Safe Harbor

A place to wait while we work out the details

Finally escaping La Paz, that city where old cruisers go to die, we planned to spend three days sailing up to Puerto Escondido, a marina a few miles south of Loreto, itself about one hundred miles north of La Paz.

Our first day out, we had calm seas, right up to the northern end of Espíritu Santo island, where we were exposed to the short sharp chop of the Sea of Cortez.  Our destination that day was San Francisco island, only another few hours, although in those conditions, they would have been unpleasant hours.

Looking at the charts, we decided to duck out and head to Caleta Partida, a sheltered anchorage between Espíritu Santo and the next island north, Partida.  As we slowly cruised into the anchorage, the water slowly turning turquoise over the shallowing sandy bottom, the wind and waves dropped to a ripple and a whisper.

We anchored in sand over three fathoms of water, grilled something for dinner, and watched the stars wheel between the islands in the warm night.

Early the next morning, knowing we had a bit further to go to make up for our early stop the day before, we picked up the anchor and got underway.  Most of the day was spent cruising along in the Channel between the Baja peninsula and San Jose island.

Running on autopilot all day, alternating watch and watch, we watched the striated rock slide by, at one point slowing to let a whale cross our path.  As we got closer to Agua Verde, our destination for the day, we had to watch more closely, as the charts in this area sometime show the land in the wrong place!

A whale crossing our path

Navigating with satellite images and known-good GPS coordinates from guidebooks, we made our way into Agua Verde a little before nightfall.  This small anchorage is quite popular, but we managed to snug up into a cove of our own, with the lights of a small National Geographic cruise ship  in the background.

The late afternoon approach to Agua Verde, with the cruise ship small on the horizon.

Sunset inside Agua Verde

From Agua Verde, we only had a short four hour cruise up to Puerto Escondido marina, with conditions so mild that we spent a couple of hours sitting on the fore deck watching the scenery.

We had hurried up to Puerto Escondido, partly because we were meeting friends from San Francisco just after Christmas, and partly because we made plans for Christmas dinner with a couple from another boat who had been on our dock in Brisbane.  We arrived on Christmas Eve, picked up a mooring, and settled in.

Puerto Escondido marina is almost completely enclosed. The entrance is to the bottom left of this photo.

For Christmas dinner, we made a ham, with coleslaw, and sweet potatoes.  We had picked up an assortment of Christmas cookies in a huge supermarket in La Paz before we left.

A couple days after Christmas, our friends from San Francisco arrived, and we locked up the boat and left it for an AirBNB for a couple of weeks.  Actually, two different places, as we had one near the boat, to facilitate a group trip out to the islands off Loreto, and another further north near Bahia La Conception.

Soul Food dinner in Loreto

Group sail to Honey Moon Cove (Photo credit Jayms Ramirez)

Once our friends headed back north, we needed to stick where we had network access for Donna’s surgery consultation (which only reiterated that she needed the surgery), and then to get the scheduling and other arrangements set up.

Now that we have the schedule, we know we’ll be in San Diego again between mid February and early March to get the surgery out of the way, and until then we have a couple of weeks to spend cruising the islands around Loreto!

Peter making a friend in Loreto.

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We’ve had lots of time to read. Here’s a list of few books that we’ve recently finished, in no particular order, in case you’re looking for something to read:

• John Steinbeck’s Log from the Sea of Cortez

• Alan Watts’ Nature, Man, and Woman

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• All twenty (and a half!) of the Aubrey / Maturin books by Patrick O’Brian. The first is Master and Commander. There’s also a movie of the same name with Russell Crowe, but the books are of course better.

• Overstory by Richard Powers