We left Santa Rosalia in the dark of night around 4am on July 2nd to make the passage to San Francisquito with time to arrive before nightfall. It was a sporty sail in the 20s and up to 30 knots for much of the trip. We caught some fish, several black skipjack tunas, but no mahi.
During this sail from Rosalia to San Francisquito, we saw a pod (pack?) of HUNDREDS of dolphins. In the northern Sea, it seemed like we didn’t often see a few dolphins – we saw them less frequently, but when we saw them, they traveled in hordes. This group of dolphins on this passage were traveling south as we sailed north. We passed through a line of them that extended far in both directions from the boat. Were they driving fish in front of their line? We don’t know. We were just REALLY glad that we didn’t hook a dolphin on our fishing lines that we had trolling! A few of them broke off from the group long enough to come play in the bow wake for a few minutes.
This was also the passage where Brenden and I saw a shark chase after our boat, trailing the scent of the tuna which we were dragging behind us to bleed out. I pulled it in before the shark got a bite. I didn’t get any pictures or video because the whole shark encounter happened fast, but it was still super cool to see. It came up behind the boat at speed, a large dark-colored blob that we registered as a shark. I believe it was about 6 feet long, and very fast.
San Francisquito Anchorage – July 2022
We arrived at sunset to San Francisquito and had to carefully pick a spot to drop the anchor. There were about 6 or 7 other boats in the space and not a whole lot of room to anchor without going pretty deep. Thankfully, we found a spot and set the hook as the sun was setting. Friends came over in their dinghy to say hi and we planned to hang out for a day or two before moving on.
As plans tend to do though, we made a spur of the moment decision the next morning, after studying the weather predictions for the next few days, to go ahead and make our next jump north right away. We followed Captain Musick and two other buddy boats north up to Isla Partida. We were still following Captain Musick like a lost puppy dog, always anchoring close enough to them that I could bum use of their Starlink internet for work.
Isla Partida Anchorage – July 2022
Unfortunately though, we found that the Starlink didn’t work at Isla Partida. In fact, SV Auryn was also out there and their Starlink wouldn’t work at that island either. We collectively decided that it was likely due to being more than 10 miles from the Baja peninsula at that island.
But we took a few days to relax, off-grid at Isla Partida – this was our Fourth of July location for 2022! We were in company with several other boats, including kid-boats, that we knew and were friends with. It was a nice, chill holiday.
SV Mosaic, SV Captain Musick, SV Auryn, and SV Mar de Luz
Thanks for reading. Click here and sign up to help keep us afloat.