Down the Sea 2.1. Puerto Peñasco to Bahía Kino and Santa Rosalía
11/18-12/12/2016
We left Puerto Peñasco around noon for our about 20 hour crossing of the upper Sea of Cortez to Puerto Refugio, an anchorage at the northern shore of Ísla Ángel de la Guardia. We had spent several nice days in July there and had held a small ceremony for Samba on one of its spectacular beaches. This was our first trip since a while, so we were a little nervous. Traveling the Sea in late spring, we had a great routine down, and not sure if we would pick it right up.
It was windy and waves hit us sidewise, which made for an unpleasant motion. We were sailing and held this course to keep our sails full, but the boat rolled, so much so, that the sun on the horizon looked like bouncing up and down the lifeline. After a couple of hours, I got seasick. I went below to sleep it off, but it wouldn’t go away. I was talking to myself as if to hypnotize and heal myself. It worked for a bit, but best was to be in the cockpit. Anyway, I had no choice as we do three-hour watches. I gradually felt better and by the time we arrived in Puerto Refugio, I was ok. The queasiness didn’t go away for a couple days, but at least I didn’t feel nauseous anymore.
That was scary. Seasickness can be debilitating and could make us abandon our voyage. It seems that I need a bit of time to get adjusted to the boat and the motion after being on land and in a marina for a while. First time out from San Diego was like that for me too. I now have Sturgeron on board, to help me if that will happen again.
Puerto Refugio was beautiful again. The winds came from the North this time and we anchored in a smaller bay sheltered by islands on three sides. The rocky, barren hills and beaches reflected the sun in a multitude of shades of orange and red. The sunsets and sunrises were spectacular. Radu and I slept the first day in Refugio, passages take it out of us until we get used to them. Our buddy boats SV Coastal Drifter and SV Que Sera, who we sailed with on this trip, went ashore with their kayaks and dinghy, exploring the island. I enjoyed a nice, extended afternoon nap in the cockpit, while Radu slept in the vberth. We were exhausted. The following evening, we had potluck dinner on SV Que Sera, a well appointed, large Canadian sailboat, perfectly outfitted for its racer owners, Rick and Mary. We met them at Cabrales boatyard, where they had stored their boat for the summer and the weather made it such, that we all traveled south together.
The following day, the wind had shifted and we decided to stay another day in an eastern cove. Mary and I learned how to bake bread from Debbie in Coastal Drifter’s large galley and salon and took a long stroll on the beach in the late afternoon. The next morning the northern winds blew us fast and straight to our next anchorage at Bahia La Gringa. We sailed all the way. What fun! Only once we had to run the engine, because the autopilot needs a lot of energy. Soon, we will figure out our new wind vane, which will act as our third crewmember, but without depleting our batteries.
La Gringa is a large bay with a long beach ending in an estuary and large hill, sheltering the bay from the swell of the adjacent channel, which carries a lot of current and is called Canal de Ballena, for the whales traveling on it. We were watching for whales the whole day but weren’t lucky. The winds were strong in La Gringa when we arrived in the afternoon and we opted to stay on board until the next day, when went ashore to check out all the RV campers lining the beach. Perfect day and weather for a walk and a chat with two American retired couples, who lived in Sonora, Mexico, and took their RVs and ATVs around the Baja.
The next morning we left for Bahía de los Ángeles, a small town on the Sea of Cortez, which lives of fishing, tourism, fishing tourism and from a few tourists, who stop on their way down the Baja. Most of them are loners seeking the solitude of the desert road trips on motorcycles, in RVs, some in cars. Baja is a lyrical place in the desert, with some palm trees, hotels, tiendas, restaurants it might seem a forlorn place to some, it is heaven to me. Last time, when we were here in July, we hid out of the sun under Guillermo’s palapa. This time it was cool enough for further explorations into the town. We found an arts & crafts show at the Natural History Museum, conceived and run by Americans, it describes the local history, flora and fauna in lovingly laborious exhibits.
We met the elder of the Benedict brothers, when we were about to leave the museum. Steven wore a vest from Esalen Institute in Big Sur, I attended quiet a slew of seminars at back in the nineties, and in true generous Esalen spirit he invited the four of us to dinner at his and his brothers’ home. Turns out, that both brothers live in Los Angeles, one is working as a alternative medicine practitioner, the other a contractor. The two come to Bahia for over 20 years, enjoying the desert, the views, the community, the fishing and the Sea. The dinner was a treat for us. A home cooked meal around a big table in the middle of their large kitchen and modest home, with great company and conversations about LA, the grind, giving it all up, freedom and sailing.
The winds were coming up and the open anchorage in front of Bahia was getting rolly that night, so we moved over to Puerto Don Juan, 6 nmiles south, the next day. Don Juan is a natural harbor with a narrow opening to the east it gives shelter from the most dominant winds and swell in the Sea, from southern and northern winds. We stayed four nights, explored the desert lands and washes beyond a beach and found lots of beautiful shells, I am thinking of making into jewelry. We met the fisherman, we watched coming to the bay daily to clean their catch and in effect feed the local wild life: the resident coyote couple, …. vultures, sea… and other birds. They gave us a small, four feet long shark, they had just caught for free, which we enjoyed together on SV Coastal Drifter the night before leaving for Ísla Salsipuedes.
SV Que Sera left us in La Gringa and were sailing ahead of us down the coast. We were planning to cross to the mainland stopping at one or two islands on the way to Bahía Kino, were we are hoping to learn about and meet the Seri, a local native tribe, who have lived in this region for eons.
We left Puerto Don Juan with the first morning rays of sun. The weather had been predicted to be light. As we wanted to stop at and explore Ísla Salsipuedes a bit, an island with the not so inviting name ‘Get out while you can’, we decided to motor over rather than wait for winds. We chose a south anchorage to hide from upcoming winds and swell from the North that night, but the swell still made it’s way around into the bay later in the ight. The reward for a rocky night was our late afternoon dinghy ride and stroll on the island. Rocks of all kind of compositions mixed with lava ash, hardened in place by extremely hot! water, while dripping into the sea millions of years ago, formed large caves and outcroppings along the shore. Red and black crabs ran up the rocks as we passed. Lichen grew on the lowest horizontal rock in a secluded bay, as if in a bio-marriage, because it was growing only on that type of rock and no other.
There were two anchorages on Ísla Salsipuedes, North Slot and South Slot, meeting at a beach, both shaped perfectly rectangular, as if man made. The island is one of the Midriff Islands of the northern Sea of Cortez and blissfully secluded. I enjoy it very much to be far away from civilization and any sort of connectivity, except for a satellite phone, which is only used for weather files, safety, emergency and the occasional greeting to and from family. Mostly we talk on the satellite phone to check if everything is ok and if the phone connection is working.
We left Ísla Salsipuedes at sunrise for Ísla Tiburon at about 40 nautical miles a day sail away. We wanted to stop one night at Ísla San Esteban on our way but the northern winds an waves are not letting up and a storm is coming. Ísla San Esteban doesn’t have a well-protected anchorage so we decided not to stop. I hope we will on our way back to the Baja, as the island has an interesting Seri history, who inhabited the island for centuries and lived apparently without much clothing. Unimaginable, the midriff islands seem barren, uninviting even. How can people get enough sustenance from the few plants we have seen? We hope to find out. A rare iguana apparently lives there as well. We will have to get permits in Kino Bay to visit any Seri islands anyhow, we would be trespassing.
We arrived at Bahía de las Cruses on Ísla Tiburon early afternoon. The large bay was beautifully lit by a sun shining past tall, dark gray storm clouds. The long sand beach busy with fishermen and their pangas and a small fisherman’s house on the beach. We had just come from big seas and the swell didn’t seem much better here, so we moved on through a narrow passage to the next bay, Bahía Monumento, where we stayed a couple nights rocking out wind and weather out on the Sea in that sheltered bay and doing boat maintenance. There is always something to clean, something to fix or add from a long list of wishes or water to make or laundry or accounting.
We arrived midday on a Monday in Bahía Kino. Named after a Jesuit priest, it is a large bay formed between a lagoon with a peninsula and Ísla Tiburon. To the north of the bay a channel sits between the mountainous coast and the island and a channel with treacherous currents, the native Seri crossed and fished expertly on balsa rafts for centuries.
The bay offers only marginal anchorages to the north and south of the rock island Ísla Alcatras. Currents run freely around the island, which only gives marginal wind shelter. So we rocked it out and went three days ashore, once in a panga with a two hundred horsepower motor and the other days with Coastal Drifter’s dinghy. The ride was long, one mile, the longest we anchored from shore so far.
Kino Viejo was a small village, with several restaurants, tiendas, fish markets, a supermarket, and a fishing pier. A vast area from Kino Bay to Hermosillo to the east to Guyamas in the south including the islands Ísla Tiburon and Ísla San Esteban was the territory of the Seri Indians, who lived there for over 500 years prior to the Spanish missionaries. In the 60’s, the Seri were moved to two villages and we visited one of them, Punta Chueca, still having trouble to surrender to a farming existence, they use their carving and basket making skills now for making souvenirs. (more about the Seri’s fight against Western Civilization here).
We left Bahía Kino before heavier winds started up from the North and went back to Bahía Monumento at Ísla Tiburon to wait for a weather window to visit Ísla San Esteban. We had read in our guidebook that the only anchorage with shore access was only marginal and so we waited for very light winds. Ísla San Esteban was impressive, when we arrived. Surrounded by high cliffs, the accessible valley looks magical. It reminded me a little of the movie ‘Island of the Top of the World’ I watched as a teenager, where suddenly fog lifts and a valley appears with a town and people. Like the Seri who lived here for hundreds of years, without much contact to other humans except their other bands on the mainland. Magical giant organ pipe cactus great us at the beach, their roots exposed by erosion, they look like watchmen. We hiked a couple of hours along the valley on a stream bed inland, passing more giant cacti, sage brushes teaming with butterflies, the valley was green and lush. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the two endemic lizards, also big and colorful apparently, only a gray little lizard crossed our way. We heard all kinds of animal sounds, saw humming birds and shrubs in bloom. I am glad we took this detour to one of the most remote of the Midriff Islands in the Sea of Cortez.
The next morning we woke up late and prepared for an overnight passage to Santa Rosalia. On our way there, after an eerily, beautiful moonrise, we discovered salt water in the bilge, when it had already reached the cabin floor. We pumped the water out with the electrical and the manual bilge pump, but it came back, so that we devised a schedule of turning the bilge pump on and off, which got us safely to Santa Rosalia (more on the bilge pump drama in ‘Viva la bilge pump’ link here). Radu fixed the culprit and installed a floater switch, provisioned and had a couple of nice evenings out in lovely Santa Rosalia before heading out again, south to Bahía Conception.
