San Carlos

After our rough ride across the sea, we got within sight of San Carlos and realized Hello World had finally come full circle from when we bought her here a year and a half ago! We found a cozy spot to drop the hook in the anchorage of Bahia San Carlos and caught up on our sleep after the long ride over.

San Carlos is a little gringo outcropping of Guyamas, and also new home to our friend Nanette. We spent a week exploring town and a bit further since Nanette was willing to drive us all over the place. We finally made it to the famed Soggy Peso bar on Algadones Beach. We had attempted this trip last time we were here without success. It was a great spot and we'll definitely be back next time we're in town. Also in SC, we hiked up Nacapule Canyon - amazing rock formations and plant life up there.

Nacapule Canyon

Outside of town, we made a shopping trip to Obregon, about 2 hours south of SC. For a medium sized town, this place had the most monstrous commercial district I've ever seen in Mexico.

La Manga is a little fishing village about 5km out of SC, so after much planning, we made it there for an early dinner one night. Without electricity in this village, it's wise to show up a few hours before sunset. Dinner was filled with a variety of shrimp tacos and crap tostadas as we sat in a thatched rooftop deck overlooking the water and islands.

Dinner at La Manga - not too shabby!

Back in San Carlos, Nanette and I did a bunch of work on her nonprofit, Tia Marie's Coastal Cooperative, but the highlight might have been the storm that rolled in as we sat in her hot tub. The lightening was amazing to watch, but once the hail started, we were in pain and ran for cover. That's right. Hail. In Mexico. Just so you guys up north don't think you're having all the fun!


One of the boats that got washed up on shore during the gale that blew through right before we got there. The lesson here? Put chafe gear on your mooring pennant. None of these boats dragged anchor or pulled their mooring balls free. They all chafed through their mooring pennant.


Nanette's "casita". This development started out life as a trailer park and therefore, the rules state that each domicile has to be some form of trailer. So all of the casitas have some sort of RV appendage either bolted on to outside or the building was built around an entire trailer.


Soggy Peso - at last!

27°56.573'N 111°03.761'W

across the sea of cortez

Strange out of season southerlies were stsomping through the Sea of Cortez wreaking havoc and generally catching folks off guard. After beating up into the prevailing northerly winds for the past few weeks, we decided to latch onto the tail end of these southerlies and ride 'em due north and across the Sea of Cortez to San Carlos in a spirited and petroleum-free passage by sail.

Big mistake.

The forecast was for winds out of the southwest 15 to 20 knots all night turning to northwesterlies the next day. So we pulled anchored out of La Ramada cove north of San Juanico, made a heading of zero-zero-zero degrees true and caught a nice 20 knots out of the southwest.

This built up to a not-so-nice 25 to 30 knots out of the southwest which we sailed in front of until about 1AM. At almost exactly the half way point between our departure point and San Carlos, the wind shifted. Not in that gradual sort of "hey, did you notice the wind shifted?" kinda way. This was more of the "we used to be pointed at Arizona, now we're pointed at Belize" sort of shift. In a span of 8 minutes (our autopilot was steering to a wind angle, so I later checked our GPS track), the wind clocked from southwest, to due north.

Bye, downwind sail. Hello, upwind bash.

And with squirrelly winds comes confused seas. Slop. Chop. Green water over the bow. After a few more hours of this, the wind decided to back to the west giving us a better beam reach but with no improvement in the sea state.

Coming into San Carlos, we timed our arrival for early morning in case we had problems and needed more time. San Carlos is not a place we wanted to arrive in the dark. With the now very consistent 30 knot wind on our beam, Hello World took off like an angry horse. I kept reefing the sails down, hoping to slow our speed but every time, she'd stomp back up to hull speed. I'd reef some more. Hull speed. I finally arrived at a sail configuration of a napkin-sized mainsail and a placemat-sized jib and we slowed down to 4.5 knots.

Turned out, this still put us in too early. So, we hove to about 5 miles off the coast of San Carlos and I caught a catnap in the cockpit waiting for the sun to come up. The sun rose, we sailed into San Carlos, dropped the anchor and augured into bed.


Pulling into San Carlos after a long night's journey.

27°37'N 110°52'W

san juanico

We decided to take advantage of these strange southerlies and actually do some sailing. We weighed anchor, left Puerto Ballandra, blew the dust off our sails and hoisted them into a nice southerly breeze. We enjoyed our first downwind sailing since I don't remember when. We were headed for San Juanico for the night. San Juanico proper is a much better north wind anchorage and we still had some southerlies left to contend with so we chose to head about a mile north of San Juanico and anchor in La Ramada cove.

As we neared the anchorage, we furled the sails in and started the engine. Just then something large and hungry nailed one of the hand lines we had out. Christy worked the line for a while before hauling in a beautiful yellow tail.

The anchorage itself was great. Wave protection from every direction but the north. The south wind would gust through one of two arroyos in front of us but never for very long. When we're at anchor, wind doesn't really bother us. It's the waves that make life not very fun. So if an anchorage has some wind but no waves, we're happy.

After gutting and filleting the yellowtail, we had some out of this world sushi for dinner. The next day, we hiked a mile across the peninsula and over to San Juanico proper. To our surprise, we ran into a National Outdoor Leadship School (NOLS) group holding a cooking class on the beach. We chatted with them for a few hours. To their surprise, we're the first cruising boat they had run across in the 19 days they have been out sailing in the Sea of Cortez. They left Bahia Concepcion in four small Drascombe longboats, sailing during the day and camping at night (no tents!).

The next morning brought with it a torrential downpour. We thought of our NOLS friends on the beach and brought them over a plate of brownies and a weather report. We chatted for a bit and then ran back to the boat to clean it up. The weather forecast looked good to cross the Sea of Cortez over to see Nanette in San Carlos. 15 to 20 knots out of the south forecasted clocking around to the west at early in the morning. Easy sailing!

(You already know what's going to happen don't you?)


Our first yellowtail!


Yum.


The NOLS crowd at San Juanico.


This guy gave us a magical rendition of Lonely Planet's On A Boat.


The four Drascombe longboats the NOLS group sailed down here.


Another local resident.


A "cruiser shrine". Not sure what's so great about us cruisers that we need a shrine.

26°22.930'N 111°25.870'W

puerto ballandra

We got wind of a very out of season southerly brewing up for the Sea of Cortez. To date, we have only ever seen wind coming from the north and west. We know where south is, we just have no idea how to perceive of wind coming from that direction. As Honeymoon Cove was wide open to the south, we chose to dash up to Isla Carmen and hunker down in Puerto Ballandra. This cove is protected from every direction but the west and southwest (you can see what's coming, can't you?). Puerto Ballandra was a nice little cove. On the northern shore is a fish camp which we, judging by the smell of fish guts, we anchored a little too close to.

We spent a couple days here hiding from the southerly. We got some boat projects done. Christy whipped us up a lee cloth so now we can sleep in the salon on a passage instead of having to clear out the quarterberth. I cleaned out the anchor locker (long time coming, that project) and cleaned some corrosion off the windlass wiring.

There's a great hike down a wash that crosses the island and ends up over at Bahia Salinas on the eastern side of the island. We followed it probably 95% of the way and turned around as the sun started to set.

The last night we were in Puerto Ballandra, the wind shifted around to the west. Of course. We had a bit of a bumpy ride that night but not nearly the rodeo ride the boats in the southern end of the anchorage got. We got up a couple times that night and saw their anchor lights flying around and were thankful we anchored too close to the fish guts.


On the hike across Isla Carmen.


The flood wash we hiked through across the island.


One of the locals.


Christy and her schnazzy new lee cloth.

26°01.247'N 111°09.837'W

honeymoon cove

At the first sign of the norther breaking, we packed up and got out of Escondido. We decided to head over to Honeymoon Cove on Isla Danzante again and give the stern anchoring a shot in less exciting winds.

We pulled into Honeymoon Cove and headed for a U-shaped bight in the northwest corner of the cove. The bight was only 100 feet wide which means if we only set one anchor, we'd swing into the rock walls of the cove with a large clanking noise and a larger insurance claim. And probably at 3am. So we pulled our bow into the bight and dropped our main bow anchor in 10 feet of water. We then backed up about 200 feet and set the anchor. Given our 20 to 1 scope, the anchor set pretty quickly. I then scrambled to the back and hucked our stern anchor overboard. Actually, we used our secondary anchor - a 44lb Spade anchor with 80 feet of chain and 150 feet of nylon three strand - as our stern anchor. We were getting a hint of winds from the south which was going to put some strain on the stern anchor. We then pulled in all but 80 feet of our bow anchor rode while letting out the stern rode. We set the stern anchor by attaching it to a sheet winch and cranking on it. All these efforts left us lying in a tight, quiet little cove that we never would have been able to get into otherwise.

Honeymoon Cove turned out to be one of the highlights of our journey so far. The water was crystal clear and positively lousy with fish. Dolphins intermittently visited us in the cove. We rowed into shore and went on a great hike over to another one of the beaches.

At one point, I spotted a whole mess of fish schooling right below our boat. I couldn't tell what kind of fish they were but gambled that they would be tasty. I hopped in the dinghy, loaded the spear gun, floated over them and blindly shot into the crowd. Not entirely a sporting shot but if the fish would just hop into my frying pan, I wouldn't have to cheat, would I?

Turns out my stellar marksmanship netted us not one but two fish on the spear. The bottom one wiggled off but the first one remained firmly impaled on the spear. We took a closer look at the fish and our fish book and decided we had just scored ourselves a Mexican Barracuda. What the book doesn't tell you is that they are very tasty over rice, butter, limes and garlic.


Our 72lb. Rocna anchor firmly set in 10 feet of water.


Lying stern-to and bow-to in the northern bight of Honeymoon Cove.


The welcoming committee on shore.


Hiking one of the beaches in Honeymoon Cove.


Overlooking the Sea of Cortez and Isla Carmen to the north.


Loading the spear gun.


Dinner!

25°48'34.99"N 111°15'35.18"W