Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Santispac

Written from the anchorage at Santispac, in the Bahia Concepcion, about 200 nautical miles north of La Paz. After visiting numerous anchorages, each one as pretty or interesting as the next, one would think there would be no more "firsts" on this part of our adventure. Today there were several, notable enough to note, maybe not to blog about. But heck, this is another way to get up to speed on the blog, and keep moving (I mean, sailing) forward.
Here are the firsts:

1) Left the anchorage without calling out goodbye to our friends on Sirena or Tisha Baby (Shindig was uncharacteristically stealth mode)

2) Encountered heavy fog, with visibility down to ¼ mile. That is not fun. Rob was down below doing his communications things, so I called him up. We used the Boat Horn, which is loud, but needed, to alert some pangas that we could see on radar but never saw with our eyes. I asked Rob to let me know each time before he pressed the button - if you haven't heard one of those horns, repeatedly, they give you a mental shock when they go off.

3) Caught our first dorado - beautiful shape and color, but not large enough to keep. Besides, I had a special dish in mind when we anchored down…

4) Despite the online charts, our trusty "A cruiser's guide to the Sea of Cortez", we found the depths in Concepcion Bay were Way Off! Instead of an expected 50-60 feet, we got down to 12-15 quickly, had to do a sudden tack, and went 180 degrees in the other direction to find deep water. We're glad to be here, but the general approach, multiple big rocks and islands to dodge, and lack of accurate charts, made the final arrival and anchor down even more sweet.

5) I shared a dark beer with Rob as our "anchor down" beverage, 9 hours after we left this morning. The wine supply is dwindling and I've saving it for more shindigs this month as we finish up our cruising in this season.

The anchorage at this beach has only two other boats, and a very spartan beach with a few buildings. We had been advised to look for the "green restaurant", which is always exciting after cooking on board night after night. I thought we had identified the restaurant through the binoculars, only to find as we approached, that structure is actually a very nice RV camper and compound. Guess we'll continue with our original plan for dinner tonight, another first. "Curried Coconut Shrimp on Rice Stick Noodles".

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