TINO PAI AGROUND! AND OTHER NEWS

We headed out of San Juanico on 7th November and headed for Puerto Escondido, where we left Tino Pai to catch up with a group of our good friends visiting us from California. We had a wonderful time over the next week in and around Loreto and Puerto Escondido with Alex & Morgan, TJ & Aly, Jeff & Rhonda, and Lambert & Esme. Many tacos, margaritas, and a couple of ‘margaronas’ were enjoyed!

With the rest of the team heading back to the USA, we’d planned some time aboard Tino Pai with Alex, Morgan, Esme and Lambert. While Shan and the team provisioned, Andy headed out in the dinghy and, in one of his worst moments cruising so far, found her off her mooring, nose into the mangroves and rocks ashore! Heart thumping - and not stopping for photos or video - he was able to back her off the rocks and radioed the marina for assistance. Confused, they in turn called Shan who then called Andy to find out what was going on. On hearing the news, she immediately headed back to the marina car while Andy anchored just outside the marina.

What had happened was the pendant, the connecting line to the mooring ball, had failed. Our lines still had the thimble from the pendant attached when Andy pulled them in. When the marina staff saw this, they immediately accepted responsibility and gave us a slip while the keel was dived on and inspected. There were some obvious gouges in the keel, but nothing structural, and the marina offered to pay for Tino Pai to be hauled out and repaired. Sadly, this inspection process took the couple of days up that Esme and Lambert had left, so we decided to have a few days with Alex and Morgan before we hauled.

Unfortunately, by this time our nice weather window had passed, and it was fairly blowy as we headed up to Isla Coronado. So much so that we decided to flag our plan to head up to San Juanico for some spearfishing, and after a night in the southern anchorage at Coronado we headed around the north end of Isla Carmen for the shelter of Bahia Salinas on the island’s eastern side. We explored the salt works and hung out together for a couple of nights before heading to Punta Colorado for some snorkeling. By then it was time to head back to Puerto Escondido to sadly wave goodbye to Alex and Morgan, and to haul out Tino Pai for her repair.

Closer inspection of the grounding marks proved what a solid boat Tino Pai is, and there was no structural damage at all. Nevertheless, as she needed a bit of epoxy and paint applied to the grounding gouges, we elected to have her sanded and a couple of coats of ablative paint applied. We’d planned to do this in La Cruz anyway, so it was only a few months ahead of schedule. In a happy coincidence, fellow cruiser and boatwright/surveyor Marga on SV Dogfish was in the area; it was lovely to have her inspect the hull and reassure us of how minor the repairs were. She conducted a hull survey for us, the first part of a full survey of Tino Pai to ensure she's ready to cross the Pacific. We'll do the rest of the survey when we catch up with Marga on the mainland.

Steady north winds kept us tusked into north protection wherever possible. Heading south again on 1st December we spent a night in Agua Verde but not liking its exposure to the swell, we headed around the corner into the better protection of San Marte the next day. We had a couple of nights there, Andy shooting a grouper for our ceviche fix, before moving on to Los Gatos. It’s a favorite stop for cruisers – including us – and unusually we had the bay to ourselves! The wraparound swell wasn’t too bad, but we decided to move on to the very comfortable anchorage at San Evaristo. We had a lovely sail downwind through the San Jose channel and were pleased to anchor in calm conditions in the northern lobe at Evaristo. We enjoyed a couple of settled nights there, including sundowners on a very nice motor yacht sharing the anchorage with us.

It is our Baja farewell tour, and Isla San Francisco had made quite an impression when we first saw it – so we headed there for our next stop. We went for a spearfish along the southern breakwater, where there were lots of reef fish and an unfortunate grouper who ended the day as ceviche. We shared that with Duncan, Larissa and their kids on SV Freeranger who’d anchored next to us and kindly invited us for cocktails.

A strong northerly of over 30 knots was forecast for 10th December and knowing these are not to be taken lightly, we decided to head down to Ensenada Grande at Isla Partida where we’d sheltered from one last year. Ironically, we had a terrific sail down in flat conditions making 6 knots with all three sails up in 8 knots of wind on the beam. It was just lovely.

We hunkered down in the north lobe at Ensenada Grande with 25-30 knots howling through the anchorage. We can see the sea state outside the anchorage and are very content to be tucked in here. It’s very nice having an anchor we trust! Because of the topography here, during northerlies the wind we get at the boat is actually channeled from the northeast through these canyons. It’s the swell we’re trying to avoid during these blows, and the swell can wrap around into the anchorages. We try to tuck into as high a northeastward corner as we can in the bays to get out of the swell, and the north lobe at Ensenada Grande is a good one. For all that, it is blustery and we had sustained winds of 25 knots at anchor in which Tino Pai fishtailed around. As much as we’d like to do a bit of work around the boat (the never ending battle with rust on our brightwork), it isn’t pleasant out there and we tend to hunker down. We could see large waves rolling past the point and were happy not to be out in that nasty, steep, short interval chop!

The wind passed eventually, and we had a pleasant couple of days snorkeling around the rocks, and exploring a dry arroyo in the southern part of the bay. We clambered up to the top of the ridgeline to look down into the southern part of the bay, and very much enjoyed stretching our legs after a few days on the boat. Looking for a change of scenery, on Friday the 13th (!) we motored the short distance to Ensenada del Candelero, an increasingly rare new anchorage for us. It was hot and dead calm as we dropped anchor in this pretty bay, and we jumped in for a refreshing swim. Though cooler, the water is still around 73F / 22-23C and not too bad for swimming. We do wear wetsuits for extended time in the water, such as when snorkeling and spearfishing or cleaning the hull.

We’re going to stay here through another, lighter northerly and snorkel the interesting small island in the center of the bay. It’s a little bit rolly, but not so much as to drive us out of the bay. We plan to be in La Paz for Christmas, and that’s not far south of us now so we’re dawdling to make the most of our time in the islands. We’re loath to end our time in the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), but we know we need to be across to the mainland early in the New Year. For now, it’s as much island time as we can manage!