This article was previously written by Rachel Messerschmidt for and published by Vancouver Family Magazine in October 2022.
In early July, we arrived in what would become our final “neighborhood” of our first season cruising in the Sea of Cortez: Bahia de Los Angeles or, in English, the Bay of LA. We’d been hearing about the beauty of this area for years and we couldn’t wait to check it out.
There are many anchorages available within a short day-sail from the village that goes by the same name. The village there is the only civilization within 125 miles in any direction. Cell phone service is non-existent and if it weren’t for our friends’ Starlink satellite internet, there would have been absolutely no way that I would have been able to work during the month of July.
To put it simply, the Bay of LA is just about as remote as it gets in the Sea of Cortez. But there was a nice little family-owned waterfront restaurant that was welcoming to our group of cruising sailboats. They had useable wifi and great food. What more could a cruiser ask for?!
We stayed for our first few nights anchored in front of the village. We enjoyed exploring the town and buying fresh fruits, veggies, and other goods at the grocery store that was just a couple blocks from the water’s edge. We met new cruiser friends here and reunited with others.
On the 9th, our daughter’s birthday, we moved across the bay to a little spot called La Mona. Two of our buddy boats came along and we had a 3-family birthday party that night aboard our sailboat, Mosaic.
By this time, we were seeing daily temperatures climbing upwards of 100 degrees, and even the water our boat was floating in was over 90. The wind, when it blew, felt as if it was 115 degrees or more. I have never in my life experienced such breathtakingly hot wind. We were miserable. Our only reprieve from the heat was to get in the water so we spent many hours floating in the shade of our boat just trying to cool down.
Finally, the worst of the heat broke and we found a new anchorage that had heavenly, cooling breezes. It was still over 90 each day but with wind that was blowing over the water instead of off the land, it was manageable. This was the La Gringa anchorage just north of the BLA village and this was where we saw and swam with whale sharks. Major bucket list item checked off our list!
We stayed in La Gringa for over a week amongst an often-changing crowd of up to 15 cruising sailboats. We played in the beach lagoon where the tide cycles each day created never-ending entertainment for kids and adults alike as a river formed and flowed inward on the incoming tide and then out again on the outgoing flow. And, of course, we swam with the whale sharks that visited the anchorage.
Unfortunately, this is also where Covid struck our little floating community and nearly every boat took their turn battling through thankfully only mild- to moderate cases. We, by some grace, were spared and managed to dodge the illness.
Then, suddenly one day, the La Gringa party broke apart as we all noticed some strong and unfavorable winds in the forecast. In just one day the entire anchorage emptied of all the cruising boats and we scattered for a night or two to various different spots around the Bay. We took our boat back to the village and picked up a few more fresh groceries before heading to the local ‘hurricane hole’ known as Puerto Don Juan to ride out the forecasted winds.
The big, scary winds either never developed, or perhaps just didn’t make their way into the 360-degree protection of the Puerto Don Juan anchorage. But we were safe and stayed there for several nights while 30- and 40-knot winds were predicted for the majority of the Bahia de Los Angeles area.
Then, the heat kicked up a notch again and we decided it was time to start moving up to our staging zone for our final passage of the season. We would soon be making a 22-hour sail up to Puerto Penasco at the very top of the Sea of Cortez and thus wrapping up our first season of Mexico cruising.
Rachel Messerschmidt and her family are Clark County natives living and cruising full time aboard their 40-foot sailboat, Mosaic. They traveled down the US West Coast and have been cruising in Mexico since November of 2021. 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 for Vancouver Family Magazine.