Once we departed Mazatlan, we decided to motor away from the coast for a couple of hours, in hopes that the wind would fill in a bit, and to get us away from fishing traps and nets before dark.  We finally set the sails and, very slowly, began to sail towards La Paz.  Sadly, the wind would die in the evening and we would be forced to motor throughout the night (not the most enjoyable sound when you are trying to sleep!).    Generally, when we were able to sail, the wind was coming from exactly where we were heading to – that, combined with current, made for terrible tack angles – we were only making about a third of our actual distance sailed towards our destination each day and we were getting frustrated by our slow progress! 

We did have some spectacular sunsets and lots of turtle and ray sightings.    Each night we would hear whales near us and finally on our last night we spotted them joining us just as the sun was setting.

After 4 nights at sea, we were finally on the home stretch – we had anticipated arriving in La Paz sometime mid-day.   When I came on shift at 2:30 a.m. there was again nearly no wind and I was motoring along towards the top end of Jacques Cousteau Island.  About an hour in I suddenly had 15-20 knots on the nose and the sea state was getting terrible.   The main was still up and I was having to drive off course a little bit to allow the main to drive us through some of the worst waves.  By 4:30 in the morning the wind was gusting in the mid 20’s and the sea state was even more untenable.  I was now at least a couple of miles east of the light that I needed to turn at to head into La Paz and the wind began to funnel directly from the entrance into Bahia de La Paz.   We were making terrible headway – sometimes only managing to go a knot and a half.  When Owen came on deck the sun was finally rising which just let us see how terrible the sea state was.   We finally had to make the decision to turn around and run back downwind, away from what was now 28 knot gusts.  Our plan had been to get into the lee of Jacques Cousteau Island, hopefully find a spot to tuck in for a few hours and wait for the weather to settle down.

As we had been at sea for 4 nights, and our only weather had been large scale grib files downloaded via our SSB radio, we had not had the information that a localized wind was expected to blow right out of Bahia de La Paz – we finally received this information when we hailed another boat that we would see coming up a few miles behind us on the AIS.   He was able to let us know that the wind was expected to die down late morning or early afternoon – hopefully allowing us the chance to get into the bay.   We decided to try to work our way closer to the Baja Coast and come up on the bay entrance from its immediate south – rather than trying to beat into the wind and waves coming out of it!    All morning and afternoon, we slowly tacked our way back and forth through a miserable sea state, all while the wind gradually died to nearly nothing.   We finally fired up the engine and managed to drive into the bay, realizing we would never make the nearly 15 miles to go to town before dark.  Instead, we opted to anchor at Balandra Bay.   After more than 4 full days, we finally got the anchor set just as the sun was going down and called it a day!!!  

The wind continued to blow all night and through the following day.  The entrance to La Paz Harbour is very shallow and anchoring can be a bit of a bear so we opted to spend yet another day at Balandra Bay.  Sadly, Balandra Bay is known to have one of the nicest beaches in the La Paz area and we were not even able to consider putting our dinghy down to enjoy it!!

We finally woke up to flat calm seas and quickly pulled up the anchor to head into La Paz.   We got the anchor set and promptly made our way into town for arrachera tacos at Viejo – we had missed those amazing tacos!

We knew we wanted to get in and out of La Paz quickly but could not bring ourselves to get moving the next day!!   We spent the entire day on the boat (I may or may not have even gotten out of my pajamas) watching movies and cleaning up from the passage.   We paid for that with a couple more days of chaos.   Over the course of the next couple of days, we got so much accomplished!!   We got to the boat store to buy the new block to replace the spinnaker block that had been jammed lifting the dinghy.  Owen went to the barber and I found a great little salon to finally get my hair cut.  I walked up to the Soriana to do a provisioning shop (and so wished I had called an Uber to head back to the boat – I nearly pulled my arms out carrying everything back!).  Owen went in hunt of oil and oil filters and spent an entire afternoon traipsing from store to store, never managing to come up with the filters!  We did three runs with our trusty little cart to fill diesel jugs and 4 runs to get water.   We also fit in one last visit to Viejo for more of those tacos!  Finally, on our third day in La Paz, we motored out of the harbour, fighting current the whole way, and anchored in Bahia Falsa.

We spent the next day at Falsa – Owen dove the prop to clean off the barnacles that had been building up and we swam and scrubbed the water line.   Unfortunately, we ended up covered in little shrimpy like things – they were everywhere when we got out of the water so quick showers were a must before dinghying in to have Pina Coladas and guacamole at the beach bar. 

We were now all ready to start our march north.  It was April 20 and we had about 450 miles to cover before being hauled out in Puerto Penasco on May 15.