Bahia de Magdalena (Mag Bay), Baja California, Mexico

 

11/9/2021

               This morning is sunny and the anchorage is calm.  We had a marvelous 350 mile sail from Ensenada over the first three days of passage, cracking along at 6 or 7 knots the whole way.  I owe a lot of catch-up posts to give some background on how we got here.  For now, let me summarize it this way.

               We’ve hit milestones all along the way from Seattle.  The first was getting underway to begin with.  Then there were the first whale sightings for Jen and I – we saw whales every day on passage.  Porpoises and dolphins playing in the bow wake.  The next was coming in under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, completing our first long leg and the most uncomfortable one.  Our onboard advisor Nancy said goodbye to us there to return to Seattle.  So after a month long stay in SF, when we started on our own, it was a milestone beginning part two – just the two of us.  South of San Francisco, the milestones started to change in their nature.  How so?  They became a little less about sailing milestones and more about glimpsing the richness that the cruising life could promise.   Palm trees started to grow more prevalently.  A friend gifted me a fishing rod and gear when we stayed in Santa Barbara.  We finally pumped up the paddleboards in Alimitos Bay in Los Angeles.  We used our dinghy every day to get to shore on Santa Catalina Island.  The milestone of sailing from San Diego to Ensenada – entering a new country for the first time on our voyage.

               Along the way there were visits with old friends, as well as new friends met.  This last 5 day passage marks a milestone as me and Jen’s longest continuous run.  We are anchored in Mag Bay.  Here’s a pic.

I’m working on adding a  bird list so far to the right.  I don’t always get pics, and the pics aren’t always great.  It’s a work in progress.

As for some of the catch-up posts, at some point, I want to write about our wine tasting outside of Ensenada in the Valle de Guadelupe, but that will have to be forthcoming.  I don’t think I’ll ever get to the passage down the West Coast of the U.S. from Seattle, but who knows?  For now, I’ll start us after we left Ensenada, Mexico, and are on passage to Bahia de Magdalena down the Baja Coast. 

 

  11/5/2021

At sea, 40 miles off the coast of Baja California Sur.

We’ve had a phenomenal 350 nautical mile straight run of sailing at 5-7 knots.  We decided to skip Isla Cedros to take advantage of the favorable winds, and make the stretch for Bahia Magdalena (Mag Bay).  The wind died this morning, so we fired up the engine, much needed to recharge the batteries anyway.  The seas are flat calm – thinking it might be a good morning to take a shower with calm seas and hot water from running the engine. 

               I’ve been finding dead squid covering the deck in the mornings. 

They seem to launch their assault in the dead of night or wee hours of the morning.  I’m not sure how this happens – there haven’t been breaking waves over the deck to carry them – are they making a mad leap to storm these pearly gates?  This is the second morning I’ll have to clear the deck of the detritus of their calamari carcasses.  There are always 2 or 3 more than you think, and be sure to check the propane locker. They can slip in there, and who wants to spend a day wondering where that smell came from when it’s a sneaky calamari that jumped on deck, slid in to the propane locker and died?

               On the VHF I’ve been monitoring a boat in distress about 100 NM ahead (South) of us.  Their engine transmission failed, and they are adrift.  They’ve contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, that, from what I understand, still comes to assist U.S. boats this far south of the U.S. border.  After a little bit of back and forth between the boat and the Coast Guard, I realized the boat was moored across the fairway from us at the marina in Ensenada.  They left the day before us.

               The day before yesterday I put a line in the water and caught my first fish, a Skipjack Tuna I named Skippy.  I pan fried filets in olive oil, garlic and chile flakes for dinner, and made the left overs in to tuna salad sandwiches for lunch the next day.  Skipjack Mike, Jen calls me.

Skippy.

               Finally feels warmer today.  Latitude 26.10 degrees North – we’ll be crossing the Tropic of Cancer at 23.5 degrees soon, to enter the tropics proper. We started at 48 degrees North up in Seattle.   A degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles, and Brightnest can cover about 120 nautical miles a day or about 2 degrees of latitude in a 24 hour period, give or take.  We’ve made closer to 140 nautical miles a day on the first days of this passage.

               This far out the bird life has really dropped off compared to what we typically saw 10 miles offshore. I’ve spotted flying fish (doesn’t make the bird list by official standards, I’m told), and a huge fish leapt from the water yesterday before sunset – some kind of large billfish like a marlin or sailfish.  We also see large dolphins but have yet to identify them.

 

11/6/2021

At sea, 40 miles off the coast of Baja California Sur.   50 miles out from Bahia Magdalena.

Winds haven’t picked up so it looks like that 350 mile run is over and I expect we’ll motor in to our destination.  We’ll anchor tonight either in Bahia Magdalena (Mag Bay) or Bahia Santa Maria if the timing doesn’t look like we can get to Mag Bay before dark. Neither of us want to mess with picking out a spot and anchoring in the dark at a new anchorage if we can avoid it. We’ve been attempting to time our route to keep us behind, or at least out of the way of, the Baja Ha Ha  In case you’ve never heard of it, the Baja Ha Ha is a huge rally of boats that head down as a group from San Diego to Baja at the beginning of the season (Nov.). This year is a big one – maybe a bigger serving because of all the people who had to cancel last year because of COVID?  I believe I read 190 boats.  That. Is. A. Lot. Of. Boats. Statistically, all the breakage, mishaps, and generally fuck ups that normally occur 1% of the time will happen to two of those boats a day. Jen and I aren’t antisocial, but the Baja Ha Ha is probably too much of a traveling crowd for us.  Plus it can be a little worrying to be around party boats.  Here’s what it looks like on AIS as they started down (the pink Armada cloud of boats).  

Don’t get me wrong, there was a time when I would have gladly joined the Ha Ha – hell I’d have been a cheerleader, shouting over speakers blasting yacht-rock and a whirling blender of icy booze with the worst of them. Alas, time and experience has mellowed me, to say it kindly, or made me a curmudgeon to not. Both Jen and I served in the Peace Corps in different parts of Latin America before we met, so we both speak Spanish and are empathetic to the local perspective on tourists from the U.S.  Our wild pace now runs along the lines of setting up the laptop in the cockpit on a calm passage night to watch an episode BBC’s Death In Paradise for “at sea date night”.

Avoiding the Pink Armada isn’t as easy as you might think, however. They start at the beginning of the season, marked by the end of hurricane season, when everyone else starts as well. There are only so many good anchorages down the Pacific Coast of Baja, and even fewer spots for diesel fuel and supplies. Mag Bay isn’t on the Ha Ha schedule of stops, so we’ll see how it goes. Either way, it’s a temporary thing – the Ha Ha ends at Cabo and the boats will fade away back up North or at least disperse, and the Sea of Cortez will be ours.