Puerto Escondido is one of the largest and most sheltered bays in the Sea of Cortez….right up until it isn't.
Talk to any cruiser who has spent more than one season in the Sea of Cortez, and you will hear tales of what can happen in Puerto Escondido when the weather gets up. Much of the time, the bay can be windy but the seas will remain relatively calm and the worst thing that happens is you get thoroughly soaked in afternoon wind and chop getting back to your boat in your dinghy. It's why every cruiser heads to Puerto Escondido if bad weather is forecast.
But then, there are other occasions of bad weather in which the wind bounces and spins off of the tall mountains of the Sierra Gigante ridge, roars down into the mooring field, and makes the boats there….dance. And the dinghies that some cruisers foolishly leave trailing in the water behind their boats? They levitate. As in: LEV-I-TATE.
The cold front that had been forecast for March 7, 2016, arrived right on time, just after sunset. First it came from the south at 12-18 knots, then clocked north and increased into the 20s. The first 20-knot gust hit The Fox sideways and ripped our precious, brand-new, Stamoid bimini right along the main line of stitching. [Oh well – I can always use another sewing repair project.]
Gusts increased overnight; the maximum we saw on the anemometer was 38. As is always the case, the wind speed itself was not the problem: the problem was that The Fox was heeling hard and spinning wildly on its mooring buoy, because of the many directions the wind gusts were coming from. Under the right conditions, Puerto Escondido's inner harbor can become quite the pinball machine.
The next day the winds eased but varied all around the compass from south to north. Clouds grew to full overcast by noon. Three PM gave us rain squalls, a very close-by lightning strike, and hail. (Denizens later reported they had not seen hail for over 10 years.)
Moderate breezy conditions continued the next 2 days. We dinghied ashore to do our usual laundry/provisioning chores and were fine until we had to return to the boat in 19-knot headwinds and a 2-foot sloppy chop. But, 'twas nothing that another shower and laundering of clothes couldn't cure. At least a certain couple of denizens were no longer complaining about how we were tied to our mooring buoy…
m
Leave a Reply