Underway 10: Puerto Ballandra/Isla Carmen to Punta Mangles/Baja mainland – 2/27 Engine gave no trouble on start; motored in 5-8kt light air out of Puerto Ballandra at 1015, N 20mi. past Isla Coronados to the new-to-us anchorage of Punta Mangles. Odd N swell of 1'-2' at 3 seconds was accompanied by no wind. However, by noon,…
Again with the recap. Underway 7: Puerto Escondido to Punta Colorada, SE Isla Carmen – 2/22 Couldn’t pass up a good weather forecast so left Pto. Escondido a day early for a short 15-mi. motor in light air to the SE side of Isla Carmen. Plan: explore a couple anchorages we’d not seen before. 2…
Here we go again with a recap of the posts that never posted while underway. Now, with better editing! More commentary! And pictures! Underway 4: Cazadero to Timbabichi on Baja Peninsula – 2/1 Motored 4.5 hrs. in light & variable N wind for 23 mi. Arrived 1300. Received a mayday at 1530 & by 1600 were…
Our clever plan for posting via satellite while underway, hasn't quite worked out yet. We posted, but sadly no text made it through to this here blog. We are college graduates so the problem will get resolved. Eventually. Meanwhile, here's what we've been trying to post for the past 2 months. Let us stumble back…
A remote post – does this even work? We try to avoid these since it sucks up Skymate bandwidth – but with no reliable email for the next six months we will use it a bit more often – here’s hoping.
It was 0200 on a dark and clear night in the Sea of Cortez – also known as the Gulf of California. We were motoring along at 1600 rpm in a 1985 40 foot O’Day sailboat making about 3 knots, the oil pressure was wavering between 7 and 15 pounds, (the engine was rated for…
The cruising publications are correct when they describe the great travel to be had amongst the islands in the Sea of Cortez within a very small radius of La Paz. Like, within a 35-mile radius are four islands plus the Baja peninsula. For those of you from the PacNW, think "San Juan and Gulf Islands, but…
At least one popular sailing publication encourages boaters in Mexico to spend as little time as possible in the Sea of Cortez in November, or bypass it altogether, and instead steers them to mainland destinations like Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatanejo and Manzanillo. It's hard to tell whether or not these areas were popular with cruisers before the sailing publications…
We had about one week to really get everything done in Mazatlan after hurricane season officially ended there – on Nov 1 the rates doubled from $.27 to $.50 a foot. For October 2008, we spent about $200 running an 8000 BTU Home Depot AC unit 20 out of 24 hours. It's real hot in…
We had some hitchhikers with us on November's crossing of the southern Sea of Cortez. About 25 miles offshore from Mazatlan, two hummingbird-size moths landed in our cockpit. They found spots with good grips for insects (like the binoculars we have hanging from the helm in that pic over there); used their forelegs to shield…