Once we passed the upper-Baja drift net and entered the port of Santa Rosalía we had a grand
time seeing cruising friends again, and meeting new ones. Most cruisers
in Santa Rosalía in July were making their way north; only The Fox and
a very few others were going south, ever mindful of the summertime weather
forecasts. We began listening to SSB weather reports twice a day;
ultimately July proved to be a quiet, storm-free month, occasional
mainland convection and chubascos notwithstanding. We got it easy in
July 2009.
Upon leaving
Santa Rosalía we took shorter day trips, exploring new-to-us
south-protected anchorages whenever possible. Thus our itinerary took
us to Sweet Pea Cove on Isla San Marcos (27deg. 14'N/112deg. 06'W)
where we weathered a delightful midnight chubasco that included
thunder, lightning, and gusts to 38-40 knots. Our anchor held well, and
GB let out an extra 30 feet of chain at 0300, ultimately giving us 160
feet of chain in 25' of water. We slept in the next morning.
Other
anchorages came and went – admittedly a bit faster than we typically
like to cruise, but The Fox was smellin' the barn in Mazatlán and would
not be denied. We battled aggressive, swarming bees in Playa Santo
Domingo at the entrance to Bahía Concepción (26deg. 52'N/111deg. 51'W);
snorkeled and looked for seashells in the southern anchorage of Caleta
San Juanico (26deg. 21'N/111deg. 25'W); and checked out three anchorages
on Isla Carmen's east side before a threatening
thunderstorm chased us in to Puerto Escondido for a night. Note to
sportfishers: in July the area between Caleta San Juanico and Isla
Carmen has a lot of marlin just begging to grab the line you're towing
for dorado. I am very glad that both of the marlin GB hooked, were able
to easily self-release. I have no idea how the two of us would ever
land a marlin but they sure are purty when they jump.
Next
stop was Isla Monserrate and the beautiful anchorage off Yellowstone
Beach on its northern side (25deg. 43'N/111deg. 03'W). In calm July
weather we got to enjoy the turquoise blue water of the shallow shelf
that extends from Monserrate north to the Rocas Galeras, contrasted
with the dark yellow bluffs of Monserrate's beach. This is a really
pretty place that deserves at least 4 days of your time. We didn't do Monserrate justice, but spearfishing
and beachcombing both yielded favorable results for us. Plus now, I need a geologist
or seashell expert to explain to me whether the high layers of crumbly
yellow rock on shore that contain all those scallop shells are a recent
deposit formed by a mudslide or deposited by a storm, or some kind of
very old deposit that has eroded to expose the shells? Ideas, anyone?
We
continued south from Monserrate to Punta San Telmo on the Baja mainland
(25deg. 20'N/110deg. 58'W), and to Isla San Francisco (24deg. 51'N/110deg.
34'W). Due to unsettled weather we tried two of Isla San Francisco's
anchorages before giving up entirely and moving to the SE shelter of
the entrance to Amortajada Lagoon on the SW side of Isla San Jose
(24deg. 53'N/110deg. 35'W). We had a lot of company there that day.
We
used Amortajada as our jumping-off spot to cross the Sea of Cortez to
Mazatlán, some 255 miles away, instead of taking more time to move
further south and cross the Sea to Mazatlán at Bahía de los Frailes, where the distance across the Sea is only 165
miles but where the anchorages are all exposed to summertime southerly weather and swell. Our strategy was to also avoid the nightly thunderstorms that were building and proceeding north
along the mainland and Baja shorelines this time of year. Ultimately our strategy
succeeded: no thunderstorms came near us as we stayed roughly in the
center of the Sea…though there was little in the way of wind, either.
And thus we bobbed our way off the Sea and in to Mazatlán on July 31,
2009, ending our second circuit of the Sea of Cortez. And a fine one it
was.
m
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