We left Cabo San Lucas hoping for light northerlies to allow us to move up the coast to La Paz – the forecast was for 5-7 knots from the north, entirely comfortable. The northerlies had been fairly relentless this year and we were hoping to grab this little window for an easy trip. The reality was that by the time we reached the East Cape we were seeing 15-20 knots from the North and the sea state was terrible. Our boat was being tossed around and I admit to a bit of a melt-down somewhere before we turned the corner north. I had actually not been feeling well all day, and the horrible sea state was not making me feel better. I didn’t want to turn around but I also didn’t want to go forward – the idea of facing the seas head on in the middle of the night seemed terrifying in that moment. Owen managed to get me slightly calmer, we drove the boat down for a few minutes so I could at least use the head and cobble together a snack for us (big buns slathered in butter and sandwich cookies – yup – eating in high style!).
Once we rounded the corner to head north the winds actually started to abate a bit and by dark we were motoring in nearly no wind. Not ideal but better than what we had been seeing!!! Sometime on one of Owen’s nights shifts, somewhere off of Los Frailes I was awoken by the sound of the engine nearly stalling. We had clearly picked up something with our prop – Owen threw it into reverse, nearly stalling the engine again, but then it was running fairly smooth and we were able to continue on.
We made it to Bahia Los Muertos mid-day the next day – by that time the Northerlies were again building and we were glad for a spot with little wave action – the wind was still howling through but we were comfortable. We were not comfortable enough to launch the dinghy however and were sad to not make it into what looked like a beautiful beach. As the sun set that evening, rays were jumping all over the bay – so cool! The next day, we entertained ourselves watching kite surfers on shore and checking and double checking the weather. It appeared that the winds were to ease overnight and so we made the decision that as soon as they went below 20 knots, we would head out.
At about 8pm, we finally left the anchorage and headed around the corner. We had to cut through a pass between the coast and Isla Jacques Cousteau and found the wind and current funneling through this gap – it was not fast going!!!!
We finally entered La Paz Harbour, travelling down the long narrow channel to the anchorage, around 4pm the next day – a much longer trip than anticipated!!! We got set in the harbour and checked in with the Port Captain by VHF – Owen was pretty pleased with himself as he managed to do much of it Spanish!!!!
At some point that day we had noticed that the sump pump in our shower sump was not working and, not wanting to get stuck over Christmas with no way to pump out the shower and sink water (other than having it pour into our bilge – yuck!), we quickly jumped in the dinghy and headed into Marina La Paz to get a dinghy dock pass and to hit a boat store.
Luckily, we made it in time to grab a pump before the store closed and were able to get it installed easily that evening. We had taken the time to do a quick walk on the Malecon and were so excited to explore the town! We had made it to La Paz just in time for Christmas (having arrived on the 21st of December) and the Malecon was decorated, with one entire section clearly set up for picture taking opportunities!
La Paz is home to Club Cruceros, a community of cruisers and expats with a club house at Marina de La Paz. They do pot luck meals occasionally and hold events with the aim of raising money for charity initiatives in town. There was a small contingent that we called the “homeowners association” – people too intent on meddling in everyone else’s business – but otherwise a fantastic group of people with good intentions. The clubhouse has a huge leave a book, take a book library as well as a library of dvd’s available to be borrowed. Thankfully, those dvd’s included “It’s a Wonderful Life”, allowing me to indulge in that Christmas Eve tradition! Club Cruceros also has a daily radio net to keep everyone abreast of their activities and to allow people to seek local assistance in finding products or services. It is truly a boon to the cruising community!
Club Cruceros was hosting a Christmas Even Potluck so our first task on our second day there was to get out and get some groceries so that we could contribute to the pot luck. The large grocery stores are about a kilometer away (seems like nothing when walking there – not so much when you have over-shopped and are dragging the bags home!!!).
The next day we met up with Laurie and Mike (of Lunar Bird) to do breakfast at a great local coffee shop and then went with them to explore Mercado Bravo – a local community market that includes small restaurant stalls, fruit markets and fish, seafood and meat markets. Readers from BC will recognize the similarities to a Vancouver favorite, Granville Market. We grabbed some gorgeous produce and had a smoothie and then continued exploring.
Christmas was a bit of a different event this year – we missed the people at home so much – though certainly not the weather as it snowed relentlessly for days leading up to Christmas on Vancouver Island! – it didn’t truly feel like Christmas. We only finally dragged our itty bitty tree out of storage on the 23rd and even that didn’t really make things feel very festive (truly just more messy!! Lol). The Christmas Eve potluck was a well-attended event though, given that nearly every salad and dish contributed seemed to have beans in it, Owen was looking for something a bit extra once it was over! We decided to go wander the Malecon again – as Mexican families largely celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, it was pretty quiet but we were able to check out one of the many ice cream shops and just stretch our legs. We headed back to the boat to watch my movie and to call it a night.
Christmas Day passed quietly with calls home, a small roast chicken for dinner, and a screening of Die Hard!!!!
For years we have heard that people will swallow their anchors in La Paz and we could certainly understand why – it is a fairly large town, is the capital city for the region and has several universities. It still feels like a Mexican, rather than American, city (I am looking at you Cabo!). There are so many great restaurants and shops you can wander endlessly. There is of course a new development with a Walmart, Sam’s Club, Home Depot, etc. but that is an Uber away and for us staying in the Centro area, the effect of that Americanization is not felt as much.
We were leaving the boat one day when I noticed something on the rudder – we go the boat hook on it and discovered a whole length of poly wrapped around the rudder – that might have explained the stiff steering while coming around to La Paz – remember that incident outside of Los Frailes – well, apparently, we didn’t get away from that unscathed.
Once again, Club Cruceros stepped in with an activity to get us off the boat and involved for New Years, with a Zulu midnight toast being planned. Rob, from Lilypad had arrived the day before and so we all headed in to join the festivities. We first tried to take Rob to the Mercado Bravo only to find it closing when we got there – instead we stopped at the Oxxo for chips and drinks and made our way there – on the way, Owen thought it a good idea to faceplant into the sidewalk. While he was looking up at a low hanging awning, he missed a 4” drop in the sidewalk and pitched forward – it took a comically long time (in reliving it later anyway) before he finally landed, quite literally face first on the sidewalk – somehow he didn’t break any teeth and only ended up with very minor scrapes. I had some wet-wipes in my purse so we were even able to clean him up before we got the gathering.
Rob had left Cabo behind us and had gotten held up in Los Frailes for several days waiting for the chance to jump to La Paz – while there he had met up with the crews of several boats and introduced us to them. It was decided after the toast that we should head out for dinner – of course being New Year’s Eve, most restaurants were fully reserved and those that weren’t fully booked had very expensive set menus for the evening – not what we were looking for. The nine of us continued traipsing around until we finally ended up at a restaurant just up the road from the marina. Owen and I had walked by it several times and the smells from the grill were always mouthwatering. After a bit of a wait, we finally snagged a table big enough for our group and ordered tacos and margaritas all around – they were fantastic!!!!! One of our favorite things about the restaurant was that our table and one other table in there appeared to be the only “gringos” there, the rest of the diners appeared to be locals – in our book that is always the sign of a good restaurant!!!! We finally headed back to the boat, and were actually on the boat by 11pm, trying desperately to stay up until midnight!!! I am sure glad we did because the cacophony at midnight would have given me a fright if we were sleeping – they don’t do one fireworks display here, everyone does a fireworks display!!! Added to that was the Navy honking their horns, joined by tankers outside of the harbour and of course many of the other boats got in on the action sounding their horns!!!
We were settling into La Paz a little too well so we decided a few days into the New Year that we should get out to do a bit of cruising. The Islands of Espiritu Santos and Partida are within Bahia La Paz and we headed out intending to be gone for a couple of days.
We started out at Bahia Falsa – an anchorage just outside of La Paz. The wind and water were calm and we were able to get my stand-up paddle board inflated and took it, and Owen’s kayak, in to the beach to enjoy tacos and pina coladas at the beach bar, with our toes tucked into the sand. Mike and Laurie, of Lunar Bird, we also in the anchorage and invited us for drinks that evening. We had a great visit on Lunar Bird, enjoying Laurie’s fresh baked cookies and my latest attempt at salsa (and chips), along with a batch of margaritas. We had been very slow in travelling from La Paz to Falsa and, keeping in mind the stalling outside of Los Frailes and the poly found on our rudder, we took advantage of being in clean water with little current to put the camera down – our worst fears were realized when we found a huge pile of poly wrapped on our prop. Owen had started to dive it on our first day there, removing the large chunk of it, and making a very little more progress on the 2nd day but realized pretty quickly that he was not going to be able to get it cleared just snorkeling. Luckily the girls on Ka’sala had arrived the day prior and they are divers. Owen went over and chatted with them and they agreed to come over the next day as they had already planned to dive and clean their boat. It took Wren about 15 minutes and a hack saw to get the melted plastic, along with a small chunk of the bearing off – Owen would never have managed that without assistance!!! Chelsea was nice enough to clear the mussel farm off of our keel and to clear the muck off our speed sensor while Wren was busy sawing so we were feeling pretty quick and spiffy!!!
If you look at the Islands on a map you will see that they are indented with a whole series of coves and anchorages – you could easily spend weeks in the Islands and not get to all the possible spots. Once we dragged ourselves away from Bahia Falsa, we first headed, much quicker than we had been traveling, to an anchorage on Espiritu Santos, heading first to an anchorage that was to be very protected from any Northerlies that might kick up – we dropped our hook and were immediately beset by flies and bees – it took about 10 minutes for us to pick up the anchor and move back south one anchorage to Ensenada de Gallo. We were nicely protected and had a calm evening on the hook – the next day, we took the dinghy intending to head into the far beach – on our way in we noticed turtles swimming out towards us – we drifted around watching them swim past before getting going again. We realized it was going to be too shallow to get the dinghy into the farthest beach and detoured to one a bit closer so that us so that Owen could hug a cactus – seriously!!!
We then left the lovely protected anchorage and were a bit shocked to be walloped by large waves and strong winds as soon as we were out of its lee. Luckily, we were only going a mile and a half or so north! We headed to Caleta El Candelero and got set in the North Bay. We had heard about this anchorage a few times and people would refer to the “rock” in the middle of it – the “rock” turned out to be an imposing island separating the North and South sections of this anchorage. We had arrived here in time for a birthday celebration for one of the cruisers we had hung out with on New Year’s Eve. Gentry and Tera on SV Freia had let us know that they both had birthdays in early January and would be celebrating them in the Islands. We joined them, along with cruisers from a couple of other boats, to celebrate Gentry’s birthday with drinks on Freia that evening.
The next day we headed to the beach for a short, but stunning hike. The views back at the anchorage from the hike were what guidebook pictures are made of!
The next morning, we headed out to jump north to Partida, tucking ourselves into Ensenada El Cardonal. We enjoyed a peaceful afternoon there – unfortunately, at some point during the afternoon a power boat pulled into the anchorage (literally chasing out 3 of the 5 boats that had been in there with their music – we should have followed suit!). The boat blasted really, really bad music all evening, and ran their generator the entire time they were in. The entitlement displayed by these people with their fully crewed boat was a bit galling! We were just contemplating going into the beach to go for a short hike the next morning, when Tera and Gentry hailed us to let us know they were headed our way and wanted to do the hike. The four of us headed out on the very easy, fairly flat hike to the other side of the island.
We decided to all head to Ensenada Grande, with a stop-over in a small bay on the way for a lunch stop – with the hopes of spotting blue-footed boobies. Gentry treated us to soup and sandwich for lunch – sadly no boobies were spotted but we had a great visit before we all got moved around to Grande. That evening, we took our toys for a paddle, and were joined at the beach by Tera and Gentry – we were enjoying such a good visit we didn’t actually notice how dark it was getting – not entirely our smartest move to be paddling back with no lights!!!
There is a hike out of Grande and while it definitely looked like a harder hike than the one we had done at Cardonal, we had no idea how tough it would be. It was Tera’s birthday and she wanted to celebrate with a hike so we all headed out that next morning – it was tough!!! Like scrambling over boulders, stepping on loose stones, climbing a good change in altitude with little to no shade, tough!!!! By the time we finally made it back to the beach 3 and a half hours later we were exhausted and over-heated – so over-heated that I actually finally put on a suit and jumped in the water once we got back to the boat. That night, we were invited to Wild Blue for Tera’s birthday celebration. Craig and Carolyn served up amazing tacos and frosty blender drinks to 11 celebrants!!! Once again, a great night was had by all!!!!
We had intended to leave the next day but the giant standing waves immediately outside the anchorage and the high winds inside it convinced us to stay one more night. We tried to do another Blue Footed Booby recon but couldn’t find any. The winds were building and the sea-state in the anchorage was becoming untenable (not to mention a power boat had pulled into the anchorage and started with the obnoxious music – not the same boat as previously but certainly the same lack of respect for other boaters). Rob had moved Lilypad south to Cardonal and, after confirming with him that conditions were better there, we moved ourselves the mile back south – a fairly uncomfortable but thankfully very short trip. Rob joined us for dinner on board that night – another great visit!
We finally realized the next day that our garbage and laundry bags were over-filling and the food stores and water supplies were getting pretty depleted!!! We had left intending to be gone a few days and suddenly realized it had actually be 12 days!!! Even with all of that time, we had barely scratched the surface of all of the spots to check out!!! We were just thinking about getting ready to head out when we noticed a boat very close to us. We popped our heads up to discover friends from Nanaimo on board their friends’ boat!! Elaine and Nigel were down to sail with a couple they had befriended when that couple were stuck in Nanaimo during Covid. What a small world!!!
We arrived back in La Paz later in the day and checked back in with the Port Captain. Our next day was spent in delivering laundry to be done (you just have to love delivering your laundry one day and getting it back clean, fresh and folded the next day!), emptying all of the garbage out of the boat, and grabbing some groceries to tide us over until we could do a bigger shop. Rob and left us with glasses to be returned to Tera and we invited them over for a drink – they arrived at about sunset and didn’t head home until 3:00 in the morning – later than any of us had been up in ages!!! We have no idea how it got so late but we sure had fun!!!!
Unfortunately, we had to get up at 7:30 the next morning to go to a boat swap and shop – pretty sure we were still steeping in tequila but we were pretty proud of ourselves for making it out of the boat – Tera and Gentry also managed to make it in (high fives all around for that!) and once we had checked out the swap, we all headed for breakfast at the marina. The rest of the day was spent very productively (a nap and a movie!).
Owen finally decided to get the 6hp outboard that had been living first on the floor of our garage and, since we had left Canada, on our stern rail, serviced and ready to use. He was pretty excited to put the bigger engine on the dinghy, especially dealing with the wind and currents that we generally see in La Paz.
While we were loving our time in La Paz, it was starting to be time to start to look for a weather window to jump over to Puerto Vallarta. We did a big grocery shop and started to do twice daily runs to fill up the water tanks. We purchased diesel and gas and kept watching for that weather window. The port was closed and then open and then closed again. Once it finally reopened, we decided to take the day break in the Northerlies and head out to Bahia Falsa to wait for the next weather window. We didn’t want to run the risk that there would be enough of a break to get us moving south, but to have the port closed and not be able to take advantage of it!!!
Our great planning did not quite work out – we spent five days in Falsa waiting for a break in the wind. Finally, a day dawned where the winds were calm and we could get out of Falsa. The port was still closed, with an intended opening of 8pm that day but we were out of the Port so we could go – or so we thought. We were actually motoring out of the bay when another boat hailed the Port Capitan to let them know they were departing from Falsa – “No…” he said “el Puerto es Cerrado” – the other boater clarified a couple of times that Falsa was included in the port and so sadly, not wanting a huge fine for leaving before the port was open, we were stuck another day. Sadly, the winds were about perfect for a departure and we wasted an entire day of good sailing. When 8pm rolled around there was no wind and it was freezing cold so we decided to delay departure until the next morning.
Finally, at about 7am the next day we headed out for what would be a very long sail to the mainland.
tjsailing 