We took longer than we’d hoped getting our boat ready for the new season after putting her away in Marina San Carlos, Sonora for the months of July-October. We’d hoped to be moving again by mid-October but our project list was long and some complications delayed us. We might cover those stories in another blog post, in this post I’m focusing on our return to Bahía Concepción which was just way too hot when we visited early in June on our way north.

When we left Marina San Carlos on October 31, we filled our diesel tanks and anchored for one night at nearby Playa Algodones. That gave us an opportunity to make sure all our anchor tackle was working well before crossing back to the Baja California side of the Sea of Cortez. This time of year we already have to think about the weather when timing our crossing as north winds will rush down the sea creating some pretty significant and uncomfortable swell that would be directly on the beam. We generally prefer to sacrifice the ability to sail to avoid unnecessary wear on ourselves and the boat caused by rocking side to side in that swell.

We left Algodones a couple hours before sunset so that we would arrive at the opening of Bahía Concepción around sunrise. While we had the sails ready to go, we did not use them. The best winds we saw were coming directly from in front of us, so in order to sail comfortably, we’d need to be going at least 45 degrees off from the direction of our shortest course which would add miles and time to our route. We also saw a little bit of swell coming on our nose as the winds built while Rachel was on watch and Nojan was trying to sleep.

We slowed a little to make sure not to enter the bay before sunrise and were treated to beautiful sunrise views across Punta Santo Domingo. We anchored in Playa Santispac around 8:30 AM on November 2nd. We tried to rest the first day, but I ended up spending time looking at route planning ahead of us and thinking about next steps since I was so excited to be on the move again. We did finally fall asleep a little early and got back onto regular schedule the next day.

Our second day in the anchorage we launched our dinghy and toured around some of the little islets in the bay. Many of the islets had patches of bird poop so they also had the tiny bobo flies. We were inundated with them on the dinghy. These flies are so annoying – they are generally feckless but when the land on you they don’t just sit there like houseflies. Instead they wriggle and tickle and generally drive you mad. And they love windless sweaty spots on your body like under your nose, inside the crook of your elbow, under your hat brim. There weren’t so many that we could kill 20 with just one swat, but we were determined to shake them off before returning to our big boat. We saw quite a few dolphins out chasing fish but none super close so no great pictures of dolphins but lots of nice pictures of the islets which had lots of caves, birds, and cacti.

We enjoyed lunch with our new friends from SV Zarpar at Restaurant Armando’s on the beach. Good food for a decent price – this can be a rarity in the small beachside areas in Baja and wasn’t really available here during the off season in June when only JC’s restaurant was open (and with a limited off-season menu). We had great micheladas served in big hand-painted clay mugs. I had ceviche de pescado and he had tacos de camarón. By the time we were finishing our leisurely lunch, more boaters arrived: our fellow Coho Ho Ho alums from SV Stella J as well as SV Reverence. They had been anchored further south but came to Santispac as the northern breezes were picking up.

Today, Monday, November 7, we pulled up anchor and relocated to the Santo Domingo anchorage so that we won’t have as far to transit tomorrow as we head to San Juanico with the plan to tuck in there for several nights as the next group of northers pass through with forecast swells of 3-4 feet from the N (in reality they are often worse than forecast as there aren’t very many observations in the sea to help confirm and the models aren’t that accurate).