We spent one more month cruising the Sea of Cortez in 2022. We had hoped to have more time to enjoy it without the brutal heat we encountered in June but some difficult to diagnose boat problems kept us in San Carlos until the end of October and we decided we wanted to be in Mazatlán by November 29th so we could take a bus to Manzanillo followed by a taxi to Barra de Navidad for a Panama Posse kick-off and seminar series. It was a good year to cross to the mainland early because the northers were worse than last year and the good weather windows were getting fewer even in early December.

Since I’m behind on blogging, this post will have an condensed version of our sailing log for the month followed descriptions of each anchorage and associated photos.

Sailing Log

Here we summarize log dates and locations from the month in a long table. If you want to hear more about the process of going from place to place and trying to time our routes, the table is interesting. Skip the table if you just want to read about anchorages and see pictures.

Times are expressed in YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM 24 hour notation. During this whole time our time zone (GMT-7) did not change because Sonora and Baja California Sur both follow Pacific Mexico Time (US Mountain Standard Time) and Mexico had already done its final switch from daylight saving time on October 30th (the US seriously needs to stop doing seasonal time changes).

Date/Time (Location)	Summary from Log of Pasargada and Rachel’s Memory
2022/10/31 13:35 (27°56.9’N 111°03.4’W)	Refill diesel at Marina San Carlos and head out to Playa Algodones anchoring in 22 foot depth a few hours later at 15:09.
2022/11/01 16:08 (27°57.1’N 111°06.8’W)	Pull up anchor to cross the sea toward Bahía Concepción in calm water without enough wind to sail. Goal was to leave the Pacific coast around sunset and arrive on the shore of Baja around sunrise. Ran the watermaker for the first time since summer and watched the sun set with moon already in the sky.
2022/11/02 00:03 (27°20.4’N 111°32.2’W)	Starting to encounter swell with about 30 nm remaining to the entrance of Bahía Concepción. The swell makes sleeping and standing watch less comfortable as the boat gets slapped and rolled by waves. However, these are fairly moderate compared to what we sometimes see in the Sea of Cortez. By 02:59 we can see the lights of Santa Rosalía glowing behind the outline Isla San Marcos and we start slowing so that we will not arrive at our destination before the pre-dawn light is bright enough to see fishing vessels or lines and nets near shore.
2022/11/02 08:37 (26°15.8’N 111°53.2’W)	Dropped anchor at 26 foot depth and got some rest. On the way in, we passed the first good Bahía Concepción anchorage (Santo Domingo) and went toward the area closest to Playa Santispac which is popular with RV campers on the Baja peninsula and more attractive as long as it is not blisteringly hot like in the summer. The water temp when we anchored was a refreshing but not cold 78°F. In summer in the nearby place we anchored it was nearly 90°F.
2022/11/07 09:59	Pulled up anchor to go to Santo Domingo anchorage to prepare for longer passage the next day. Tried to improve knot meter calibration underway then anchored at 11:55 in 15 feet of water with a few other boats in the bay. Went onshore and played with shells before dinner.
2022/11/08 06:20 (26°15.8’N 111°53.2’W)	Pulled up anchor in Santo Domingo early with a goal of getting to the anchorage known to cruisers as San Juanico (local name is Ensenada San Basilio) before sunset. Along this route we started to see sport fishing boats likely coming up from Loreto. You can see some details of our time spent in Bahía Concepción in this post: Revisiting Bahia Concepcion in a New Season
2022/11/08 13:03 (26°31.4’N 111°25.9’W)	The winds have come up enough for us to be sailing upwind past Punta Pulpito. Sailing upwind is one of our favorite things to do (maybe because we started with racing instead of cruising, maybe because our boat goes upwind quite well? dunno, but we love it while many other cruisers hate it due to the heeling of the vessel. I’d rather be at a constant heel cutting through the swell than be rolling from a big swell on our aft quarter).
2022/11/08 15:33 (26°22.024’N 111°25.909’W)	Anchored in 15 foot depth. Would have liked to be farther north to have more protection from swell coming into the bay but there were already quite a few boats and we don’t want to anchor too close with the shifting winds and tide such that we might swing into another boat. Soon after we anchored, another boat came in and anchored between us and the shore with a distance from us much less than double the amount of chain we had out which made us nervous (because closer to shore they might see different currents than us and we may swing towards each other). We decided not to worry yet as projected winds for the night were light.
2022/11/09 10:03 (26°22.092’N 111°25.773’W)	Several boats that had been anchored north of us left in the morning, so we decided to go anchor between the sets of spires in the northern part of the bay. This got us farther from the boat we were concerned about and into an area with less exposure to swell. By evening several other boats came in and filled the rest of the open space in the north, but none as close to us as the boat we’d been concerned about. Highlights of this anchorage can be found in the San Juanico section below.
2022/11/13 07:50	We pulled up anchor in San Juanico with a goal of heading all the way to the marina at Puerto Escondido. We’d managed to get a slip reservation at the docks but without that we could still be sure to find a space at one of their many mooring balls. We had a first on this passage of baking bread underway – I had some sourdough ready to go from the culture gifted to us by S/V Hoptoad.
2022/11/13 14:57 (26°48.92’N 111°18.74’W)	Tied up safely in Marina Puerto Escondido, slip A-16. We were glad there was little wind or current as this marina requires you to back in to the slip which is challenging for us. The marina is about a half hour drive south of Loreto and is pretty remote. The facilities are pretty nice but the only services are a pricey market and restaurant so we rented a car for a couple days to be able to drive up into Loreto for provisioning, refilling propane and some fun. Many boats came into the harbor and paid for mooring balls while we were there due to some heavy northers coming through and not a lot of protected anchorages in the area. From a waterfront bar in Loreto (Auggie’s Bait Shop), we got to watch a boat struggling to pull up anchor in huge waves and beat against the norther before finally giving up on trying to head north and instead seemed to be heading over to Puerto Ballandra at Isla Carmen. In that weather we would probably just choose to head south to the protection of Puerto Escondido.
2022/11/19 09:05	The northers calmed down so we got ready to leave PE. We added 104.3 liters of diesel to the tanks at the fuel dock first. Soon after getting out of the protected harbor we were able to raise our sails and move along at 4 kts until the wind died a little after noon.
2022/11/19 15:02 (25°31.9’N 111°02.0’W)	With the slight northern swell predicted to increase a little we wanted to find somewhere not too rolly to anchor. We saw that the northern end of Agua Verde was already pretty full and another boat had signaled over VHF that they were about to anchor in there too. So we decided to continue to Punta San Marte.
2022/11/19 15:55 (25°30.25’N 111°01.04’W)	Anchored just south of Punta San Marte (Google Maps labels the bay as Bahía Berrendo). One power yacht was already in the anchorage and no others arrived overnight although one was coming in when we left in the morning. We think we probably had less swell than the overflow areas at Agua Verde would have had and it put us that much closer to whatever our next anchorage might be. If conditions had been good for staying at Agua Verde it would have been nice to go on shore and hike to the cave paintings but the swell was only supposed to get worse.
2022/11/20 08:02	Pulled up anchor with a goal to head for Mangle Solo since it was clear that most likely wrap-around swell would be impacting all the closer anchorages (including the two with beautiful pink sandstone: Punta San Telmo and Puerto Los Gatos as well as the less interesting Timbabiche). And getting further south would get us closer to Islas Espirtu Santo and Partida sooner which do have bays with northerly protection.
2022/11/20 12:00 (25°07.7’N 110°48.8’W)	By noon we were observing some larger sets of swells coming from the north and we needed to head east to get over to the anchorage on the Isla San Jose side of the channel which meant we had to take the swell more on our beam. We saw on AIS that several vessels behind us were heading into Puerto Los Gatos and we were happy to be heading to a less frequented anchorage. We’d heard from a cruiser whose experience we trusted that it should be pretty comfortable in a northern blow. Even though we had wind on our way to the anchorage we were mostly motoring because the angle of the wind was dead behind us and we can’t sail that close to the wind so we’d have to gibe back and forth which would add distance and require more exposure to the potentially dangerous gibe maneuver.
2022/11/20 13:39 (25°01.7’N 110°42.3’W)	Anchored just south of the point in 16 feet of water at Mangle Solo. The low point meant we had no swell at the boat and the constant northerly wind kept our bow pointed north all night. We know some cruisers don’t like anchorages that are exposed to wind, but if we can set our hook well, we’d rather have wind howling through our rigging than be lazily swinging around our anchor with annoying swell rocking our boat all night. We’ve spent many windy nights on the boat in our Puget Sound cruising days.
2022/11/21 07:06	Pulled up anchor the next morning with the goal to get to Ensenada Grande at the north end of Isla Partida. We decided to skip Isla San Francisco as it can be quite busy with charter boats and we had the goal of getting to Mazatlán by the 29th so it made sense to go more south.
2022/11/21 09:28 (24°51.0’N 110°38.4’W)	I put two handlines out from the boat and finally caught our first fish since we restarted in San Carlos. I pulled in a fairly big fighting bonito or skipjack on the starboard side but I was not able to land him before he broke away. I was using an old lure from my grandpa’s old tackle that had a tiny treble hook on it and the tuna broke 2 of the hook barbs off. Then I realized I had a fish on the port line too. I managed to land him and he looked just like the bonito I’d caught and enjoyed before (only stripes, no spots) but he bled a lot and when I went to fillet him I found the meat much darker and not tasty. So sadly I wished I had just released him. After that I’ve decided to only release the “bonito” ones even if they don’t have any spots because I don’t want to risk another fish I don’t want to eat. The seas were calm and we had our headsail out until nearly 11:00.
2022/11/21 13:42 (24°33.99’N 110°24.51’W)	Anchored in 21 feet of gorgeous clear water in the northwestern lobe of Ensenada Grande. One other boat shared the lobe with us but left by the next morning and then another sailing catamaran came in. Most of the boats were in the larger lobe. We had a great time here and you can read more about it below in Islas Partida and Espiritu Santo Highlights.
2022/11/23 10:02	After just two nights, we decided to pull anchor in Ensenada Grande and see if we could find space in Caleta Partida where other cruisers were gathering for Thanksgiving togetherness.
2022/11/23 11:46 (24°30.11’N 110°23.21’W)	We ended up bypassing Caleta Partida becuase the shallow protected anchorage in the north was pretty busy and we weren’t feeling as social when we got there. We checked out the southern side where we’d anchored before but could see that the wind was coming pretty strong between the two islands and that we’d probably not enjoy touring around in the dinghy or snorkeling in that choppy of conditions so we continued south looking for a comfortable spot. We ended up anchoring in 16 feet of water in Bahía Candeleros on the southern lobe. There was a bit of annoying refracted swell there but it was pretty chill otherwise as everyone else was anchored on the northern lobe and seemed to be getting similar swell.
2022/11/24 06:29	After one night, we pulled anchor and headed south again. We were regretting leaving beautiful and calm Ensenada Grande but did not want to head back north with our goal to be going south and we could see that the northerly wind and swell were only going to be worsening so if we didn’t make a run to Ensenada de los Muertos on Thanksgiving Day, we’d be waiting and probably not be set up well to cross to Mazatlán by the 29th (unless we just left from Ensenada Grande which our friends on SV Priya did recently, but we wanted a shorter crossing distance).
2022/11/24 09:15 (24°22.3’N 110°14.1’W)	After making our way through confused seas of swell against current in the San Lorenzo Channel, we headed south into the Cerralvo Channel with about 36 miles left to our destination anchorage. We were seeing some pretty good speeds with the wind and current pushing us south and felt bad for a sailboat trying to work his way north in the channel. As predicted, as we got further south in the channel the wind was funneled and the wave heights were greater so we were happy when we briefly got protection turning east past the south end of Isla Cerralvo, aka Isla Jacques Cousteau.
2022/11/24 15:13 (23°59.13’N 109°49.70’W)	We finally anchored securely in Ensenada de los Muertos on our second attempt. On our first attempt we were pulled north too close to other anchored boats by a sort of tidal current even though the prevailing wind was coming across the beach from the northwest so we reanchored to be safe. We could see that the conditions were a little better to the north but we wanted to give ample room to the boats already anchored and did not want to be too close to the boat launch and fixed moorings for sport boats at the north end of the bay. A couple boats left and we did move north and reanchor on the 25th (23°59.28’N 109°49.75’W) – there was less beach refracted weirdness further north and I imagine if we could go even further north where other boats already were it would have been better yet.
2022/11/27 03:54	Pulling up anchor to head southeast! We spent several nights anchored waiting for the northers to calm a bit so that our crossing to Mazatlan would be calm. We finally chose to leave before dawn on the 27th so that we could arrive in Mazatlan around 10 AM slack tide time on the morning of the 28th.
2022/11/27 06:13 (23°56.4’N 109°37.6’W)	We started with our jib pole out and attached next to our forestay thinking we’d want to deploy it for deeper downwind sailing. But it turned out to be broad reach angles so we needed to get the pole out of the way so we could get the jib out without it. That took both of us going up to the bow with our tethers clipped in to our high life lines. It was a bit of an accomplishment that made us feel better as we’d really avoided having both hands on the bow during rolly windy conditions like that but it was good to know we knew our safety procedures and could handle it if needed.
2022/11/27 09:00 (23°51.7’N 109°19.8’W)	We’d been wondering if any boobies would try to land on our boat but neither of us had seen any birds until 09:00. First I heard them with a sort of high squeaking call then I saw them, two white birds circling each other playfully. We were sailing with a double reefed main and the occasional splash of the waves from the large swell onto our aft deck. Taking turns resting and being on watch.
2022/11/27 18:01 (23°38.9’N 108°23.5’W)	The sun set and we could see the orange glow of the sun behind the tallest of the hills at the tip of the Baja California peninsula. We could not yet see any land on the mainland side where the mountains are much further from the coast. We had switched from pure sailing to motor-assisted sailing around 15:30. We probably could have gotten more speed by shaking out the reef but then we’d need to put it back in again if the wind picked up. Sometimes it’s ok to be a bit lazy… especially when a 14 hour bus overnight bus ride is on the horizon.
2022/11/27 21:00 (23°34.3’N 108°01.2’W)	There isn’t much boat traffic in the Sea of Cortez but there is a ferry that runs overnight in both directions from La Paz to Mazatlán and some commercial traffic of large container and tanker ships on the mainland side. Around 20:51, Noj contacted “Baja Star” (the ferry headed to La Paz) since he could see them headed directly toward us. As we got closer he contacted them again and we arranged to pass starboard-to-starboard (or green-to-green as they said on the radio).
2022/11/28 04:04 (23°26.3’N 107°15.8’W)	We first saw the glow of cities on the mainland around 00:00. Around 03:00 we saw the “Emerald Express” tanker on AIS heading up the coast. It looked like we could end up at the same place at the same time so we kept an eye on our course. We were sailing in current so it was hard to be sure what our future course would look like so we contacted them around 04:00 to let them know we were under sail and had limited ability to change course but would try to hold our current course. Just before 05:00 as the crossing neared, “Emerald Express” made a significant course change to pass north of us and south of a private motor yacht that was on a similar course to us. Due to light haze/fog and dark we did not see any of the land ahead of us until pre-dawn light just before 06:00.
2022/11/28 10:12 (23°17.7’N 106°36.1’W)	We timed our arrival to Mazatlán well and were starting to put on fenders and dock lines to head into the marina. Earlier, Noj discovered a dead flying fish and a dead large moth on the deck. We had not been landed on by boobies on this crossing so we were happy. Also did not have squid on deck from huge waves full of squid like we have in the past.
2022/11/28 11:47 (23°16.19’N 106°27.30’W)	Securely docked at Marina Mazatlán Dock 3, Slip 13. End of our Sea of Cortez adventures. Ready to clean up, tidy the boat and take a 14 hour bus to Manzanillo so we could go to the Panama Posse meetup in Barra de Navidad and then go visit Guadalajara. Details of our time spent on land in Mexico in December will be in forthcoming posts.

San Juanico Highlights

San Juanico should not be confused with the community of San Juanico on the opposite side of the Baja peninsula. It’s unclear why this anchorage is called San Juanico in the cruising guides as the maps refer to it as Ensenada or Punta San Basilio. Maybe it’s an older name. In any case, it’s a dramatic bay and we had visited it before by walking a dirt path from the anchorage immediately north of it called Caleta Ramada when we were heading north at the end of last season. It’s the location of the famous cruiser shrine tree and we were able to revisit that and see that the ornament we hung there with our boat name on it was still there.

This time we did a dinghy tour of parts of the bay and also walked further west on the dirt road until we got to the ranchito that sometimes has vegetables, eggs or cheese to sell. At this time in late fall they didn’t have anything available but we got to see a gorgeous large turkey and lots of turkey chicks running around in a pen near the entrance to the ranchito.

We enjoyed our five nights there and were happy to be a little farther north as some of our friends who got in later experienced much rollier conditions just a little south due to the swell wrapping around into the bay. We also walked the dirt path back over to Caleta Ramada and found that the anchorage that was so calm and restful in late spring had turned into a raging surf break.

Because I never made a post about this bay in June, I’ll first include some photos from that visit then the most recent November visit in the next slideshow album. That will show you the stark contrast between how dry Baja is in June and how green it is in November after the rains.

Islas Partida and Espiritu Santo Highlights

We didn’t spend as much time at these islands in November as we did back in May but the spot we spent two nights in (northwest lobe of Ensenada Grande) was so amazing. The water was flat and crystal clear and we could easily SUP to the beach or just swim to the nearby cliff and go snorkeling. I think the best way to describe it is just to share pictures.