amortajada back to la paz

Amortajada is a giant, giant anchorage. By "giant, giant", I mean about 3 miles of beach off of which hundreds of boats could anchor. When we arrived, there were 2 other boats there. We followed our usual pattern, checked out a few promising spots and decided on one that was a good distance from either boat. Well, those other boats left, so we had the entire place to ourselves. Until the Moorings charter boat showed up, made a beeline for our boat, zipped 10 feet from our bow at about 8 knots, dropped their hook and ended up about 50 feet from us. 3 miles of desolate beach and they pick a spot in which we can count their errant ear hair. Thanks.

These poor Moorings boats get a pretty bad rap from the cruising community. It's not that they're ALL bad sailors. Just 98% of them. I kid. Sort of. The last one we met took the most protected spot in an anchorage, but proceeded to let out 11:1 scope, thereby excluding any other boats from having a comfortable night.

Anyway, we had a pleasant afternoon in Amortajada and took a dinghy tour of the mangroves where we saw a few rays, lots of fish and quite a few birds. Since the anchorage isn't too protected, we jumped south down to Isla San Francisco for 2 nights to enjoy some spearfishing-without-a-speargun. We didn't catch anything that way either.

We had plans to head directly from SF back to La Paz, but we caught some SERIOUS wind on the way south, so we ducked into Ensenada Grande, our favorite anchorage on Isla Partida, for the night before getting the rest of the way to La Paz.

Jason driving us into the mangroves

Windy mangrove "trail"

This guy drove around the anchorage like this for at least 20 minutes. Sadly, no Moorings boats were hit.

24°52.890'N 110°34.470'W