Some pictures from the first few days of our fall 2006 adventure follow. These were in the wrong folder so they didn’t make the first posting.
Our trip back from La Paz to our homeport of San Carlos was uneventful except for one dark moonless evening. We were anchored close to shore behind Punta Pulpito (the pulpit) all alone.
Punta Pulpito is a very isolated place on the Baja Coast. We had a long sail planed for the next day so we went 10 miles past one of our favorite anchorages (San Juanico) so we would only have 44 miles to cover the next day. The Baja generally has anchorages every few miles but this stretch is the exception, no anchorages north of this point for over 40 nautical miles. The weather forecast was favorable for the next day so we were in good shape.
Link to a Google satellite view of Punta Pulpito:
http://wikimapia.org/s/#y=26522654&x=-111452866&z=13&l=0&m=a
About 7:45 PM Rhea was reading in bed and I was at the navigation station getting ready for tomorrows voyage when I heard voices. Sometimes local fisherman will work close to us at night but they don’t usually make much noise. Going up to the cockpit for a look around I saw a strange site. Quite a few men were scurrying around the beach. Most were clearing the three or four foot high cobblestone berm that Hurricane John had built up along the beach. It looked like they were making a place for a boat to land.
Another man was almost half way up a steep jeep trail leading from the beach area to the top of the ridge, which connects to the main part of the Baja, shinning a powerful light straight out to sea on the heading we use to enter and exit this anchorage.
Others were working at the base of the jeep road while others were shinning flashlights on us as well as their work. Clearly they were not trying to mask what was taking place.
Just as clearly I was certain that they were making plans for drug drop that evening. Nobody wants the bad publicity by hurting American cruisers so in all probability if we kept our light off and didn’t use the VHF radio nothing would happen. Oddly, we had had an encounter with the other side, the Mexican Army, at this very anchorage in May of 2005. A copy of that blog entry follows this entry.
Rhea came on deck and quickly agreed that we should leave ASAP. Fifteen minutes after I first heard talking the anchor was up and were underway. Luckily this is one of the few anchorages that I am comfortable leaving in total darkness. We enter using a certain compass heading so we exit using the opposite heading.
Where to go was the only question. The moon would not rise until 11:30 PM we would be in total darkness except for starlight for almost 4 hours. San Juanico, down the coast, was not an anchorage we could enter even in moonlight. Going up the coast presents some navigation challenges. I would have to stand watch all night, then stand off the anchorage until daylight then enter an anchorage at dawn. All this without any sleep for 24 hours. We had already had a long day so that was not an attractive option.
On the other hand if we headed for our homeport across the sea we would have an easy 15-hour 85 nautical mile journey free of any unusual navigation challenges. We could stand our normal watches and we both could get some sleep. Getting home a couple of weeks before Rhea’s knee replacement operation was a good idea anyway.
So we headed for the barn. The trip was without incident except for a pod of sperm whales we encountered 15 miles out of San Carlos. I had just read an account of a sperm whale ramming and sinking a racing sailboat returning to San Francisco from Hawaii. So I was a little nervous. It must have been springtime in the whale world because they were swimming in pairs almost touching. They dove and surfaced in pairs. An awe-inspiring sight. Sorry no photos we were busy avoiding them.
We anchored in San Carlos Bay for a couple of nights before going into our marina and then putting Vagari “on the hard” for the winter.
We had a superb fall cruise and are looking ahead to our spring cruise.
As of January 20th Rhea is making a rapid recovery from her knee surgery. We expect to be back on Vagari in March.
Copied from our May of 2005 blog entry:
The only excitement at Pulpito was an encounter with the Mexican Army. A boat circled both sailboats; Rhea and I were below sleeping and didn’t see or hear them. Military aircraft had circled us the day before and again that morning. When we went on deck to watch the sunset Tom of Persistence yelled over and told us what happen. He told us to look up on the ridge. There was an army truck and at least a half dozen soldiers walking on the ridge with guns and looking at us with binoculars. This went on for half an hour or longer. I thought they would leave when it got dark but they didn’t. So we did leave
We had planned to leave at midnight for the run for our homeport so we would minimize the night hours but we were nervous about the soldier. My theory is that they had word of a drug drop and were planning to jump them when they landed.
In any case the open calm sea looked better than that anchorage.
Our last night passage was the best yet. No problem with the boat, the seas or the winds and it was relative warm. Rhea took a four-hour shift from 2:30 AM till dawn. No moon during those hours. She did great.
After sunrise we saw lots of dolphin and schools of baitfish. Dozens of pelicans dove on the small fish. Meantime the dolphins were feasting on the small fish and the larger fish that were eating the baitfish. Moral, don’t come back in your next life as a small fish. Persistence saw several marlins and a whale. The sea off San Carlos was teaming with life
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