San Gabriel

We had a few days before my dad was scheduled to come into town, so we headed out for the islands so Jason wouldn't go completely nuts in La Paz (he's got about a 3 day limit before he needs to escape). The morning we had planned to leave brought THREE trips to town for last minute ice and Dockwise faxes and preparations. Oh, wasn't Jason happy about that! But we finally took off and headed to the southern-most anchorage on Espiritu Santo, San Gabriel.

We'd hoped to meet up with s/v Sapphire, but they had gotten an on-time start in the morning, stopped by SG and were on their way north by the time we dawdled into the anchorage. And boy, were they glad they didn't spend the night in SG. The coromuel winds kicked up in the middle of the night. Coromuels are a phenomenon localized to the greater La Paz area and are winds that howl from the Pacific through a low valley on the Baja. If you've got a nice spring day in the islands, you can count on a nasty coromuel at night. This wouldn't be a problem, but the anchorages on the islands are primarily all on the eastern side, so when these western winds kick up, there's little to no protection from the 10-15 mile fetch and it makes for a long long night. It was one of these long long nights that we had in San Gabriel. Made longer by the fact that we have wires clanking around in our mast outside of any conduit. Oh, and that mast is right by our heads when we sleep.

Needless to say, we hightailed it out of there in the morning and headed to one of our favorite spots, Balandra, for a bit of snorkeling and the last naked sailing we'd be doing before my dad arrived for a week.


Rolly night for Rhino*

24°25.683'N 110°21.821'W

*Disclaimer: this was taken in Muertos instead of San Gabriel...we've had our fair share of rolly nights.