Turtle Bay
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Time period: Friday, 11/15/13 - Tuesday, 11/19/13 We spent two days in Turtle Bay on our journey south to Cabo San Lucas. |
Friday we spent recovering from our 2 day passage from San Quintin. We are hand steering and it can be quite exhausting, especially when everything is shrouded in fog or so dark and cloudy you can only steer by compass. By Saturday morning we had caught up on enough sleep to venture into our new surroundings. The first order of business was to re-fuel. Although we only used about 15 gallons of diesel on our passage from Ensenada, this is the last place you can easily re-fuel before Cabo San Lucas. Our guidebook describes the fuel dock in detail, and especially the owner, Enrique, who is well known for never having change. Our refueling experience proved the guidebook right, but luckily we had close to exact change and only lost 11 pesos. Next we re-anchored and took a panga into town where we met several other cruisers also anchored in the bay. We all had lunch together at a small family restaurant that made roast chicken. One of the boats had come down with the Baja Ha Ha and was now heading back north. The other cruising couple, Lewis and Alyssa, are on the sailboat, Eleutheria, and are heading south like us. We caught a ride back to our boat in Eleutheria’s dinghy and they invited us over for dinner to share in some tuna Lewis had caught on their way in to Turtle Bay. It was a fun evening enjoying some delicious Hawaiian poke and getting to know each other.
The town of Turtle Bay.
Pelicans taking over one of the fishing pangas.
The fuel dock and fishing pangas moored near the beach.
Enjoying lunch in Turtle Bay with some fellow cruisers.
The next morning (Sunday), we readied our boat for the next passage south, either to Punta Abreojos (93 nm south) or Bahia Santa Maria (248 nm south). We were going to see how the weather developed and decide en route how far we would go. Eleutheria also decided to head out, and we followed a couple hours behind them. The winds were light and we made about 4 nm/hr (knots) under both our jib and mainsail. We decided to head straight west on our tack since the winds were good, and then in a day or so, tack back in to Bahia Santa Maria. The plan worked well, except Monday afternoon the winds picked up to 20-25 knots (nm/hr) and the swells increased to about 7 – 9 ft. We were flying at about 5-6 knots with a double reefed mainsail (reefing is a term to describe reducing the sail area). It was an uncomfortable ride with the swells and wind chop, but eventually we got used to it. It was also too rough to cook, so we had to make do with crackers, granola bars, and dry cereal for a couple meals. Note to self: prepare meals in advance before rough passages! Tuesday morning the winds calmed down and by Tuesday afternoon we were motor sailing. We made it into Bahia Santa Maria at 9pm Tuesday night, exhausted, but glad to have made it so far. We were also thrilled to have traveled most of the way under sail!
The dolphins really enjoyed the choppy swells - they were doing acrobatics all around our boat for hours! Who needs Seaworld?
One more dolphin pic...