to head back to La Paz.  We were at a crossroads regarding where we should head for the summer (north or south) and we needed internet access to do some research.   By that point, we had also decided we really did need a bigger anchor, so we thought La Paz would be as good a place as any to pick that up.  We had good timing because we were here for “Bay Fest” which is a little weekend festival put on by the local cruising club that includes a sailboat race in Bahia de La Paz, a few seminars (including how to prep your boat for a hurricane and how to use a pressure cooker), and lots of fun and games, including Bocce ball and backward kayak races.

Although our time back in La Paz has been fun, we are very ready to leave.  It’s been over 2 weeks since we ordered the anchor so we did make one more trip out to Isla Partida and visited Bahia Grande, Ensenada el Embudo, and Los Islotes.  At Los Islotes there is a natural sea lion rookery and they are very accustomed to humans so we were able to swim with them.  A few were very playful and spent a lot of time diving with Tim and Alex.   Brenden and I get cold too quickly so we are usually out of the water first, which means we watched most of the swimming with sea lions from the dinghy.   Since returning to La Paz for the fourth time we have had the good fortune to meet several of “kid boats.”  Up to this point, other kids have been very rare, so it’s been a welcome treat to have play dates (for kids) and happy hours (for parents).  When we leave La Paz we will start a slow journey up into the Sea of Cortez.