La Paz to Loreto: Golden Fish and Golden Sunsets

After a couple weeks of cleanup from the hurricane (not to mention some pool poaching, a bit of late night carousing with Australians, and more than our fair share of roasted chicken), Autumn, The Rascal, and I were all ready to get back out into the Sea Of Cortez.  

Poaching the infinity pool at an unnamed deluxury resort in La Paz

We wanted to get as far away from the possibility of hurricanes as possible and there was plenty of unexplored territory to the north.  With this in mind, we put together a plan to head north to Loreto over the course of a week, resupply there, and then continue to San Carlos (on the other side of the Sea) where I hoped to haul the boat out to inspect the paint "removal" that had occurred during the hurricane and throw on an extra coat of bottom paint in the process.  

While I have a great love for my inflatable dinghy, "The Little Rascal", but the truth is that she doesn't quite get the job done.  Especially with more than one other person aboard, shes just too small and outboard lacking to go any distance.  Thus I'd been looking for an upgrade and a few days before we were set to leave La Paz, I finally found one.  Its a 9 ft long inflatable Achilles with a 4 hp 4 stroke Tohatsu to power it.  The whole kit and caboodle was hardly used and came at a very reasonable price.  In honor of a nightclub in Seattle that Autumn used to frequent, I decided to name her "Superhighway".  The Little Rascal shall forever hold a special place in my heart, but it sure is nice to be able to explore around in Superhighway without breaking a sweat. 

Autumn’s birthday was at the end of September and we made plans with our friends in La Paz (Brett & Aimee on Catalpa and Gary on Sea Turtle) to meet up in the majestic Isla San Francisco for a birthday celebration that would please esteemed Interim Hurricane Captain Autumn as well as the venerable Poseidon upon whom we would depend upon for safe passage to San Carlos.  But first, we needed to get tattoos.  

All of the folks that rode out the hurricane decided to get tattoos of the anchors that held them during the storm.  Thus, we asked around and found that Manuel the tattoo artist was the man for the job.  In we went and about three hours later, everyone (except me) was all tatted up with matching CQRs and Bruces on their feet / ankles.  Lovely!

My last La Paz sunrise

The next day, we made a big provisioning run, making sure to get plenty of pina (pineapple) juice, which happens to be one of the cheapest and most refreshing things you can drink in the Mexican summer heat.  We finally got out of La Paz around noon and picked up Gary on our sail across to Gallo Bay on Espiritu Santo.  Autumn caught a delicious dorado on the way over, and we fried him up for dinner and served him up on some pasta with a nice creamy goat cheese sauce.  Scrumptious.  

Gary and the Sea Turtle

The next day (Autumn’s bday!) we got up early and went for a morning snorkeling mission and then headed over to the Sea Turtle for some breakfast.  

The wind was blowing good and strong, so we decided to make use of it and pointed our bow northward, only to have the wind fail after about a half hour.  Typical for La Paz, and it allowed Catalpa to catch up with us.  The Sea Turtle and Catalpa are each about 36 feet long, so they go a bit faster, and by the time we got halfway there, they were each just specs on the horizon.  Autumn and I continued to trundle along in the Rascal and our turtle's pace was rewarded.  A hungry dorado nailed the handline and off it zinged.  I grabbed it and he leaped high in the air.  When he hit the water again, he took off on a run that was so blisteringly fast, that it started to burn my hand.  The shock of this was enough to surprise me into dropping the handline and plunk it went right into the sea.  I hate littering, but even more so, I hate losing big fish.  I found myself disgusted and resolved that this travesty could not stand.

I looked over at Autumn, whose mouth was agape with surprise.  "Cut the engine!!!" I yelled.  She immediately knew what was up, and said "Yep!".  With that I dove into the Sea of Cortez and started swimming furiously for the slowly sinking handline and the glory that would hopefully be attached to the other end.  I finally grabbed it and looped it over an arm, and started swimming back towards the Rascal, who had enough forward momentum to be a fair distance away at this point.  After a few minutes of swimming, I couldn't feel the tug of the dorado any more and I figured he had shaken himself free when the line went slack.  Still breathing heavily, I dragged myself up into the Superhighway.  I started to bring the line in, and low and behold, something was still attached to the far end.  "Hooray!" I yelled in triumph, and the fight continued.

To everyone's astonishment, including my own, I managed to land him from the superhighway and we decided that after such a valiant fight, he ought to be able to return to the deep blue ocean.  

Given that it was her birthday and the sun was shining, Autumn elected to do some sunbathing in her birthday suit on the back deck.  All of a sudden, the handline started zinging out again.  She quickly grabbed the spool and the fight was on.  Dorado, for whatever reason, seem to like to zing from one side of the boat to the other, which necessitates quick moves from the angler to get the spool around the windvane and the solar arch (and frequently the Superhighway as well) so that the line doesn't get all tangled.  This fish was of a similar mindset, and its lucky that Autumn wasn't encumbered by clothing, because she had to do a lot of jockeying around in order to land him.  He was a beauty and we decided he might make a scrumptious birthday dinner as well.

The birthday Dorado in her birthday suit!

We eventually pulled into Isla San Francisco and found the rest of the crew already drinking beer in the water.  We dropped anchor and cruised on over to find that they were up to their necks in water to avoid the assault of a sizable cloud of jejenes (pronounced Hay-Hay-Nays) that had congregated around them.  Jejenes are a tiny biting insect that is so small that they're effectively invisible, yet they deliver a fearsome bite for their size.  I had flashbacks to my last trip to Isla San Francisco, and we all agreed that despite how picturesque it was, we probably ought to find a better spot to anchor.  As we motored back out of the bay, the wind picked up and shifted around to the northwest, and we thought that this might be enough to banish the insects from the cove, so we decided to head back and take our chances as there weren't many any other anchorages nearby that would be protected.  Autumn and I decided to close up the entire boat, just to be safe, as we knew the jejenes would be worse than the heat.

The wind helped and we enjoyed a delightful dinner of bulgogi dorado, mixed veggies, and gin drinks.  It was even capped off with a birthday cupcake from our good friend Captain Doug in La Paz.  As it got later, however, the wind slowly died and the jejenes came out in force.  We retired to the Rascal and slept just fine for the first half of the night.  I got up late to use the restroom, and the second I got outside the cabin, I was immediately totally overwhelmed in a cloud of angry jejenes.  I quickly brushed them off and got back inside, but the damage was done.  The rest of the night was spent swatting at them and cursing despite being wrapped up in a protective sheet burrito.  As sun began to rise, we got on the radio and said it was time to peel out.  Everyone immediately agreed and we steamed out of the bay at mach schnell to try and force the fearsome creatures out of all the nooks and crannies.  They seemed to have gotten in everywhere and we started shaking everything out to try and get rid of them.

We met back up in Cabeza de Mechudo for breakfast, and everyone immediately jumped in the water to nurse their wounds.  It was clear that everyone else fared even worse than we had and we were glad to be away from the dreaded, yet beautiful Isla San Francisco.  After a big, hearty breakfast, we all split up, with the Rascal heading north, and the rest of the crowd heading back to La Paz.  We lazily sailed along towards Nopolo all day, and found a delightful little anchorage (that Wade and I had used a few months before) just as the sun was setting.  

A few straggler jejenes were still buzzing around, so we decided to smoke them out with a smoldering palm frond, which happened to be quite effective.  

We awoke to a west wind and quickly got under way, but it shifted into a norther, and picked up speed quickly.  We sailed close hauled and tacked back and forth into 15 or 20 knots all day, with tall waves close together, which wasn't particularly fun.  

The fishing village of Nopolo on our way out of the anchorage - you can only reach it by boat.

At one point during the pound northward I turned around and saw that the Little Rascal was no longer trailing us.  "Shit!" I exclaimed, "The Little Rascal! We have to go back."  We did an about-face (losing hard-won northing) and started to retrace our path, gazing out across the tempestuous sea.  We figured it would've gotten pushed back south by the wind, but we weren't sure when we lost it, so we sailed back downwind of our last tack.  It became immediately clear how difficult it would be to find someone who fell overboard, given how hard it was to spot something as big as a dinghy.  Miraculously, I spotted her about a mile off, and we took off after her.

Searching for the LR

We managed to pull into Casa Grande, which was a great north wind anchorage, at sunset, and heard from Porter on the satphone that a strong norther was expected to continue for the next day.  A lone panguero by the name of Manuel pulled up that evening and exchanged pleasantries and inquired about matches, which we happened to have extras of.  He said he would bring us lobsters the next day in exchange for the matches, and we invited him to dinner the following night.

We elected to rise early the following morning and grab some pictures of sunrise from the hillside above our anchorage.  It was a gorgeous vantage point across the Sea of Cortez, the Sierra La Giganata mountains, and the fishing village of Casa Grande.  It certainly made us feel better about spending the rest of the day doing boat chores while the north wind blew.  

Manuel heading out for a day of fishing

We were able to accomplish a lot during the day and went to explore the village of Casa Grande that afternoon.  Legend has it that, around the turn of the century, a poor fisherman found an enormous pearl and earned a fortune from the pearl traders in La Paz.  He went back to his village, built an enormous house, and retired to live out the rest of this days in luxury.  The house has since fallen into disrepair, but its walls still stand.

The town is mostly deserted now, and the few ranchers and fishers that remain are outnumbered by vultures, stray cattle, lizards, and cacti.

We had been cooking a pork udon soup all day amidst our boat chores and by the time Manuel showed up for dinner, our mouths were really watering.  We chatted for an hour or so over wine and dinner and he told us about himself and his family.  It sounded like he has a hard time making ends meet as a fisherman, as costs go up, and fish populations decline.  

We woke up to the sound of banging and went out into the cockpit to find that part of the windvane had fallen apart for no apparent reason.  A cotter pin or something must've worked itself loose.  Needless to say, this was really fun to fix early in the morning, with a little bit of swell and the boat jumping up and down.  

We had a healthy breeze all day and made good progress to the north, with lots of thunderstorms threatening and just enough rain to clean off the decks and give us a good shower.  The temperature reached a record low 76 degrees - a temperature not felt since I had been in California months before.

Porter relayed during the day that the potential existed for another hurricane to cross the Baja peninsula in a few days.  We started making plans for where we would weather it if, and when, the time came.  

We anchored in Los Candeleros at sunset and made an early night of it so that we could wake up and do some exploring the following morning.  The weather obliged and we had a killer sunrise to start off the day.

We were quite close to Puerto Escondido and eager for a cold drink and some supplies, so we motored a few miles north through the calm morning seas, and dropped anchor.  Puerto Escondido is one of the most protected anchorages I've ever seen, with lots of mooring balls and a small marina all surrounded by steep hillsides with an entrance channel that is only about 100 ft wide.  Despite this, you could still see some of the havock that had been wreaked by Hurricane Odile around the bay.

When we got into shore, however, we found that everything was closed on Sunday, except this one market that was 10km down the road.  We started walking in that direction and before long, an American in a minivan stopped to pick us up.  He was a friendly guy and even gave us some cold gatorades from his cooler.  We figured we would be able to hitch back, and before long, a gentleman named Martin stopped to pick us up, if we would be willing to chip in 50 pesos for gas.  "Sure!" we said, and climbed in.

Martin and Autumn in the front seat

Martin was playing some superb Mexican pop music and he drove exceptionally slowly.  I casually looked around in the car and noticed a few empty beer and tequila bottles.  He chatted with Autumn while we were driving along, but the music made it tough for me to hear what was transpiring.  We both had reached the conclusion when we were back in Puerto Escondido that Martin might've had a few drinks before he picked us up.  We got back to the boat and relaxed for the rest of the day, savoring the cool breezes and drinking a few evening cocktails.  

With news of the potential hurricane fizzling out, we decided to spend the next day out on Isla Danzante which is just a short sail from Puerto Escondido.  We spent the day hiking, fly fishing, spear fishing, and watching the clouds and weather blow over.  It was a beautiful view place and we felt lucky to have taken it all in.  

The next morning, we went on another sunrise hike and got just enough cell service to check the weather forecast.  It looked like we would have a south wind for a little while, and the hurricane potential had totally fizzled out.  Thus, we decided to head straight north to Loreto for a resupply without stopping back into Puerto Escondido.  On our way back down to the boat, we noticed that we weren't the only ones going out for a morning hike.  

The sail to Loreto was uneventful and we anchored a little ways offshore and parked superhighway beside a huge fleet of fishing pangas.  It was a quaint, picturesque town and we were able to eat our first meal out in more than a week.  

Talavera pottery in Loreto

After a little more exploring around, we hit a grocery store, and staggered back to the Superhighway with enough groceries, pina juice, and ice for another week of exploring.