Sunday, November 11, 2012
Anchored in Turtle Bay, Baja, Mexico
It’s rarely a dull moment here on Midnight Blue. After leaving the lovely San Quintin bay, we
did a couple of day sails to anchorages down the coast, first stopping at Punta
Baja.
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| San Quintin Estuary and Volcanic Cinder Cones |
After a fairly windy night at
anchor, the next morning while on deck stretching, some fishermen stopped by to
chat – it turned out to be the same guys that had stopped by in San Quintin to
try to sell us lobster or urchins. At
first they asked for handouts – cerveza, soda, candy (a request from the youngest
fisherman on board). We handed over
three cervezas, and then had a nice chat about where they lived and how now was
the good time for getting urchins because they are in high demand in Japan in
December for some Japanese fiestas.
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| Punta Baja fish camp -- not an easy launch spot! |
Next, we headed on south to our next anchorage at Bahia San Carlos. It was a good sail and the wind really picked
up as we headed in to the anchorage just before dark. After passing several fish or lobster pots as
we headed in to the bay, I was nervous about our plan to depart the bay in the
middle of the night under darkness. But
Tim was not, and figured out the reciprocal course to follow so we’d be
safe. To get to our next planned stop on Cedros
Island was more than a day sail away and we didn’t really want to do a full
overnight trip if we didn’t have to. So
we got up and underway by 2:30AM, under light wind conditions, and a nice
bright quarter moon. We had to motor
sail for a bit that day, but by afternoon the winds had filled in and we were
flying as we approached the north end of Cedros Island, just off the
coast.
We were just making it in before dark, and were a bit
uncertain as to where the *good* anchorage was.
We chose a spot and had to get right in near the beach for it to shallow
up to a good anchoring depth for us. The
beach was lined with sea lions barking and basking, and little ones playing in
the shorebreak. Several came out by the
boat to check us out. Didn’t get any
photos of the sea lions that night, because I figured I’d have time in the morning to do that
sort of thing… Wasn’t meant to be though!
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| Approaching north end of Cedros Island |
After a few hours sleep, the wind picked up and first I got
up around 10PM to check around and make sure we hadn’t dragged anchor. Then about ½ hour later Tim got up and stayed
up. Finally around 1:30am, we actually
did start to drag anchor, so Tim got me up and we started the engine to take
the strain off the engine. We then
decided the best course of action was to pull up the anchor and head out to
sea. Which was no easy feat with the winds
gusting down the steep cliffs up to 25-30 knots, in near darkness. As Tim pulled up anchor, he also had to run
down below occasionally to flake the chain, since I couldn’t leave the helm to
do it for him. On his last time down to
flake, I was trying to keep the boat into the wind, but all the sudden the
depth sounder was coming up… from 30 feet to 20, then 18, 16, 15, and I think
we may have gotten in as shallow as 11 feet before Tim came up and screamed for
me to hit reverse! I was so tired I was
not aware enough to realize how close to the beach I was getting!!! Wow.
That was a really close one. Then
as we pulled away from shore we saw a boat headed down the coast… spent a while
trying to wait for them to pass us and even tried to hail them on the VHF to no
avail. Finally we headed back up the
coast, into the wind to wait till they were past and then headed off the coast
a few miles before heading back south to sail downwind in the windy conditions.
We were both almost delirious after two nights of limited sleep. Luckily,we
were able to sail most of the way to Turtle Bay, and arrived by early
afternoon, greatly relieved to have the anchor down in one of the safest
harbors on the Baja Peninsula. We’ve
been anchored here for 3 nights and will stay tonight then head out
tomorrow. Will have to write more about
our stay here next posting!
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| Midnight Blue at anchor in Turtle Bay |
