After spending a couple of nights and the Fourth of July at Isla Partida, our group decided to head back west to the mainland Baja in order to re-establish our connection to the outside world via Starlink. I needed to continue to be able to work, of course, and our collective group of boats was becoming more and more ready to reach Bahia de Los Angeles.
The “Bay of LA” would be our final ‘neighborhood’ cruising ground before we sailed north to Puerto Refugio and then on to Puerto Penasco to haul the boat out of the water for the summer.
We left Partida with Captain Musick and Auryn and all three of us sailed for a few hours in light winds trying to get west to Punta Pescador. Unfortunately, though we tried, we weren’t able to make sufficient progress west so we eventually called the sailing off and motored to our destination.
Sailing to Punta Pescador in the Northern Sea of Cortez – July 2022
We found Ensenada Pescador to be a very sweet spot and we stayed for a few days. I, unfortunately, ended up spending all my time here working trying to catch up after being unable to work for a while when we lost our Starlink usage at Partida.
But that didn’t stop Brenden, the kids, and our friends from the other boats from going on a hike and exploring the abandoned resort structures on shore. Meraki also joined our group anchored in the bay on the first or second day. (The heat was getting to us at this point – the exact details are a little fuzzy to me.)
After spending a few days in Pescador, we moved on again. Auryn stayed behind for more time in Pescador while we moved with Captain Musick and Meraki to anchor next to the Village in the Bay of LA.
The Village at Bahia de Los Angeles – July 2022
I believe that we arrived to the village on July 8th. We anchored Mosaic and then took the dinghy in to shore to explore the village. We hit up the grocery store, dropped our trash, and ate at the beachfront restaurant, Guillermo’s, where we also linked up to their internet for a couple hours.
The following day was Kali’s birthday!! We left from the village and moved the group across the bay to the La Mona anchorage. That evening we had a party, complete with birthday cake and everything, for Kali – Captain Musick and Meraki joined us for the celebration. It was really nice to have friends over to help make Kali’s day special.
La Gringa at Bahia de Los Angeles – July 2022
After spending a couple of days in La Mona, and withering in the heat, we picked up anchor and moved to a new spot where we hoped to get a cooler breeze off the water. The breeze, when there was any, at La Mona, was just sweltering hot coming off the land. It wasn’t cooling at all- in fact, it made you feel worse.
But when we arrived at La Gringa, to a veritable army of cruising boats (there were about 15 different cruising boats coming and going from this spot over the next week), we realized that we’d really found the sweet spot. The breeze in this anchorage blew in from over the Sea and actually had a cooling effect.
We stayed at La Gringa for at least a week, thanks in part to the increased comfort factor of the cooling wind, and also because there were whale sharks that came and visited the anchorage on a daily basis! We spent days and days swimming alongside these amazing animals. Truly, dreams came true during this week. You can read more about our experiences with the whale sharks in this blog post that I wrote shortly thereafter, and also in this blog post.
Unfortunately, the dreaded Covid swept through the anchorage and most of the boats ended up with cases aboard. Thankfully, we avoided it ourselves (or at least never developed any symptoms) but it did cause us, and everybody else, to spend the last few days at La Gringa isolating from friends.
The La Gringa party broke up when some bigger winds came into the forecast. We took a morning and swung back down to the Village in order to hit up the store for freshies and then picked up anchor again to move into Puerto Don Juan to ride out the big winds.
Puerto Don Juan – July 2022
A large group of cruisers congregated in Puerto Don Juan, the known ‘hurricane hole’ in the northern Sea, to wait out the 40-50 knot winds that were predicted for a couple of days. Most people were still recovering from varying levels of sickness, so though we were all there together, we all mostly kept to ourselves.
It was hot again in there, without much breeze, and we began discussing plans with Captain Musick to make our final run north to get to Puerto Penasco and finish out our first season of cruising in Mexico.
Isla Mitlan and Isla Coronado (Smith) – July 2022
So, we did just that. With Captain Musick, we sailed from Puerto Don Juan up to anchor between Isla Mitlan and Isla Coronado, which is the site of an ancient volcano. We spent a couple of nights there – it was a really nice spot! There was an abundance of sea life, including many, many jumping rays and osprey nests on the heights surrounding the anchorage.
SV Auryn joined us on the second day, also getting ready to make their last passage for the season, up to put their boat into the marina at San Felipe.
Puerto Refugio – July 2022
We spent our final two nights at Puerto Refugio, staging to make the overnight passage on up to Puerto Penasco. It was beautiful, but the heat had thoroughly cooked us by this point and we were fully ready to be done.
We made our last passage north, hauled the boat out and spent a week putting her into storage mode, and from there we left to go back to the Pacific Northwest for a few months. Check out these blog posts from our adventures during our summer and fall off of the boat, including our weeks of traveling via pet sitting!
Thanks for reading. Click here and sign up to help keep us afloat.