We arrived in the city of La Paz on the Baja peninsula 46 hours after we departed Mazatlan.  The crossing was relatively uneventful, as we had carefully chosen our weather window.  Cath’s parents awaited us at our marina berth at Marina de la Paz.  We spent a blissful week exploring this non-touristy city, staying at Cath’s parents’ big condo.  We especially enjoyed the big shower with full headroom and plenty of hot water, and the non-rolly bed!! 

La Paz is the capital of southern Baja, and it has few tourists, except cruisers and kayakers, so there are no timeshare salesmen or restaurateurs hustling on the streets. With excellent services, we opted to get a few things made while in town.  We had a set of “chaps” made for our dinghy – essentially a cover for the top tube to shield it from harmful UV rays – and get the sewing machine serviced.  We also found a place that custom-makes lycra suits (full body suits to protect against jellyfish stings) and ordered one each.  (See the photos for a picture of Mike in his “Mickey Mouse” suit.)

It was cooler in La Paz and our tans peeled away, but we covered a lot of ground. We also had a chance to catch up with cruiser friends from Portland, and learned to play Mexican train – a dominoes game requiring little skill, so it doesn’t matter how many cervesas you’ve had…

We departed La Paz on March 23 for the cruising grounds immediately north of La Paz to show Grant and Carol what life on the hook is like.  Baja is considerably drier than the mainland.  The topography is dramatic with lots of colorful striations showing through the cliffs along the water. Beaches range from lovely soft sand to shear rocky.  Every sunset is more spectacular than the last.  The water was colder than we were used to (72 degrees F compared to 82+ on the mainland) so we were selective about swimming.  We learned that the water doesn’t warm up in the Sea of Cortez until May or June.  However, we had some nice hikes, especially checking out the new-to-us plants – lots of cactus and succulents, some in bloom with miniature but exceptionally colorful flowers. 

We returned Cath’s folks to La Paz for their flight out March 31. 

At this point, we prepared to leave Breila for a week while we flew to Portland for some necessary paperwork.  We have called this week the “whistle stop tour” as we traveled so much in such a short time.  We spent 1-1/2 days in Portland, then drove to Vancouver B.C. for 1.25 days to complete our taxes and visit friends, then we drove back to Portland where we caught up with friends, then flew to LA where another friend met us and we picked up a vehicle for a fellow cruiser, which we drove to our car (in San Diego area), then drove both cars to Tucson, then Nogales AZ, where we left our friend’s vehicle while we drove our car through to San Carlos, MX. Here we arranged to haul the boat in May, then left our car and bussed to Los Mochis, then Tampolobampo, then took the overnight ferry across the Sea of Cortez to La Paz, arriving exactly 8 days after we had left.  We had made time to stop and purchase our ”necessities” for cruising, including 2 new inflatable kayaks, which we now use all the time.

Meanwhile, back in La Paz, we re-provisioned, picked up Rosie from the borders, checked out with the Port Captain et al, and departed La Paz 30 hours after we arrived.  We wanted to spend as much time in the Sea on the hook prior to our haul out in San Carlos in May. 

We spent the first night at our favorite “close-in” anchorage, Bahia Balandra, which is about an hour outside of La Paz. It features the “mushroom rock”, which we found less dramatic than we’d be lead to believe, but someone liked it so much that they willed money to remake the whole thing in fiberglass, since it had fallen over several times in storms. From there we headed north, catching up with our friends on Indigo who were in Isla San Francisco, 3 islands to the north. The anchorage here is spectacular with a long sandy hook making a bay.  We climbed the rocky hill around the bay and took some great shots of the anchorage.  Weather continued gorgeous, so we stayed another day.

We then visited the La Amortajada anchorage in on Isla San Jose.  We were surprised that there were so few boats here, after the crowd in San Francisco, but we soon discovered why!  Jejeunes (no-see-ums) enjoyed our visit to their island more than we did!! Mike is especially susceptible, and looked like he had a case of the measles after only one trip on deck to check the position of the boat during the night, after the wind had stopped blowing.  That next night, we also experienced nasty clocking wind conditions which caused us to up-anchor at 2 am, and we moved to three different anchorages until we returned to the original at 3:30 am after the wind dropped .  Thank goodness for the anchor windlass!!

We motored across the San Jose Channel to San Evaristo the next day.  What a difference! This is a very protected anchorage, with a small village.  We spent several days here, walking the beach, exploring the salt panning operation in the village, and visiting with other cruisers.  We finally departed to head north to Puerto Los Gatos.  This gorgeous anchorage was surprisingly empty of cruisers.  We did befriend some kayaker's from San Francisco here.  We also met a local panguero, Manuel, who took our order for lobster and immediately went diving (no wet suit or dive gear!!) for our dinner delicacies.  Manuel returned several times over the next few days, giving us ample opportunity to practice our Spanish, and bringing us lobster and scallops. 

We wanted to work our way northward, so moved towards Bahia Agua Verde, the next big stopover on the cruisers’ itinerary, but we heard reports of strong northerly winds for the next few days, so after beating upwind all day, we tucked into Bahia San Marte, the next bay south of Agua Verde.  This proved fortuitous, as we learned that there were already lots of boats in Agua Verde, and there is little protection from a northerly there.  We spent a quiet night at anchor.  The next day we were discussing our plans for the remainder of the spring cruising season.  One of our pre-departure goals was to repaint Breila’s decks.  We had postponed that task as time ran out prior to leaving Portland.  We did, however, have all the paint and supplies on board, as we planned to complete this job in Mexico.  Upon further thought, we decided we would rather get over this hurdle prior to haul-out in May (we didn’t want to leave all those very volatile chemicals on board during storage in 100 deg + weather) We examined our options and decided to return to La Paz where we already had paid-up moorage to get this task completed, prior to it heating up further.  We turned around and headed south, spending a night at Isla San Francisco en-route. The weather forecast was for a week of overcast cooler weather, wouldn’t you know it, we have just had 7 of the clearest hottest days we have yet had on this trip.

Well the paintings now done, whew what a job in this heat, only one little problem but its done now, so we’re leaving for points north today. 2/05/2002.

 More to come…

 Photo Album for Leg 8