WIND, HEAT & BEES

JUNE 17 - Here we are back at the Bahia de Los Angeles Village anchorage, for resupply after Refugio. We’d moved over to the west night of Refugio for a few days, enjoying snorkeling, swimming in deliciously warm water, and glorious sunsets. We also took the time to dive in the hull, cleaning it and replacing zincs as needed. It was tough to leave Refugio, but the end of our season is getting nearer, and we still have a few stops we’d like to make before the end of the month.

We had a bash south motoring through strong southerly winds of up to 30 knots on the nose through the choke point of Canal de las Ballenas, made rather more exciting when our oil pressure dropped dramatically! It turned out an older oil filter we’d used from inventory during a recent oil change may have been too old and the seal failed. Andy changed out the filter and refilled the oil in bumpy seas while Shan tacked us under the staysail only, and we were good to continue. Needless to say, we’ll be putting the rest of the old filters in our spares aside and buying new ones! We did have an amazing feeding frenzy to watch just off Isla Coronado, with Boobies and dolphins going hard after schooling fish. The highs and lows of cruising in a nutshell.

Nightly westerlies are strong again, and they howled through BLA anchorage last night. There’s no fetch and it’s safe enough, but very noisy! We’ll be out of range of them at our next anchorage as we head east and south towards San Carlos.

JUNE 20 - The nighttime westerlies howled through Bahia de Los Angeles Village, we clocked over 45 knots! That meant we both slept poorly, so we’ve moved back over to Punta El Pescador which is out of the localized wind effect at BLA. It’s much calmer over here, and we like this anchorage even more now that the red tides have finished. We’ll be able to do some snorkeling and spear fishing, and generally chill for a bit, which will be welcome.

We’ve met up with Gordon and Jera on SV Manifestation here too, they are headed north towards Penasco and our paths have crossed as we head south. Manifestation was one of our earliest cruising buddy boats in Baja, and it’s been lovely to catch up.

The latest SpaceX launch lit up the sky on our first night here, we’d not known there was a launch but happily were sitting in the cockpit enjoying the cool night air when it happened. Though dark in the anchorage, it was spectacular to watch as the exhaust plume was lit up by the last rays of the sun.

We’re watching the weather, strengthening southerly winds may mean we don’t make it to Isla Tiburon this year as there isn’t great shelter from strong southerlies, and we’d have to bash south to San Carlos from there. We’re considering spending more time around Bahia las Animas instead, then moving south back to San Francisquito to open up a better angle to cross. For now, we’ll keep our weather eye open and enjoy our time here.

June 24 - Wanting to visit Animas Slot for a while when conditions suited, we took the opportunity to visit this beautiful, one-boat anchorage after leaving El Pescador. It is a lovely spot, but we were immediately beset by very thirsty bees. Usually, we wave off the few scouts and aren’t too bothered by visiting bees, but these were numerous, and persistent! They disappeared at dusk but were immediately back in force at dawn. Sadly, we gave up on our snorkeling plans and moved on after just one night, Shan being stung on her big toe as we left added injury to insult.

Our latest stop is at Caleta Blanca at the northern end of Isla Las Animas. It’s another pretty anchorage and has given us decent protection from recent southeasterly wind and swell, and most enjoyably no bees. There is a pelican rookery up the small canyon behind the beach, we explored it and found it rather spooky, with empty nests, some pelican carcasses, bones scattered about, and the local pelicans watching us down their long beaks from the canyon walls. Not wanting to disturb them we turned back to the beach. We did some snorkeling when the winds settled, there was lots to look at including rays, stone fish, and lots of skittish grouper, though a strong current meant we needed to be careful in around the point.