This article was previously written by Rachel Messerschmidt for and published by Vancouver Family Magazine in April 2022.
Having spent two charmed weeks enjoying the water, the beaches, and the company of friends in beautiful Bahia Tenacatita, we picked up anchor and had a lovely sail down the coast to Barra de Navidad.
Our 7 year old daughter, Kali, took the wheel to steer us out of the anchorage and she kept it through the process of raising our sails and sailing for the first couple hours. I love that our lifestyle is instilling a sense of wonder and confidence in our children. I watched in awe as she boldly took the helm to maneuver our 30,000 lb sailboat all on her own, weaving carefully between boats and then heading into the wind to raise the mainsail.
There are moments when it just hits me, the enormity of what we’re doing. I’m proud of our family, our kids, my husband, and myself. This is something pretty cool.
The splendor of Barra de Navidad took us by surprise and this town has become our favorite stop on the Pacific Mexico coast. The Mexican people in Barra are generous and kind, the food quite delicious, the town is colorful and quaint, and the setting is simply stunning.
The cruising community thrives here with options to stay in a marina or anchor in a well-protected lagoon. There’s an established support system and the town can provide nearly anything a sailor may need. It’s one of those places that we call sticky. We could see ourselves staying here longterm.
But the boat is meant for moving and we aren’t ready to settle anywhere just yet. So, after a week in Barra, we wove our way back out the narrow channel to the wide-open Pacific and we turned south once more.
Just twenty miles further down the coast, we stopped for a night in a small, picturesque cove called Carrizal. The internet connection in this bay wasn’t stable enough for me to work the next day so we picked up anchor again and moved a few miles around the point to anchor for the work week in Bahia de Santiago.
The anchorage in Bahia de Santiago boasts a famous shipwreck from 1965, the 300-foot long San Luciano. The ship was damaged hitting rocks nearly 40-miles away but was able to make it to the shallow waters of Bahia de Santiago before it was determined that she was too damaged for repair and sunk. We snorkeled on the wreck one morning and were extremely impressed with the diversity of fish that we encountered, despite poor visibility. This is an area that we’re very excited to return to next winter to see again.
After Bahia de Santiago, we returned for the weekend to Carrizal and loved the rugged beauty and isolation to unwind for a few days. The next week, we anchored for several nights in the bay at Las Hadas, at what would turn out to be our southern-most turning point for this winter’s journey.
From this point, we’ll now be heading back north again, slowly making our way back up into the Sea of Cortez to visit the inside of the Baja Peninsula and beyond.
Rachel Messerschmidt and her family are Clark County natives living and cruising full time aboard their 40-foot sailboat, Mosaic. In the fall and winter of 2021, they traveled down the US West Coast and Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. Crossing the Sea of Cortez in December, they continued south down the Mexican mainland coast until February. Rachel shares her family’s adventures on her blog at www.mosaicvoyage.com and on Facebook and Instagram (at)mosaicvoyage. She writes a monthly column in Vancouver Family Magazine.