Bahia Santa Maria... No more kelp at last!!!

We arrived yesterday afternoon in beautiful, tranquil Santa Maria Bay which is just north of Bahia Magdalena or as the cruiser’s call it, Mag Bay. We are approximately 175 miles North of Cabo San Lucas and very happy to be out of the most challenging legs of our Baja transit. As we sit now on the hook, Craig is BBQing four (of eight) small, live lobsters that we traded for batteries, chocolate, and chewy granola bars. Did I mention how much I love Mexico? We are one of two sailboats currently in this huge bay. We are sharing the landscape and seascape with a small fishing village of which the aforementioned on the fire were brought to us via local panga fishermen. I think they are so removed out here that they are sitting in their village basically saying, “hey, check out the batteries and sweets I scored from the visiting gringos for a few, small langosta.” Win-win. Barter makes so much sense in these moments! The ocean temperature here is 72 degrees and crystal clear, and we are now done with having to look out for kelp that can foul our prop. We are swimming today, catching-up on email (hard to believe that we can be in such a remote place and have internet, Mexico Telcel 3-G ROCKS!) and generally having a relaxing Sunday. It is hard to believe it has been just one week and 520 miles since we left cold, rainy Ensenada.

Our trip from Turtle Bay started out fairly benign, but as we approached the next big bight out of the coast near Abreojos, we got hit with a pretty impressive Santa Ana condition. The wind kept building, and although are wind speed indicator took that moment to decide to fail, we think it was blowing a solid 20 knots with gusts in the 25 knot range. The fetch built to 4+ feet and steep immediately, it was 11pm and we were on a course where the land was falling away from us. We made a tactical decision to head into shore to avoid building seas… All I kept thinking was T-Pecker (Gulf of Tehuantepec, notorious for high ferocious winds forcing boats far out into the ocean) The only prudent course is to head as close to shore as is practical to try and avoid the building seas. Needless to say, it was a long night for all of us. Dawn brought no relief, but we could at last see the ocean and realized that it was not going to build any higher, so we put out the head sail along with our main already up and gave our engine, Goldie, a well deserved break. It was a great sail for about 3 hours and we were averaging 6.9 knots toward our waypoint… not too shabby!

When we got close to Santa Maria in the AM, Craig took us on a small detour to Thetis Bank, a world-renouned fishing destination. No one else was there. We started trolling in 250 feet of water, and immediately had fish on both of our lines… They turned out to be Skip Jacks but it was still exciting! Then, Craig found the sweet spot, and let the boat drift as he fished, and almost immediately he got hooked-up to his Moby Dick of fish. I got this shot of him fighting this leviathan for over an hour. He has bruises in his groin area from the rod digging in and his hands are not really into closing today. The strong, smart fish finally got the better of Craig, but he has vowed to come back again someday with bigger guns and fight this fish another day! He thought the fish was probably either a Black Sea Bass, territorialized Yellowtail, or large Grouper. In any case, the fish wedged itself in the rocks before Craig had a chance to get his head in the fight. Our GPS just shows the boat doing circles in the same 300 foot spot! We both wished that we could have seen this big guy, but alas it was not in the cards.

Coming into the anchorage we spotted no less than ten different Gray Whales, six of which were pairs of mothers and their babies. This area is a huge birthing area for them and we just happened to hit this area at the right time of year. They were breaching and blowing and tail slapping all around us. It was truly amazing. I got some very vague pictures of which this is one (whale is in right side of pic frame) , but it does not do the moments justice. Dover was pretty much ready to defend the boat when he finally saw a huge tail come up out of the water. He thought it didn’t get any worse or bigger than the dolphins!  Ha!  Wait 'til he gets a gander of a  Blue Whale.

We will spend one more day here putting the boat together for our next leg to San Jose del Cabo. We intend to get a slip there, relax, recreate Dover, and reprovision before heading across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan to meet our friend Neill and off-load the solar panels that we brought down for him...  Also got to get to Zihuatanejo to see our friend Patrick and give him some "burro" items. 

Recap of Turtle Bay:

These three gals from SoCal, circa: in their 20's are taking this Islander 30, s/v Misty Moonlight down the coast with us, and they ran into a bit of a problem when their strut completely electolicsized and their cutlass bearing then parted way with the boat...  Big problems, but nothing but positive thoughts and actions produced the ultimate success story.  These gals, with the help of this Mexican seiner and some wonderful cruisers from Canada (s/v Nordic 5) sorted their problems out old school style which we respect wholeheartedly.  We got some great shots of this event.  Notice the transom raised out of the water.
 

Total hairball, triage boating... They pulled it off in spades!!!  Great to watch them all work so well together.  Great mariner spirits from all involved.  We just saw Misty Moonlight and S/V Nordic 5 sailing past us into Mag Bay for fuel.  Hey all you sailors who don't get out much on your boats, if three chicks can do it in an old Islander 30, what are you folks, with newer boats, better equipment, and all those great toys doing?!  Get the out here and enjoy the adventure before it's too late!  
 
 

 

Well, here I am braving the Turtle Bay waters to free dive on South Trail, and check for kelp in the prop or other fouling of our drivetrain.   Thankfully, I found nothing.  The boat is perfect, and  I then used the opportunity to clean myself up with a salt water bath, and clean, warm water rinse thanks to Craig waiting on board with a pitcher of water.  Now THAT is love!!!