We beat feet for San Juanico after crossing from San Carlos and spending a night in Santo Domingo because … in what would become the story of our lives for the next month … there was a norther coming that we needed to hide from in a safe anchorage.
We LOVE San Juanico. We’ve spent quite a bit of time in this anchorage, and the sister anchorage to the north around the corner called La Ramada. These two spots hold a lot of great memories for us from both of our previous cruising seasons in the Sea of Cortez.
This place is super cool. As you can see in the map above, the San Juanico bay is very interesting with lots of different small islands, interesting rock features, sea caves, and multiple beaches. We tucked up tight in the anchorage in a great, protected spot to ride out the next few days of high wind. There weren’t any other kid boats in the anchorage, but we still met a few of our neighbors and enjoyed chatting on the beach when the wind wasn’t too rough to get ashore.
We enjoyed getting to know the older couple on this well-outfitted C-Dory 25. They were former sailboat cruisers that’ve now moved to part-time cruising in the sea on their awesome little C-Dory. It reminded me so much of the time my older brother, Clay, and his family joined us up in the San Juans aboard their C-Dory: Hammerhead. So, naturally, I had to get a pic and send to him.
That afternoon, we walked from the San Juanico beach along the road loop that took us over the hill to get to the La Ramada anchorage on the other side so that we could see the big waves coming in from the norther blowing through. Bonus! There were also sea turtle nests on the La Ramada beach that had been identified and caged off to protect the nests from predation. It was cool to see … and the waves were quite impressive!
Finally, by the 13th, the norther had blown itself out and we were ready to move on further down the sea. Unfortunately, there was another norther coming in just a day and a half. So, we didn’t make it very far in that window of good weather. We popped down to Puerto Escondido. And more on that, next time.
