Our Salish Aire: San Diego to Bahia Frailes (Friars Bay)

Wow, have I been procrastinating getting an update done. I see the last note ended when we were approaching San Diego Harbor.

Approaching San Diego

San Diego downtown from our spot in the "cruisers anchorage"

San Diego is a bit of a challenge from a cruising boat’s point of view as anchorages are very limited and transient berths at marinas very expensive and scarce. The city harbor authority has helped out some by creating a “cruisers’ anchorage” area where those from outside of San Diego County can get up to 3 – 30 day permits to anchor in a 1 year period at no cost (that’s the good news). To qualify for a permit you need to present your boat for an inspection at the police dock near the harbor entry where they confirm that you have holding tanks, fire extinguishers, and a generally seaworthy boat. The anchorage itself is across the street from San Diego International Airport (luckily at the usual landing end of the single runway so the noise from the airport is fairly minimal). The anchorage lies directly between Coast Guard Station San Diego and Naval Station San Diego. The fun begins when the new CG helicopter pilots practice hovering seemingly for an hour at a time and or the Navy decides to send a jet or two out from the airport BUT the real is the boat traffic. I had never understood when our friend, John, who grew up and learned to sail in San Diego talked about there is really nowhere to go like we were used to in the Pacific Northwest. In San Diego there is one very large harbor or open ocean to choose from. From about 10 AM to 8 PM we were constantly in motion from wakes from passing pleasure fast boats, big fishing boats, navy craft (up to and including aircraft carriers), and tour boats that decided we were of interest to their customers with our paravanes so they made sure to pass close by and explain their function over the loudspeakers multiple times a day. Getting to shore meant a run on the dinghy to one of 3 very crowded dinghy docks where we carefully locked motors , fuel cans, life jackets, and other contents into the dinghy and then locked the boat to the dock with a ¼ inch stainless cable (this was highly recommended by the harbor police and other boaters as even unlocked oars quickly walked away). On the positive side there are lots of marine focused services within an easy bike ride and with the Baja Ha Ha rally of 130 boats about to head south there were even low cost seminars to help us prepare for Mexico.

The other nice thing about San Diego was that John’s brother, Jerry, and his wife still live there and own a local business. They were very helpful in getting us to church services, making sure we saw the sights, and accepting packages for us. We also met a number of other cruisers while we were there who also were planning to leave after the Baja Ha Ha like us to avoid the crowd (we jokingly referred to this group as the Ha Ha Baja folks). Some other friends with a Nordhavn 46 also came into town and we had time to enjoy their company. All and all the friendships we built and renewed have already proven their value as we have spent the past two evenings with a family from Puget Sound who are anchored near us.

Stealth navy tri-hull warship passes in front of an aircraft carrier

Salish Aire at anchor San Diego

I periodically check in on the progress of Space X on the computer. I happened to look just in time to see an announcement that in about 15 more minutes "southern California should get a good show from a launch from Vandenburg AFB. The cloud cover was perfect for a spectacular show.

The second stage of the Space X rocket is on the left while on the right the first stage burns to
prepare for the first ever land rocket landing on the USA west coast.

We did some touring while we were in San Diego including a bike ride up to the Zoo which deserves every accolade it has ever gotten. I have always been amazed at how Disneyland takes a number of “lands” and stuffs them into a very small footprint and yet you really feel like you travel half way across the world going from one land to another. The San Diego Zoo seems to have taken that skill one step further by adding the animal displays in the native habitats. We also took time to take in some of the other San Diego sights.

San Diego Maritime Museum

Old Town San Diego

A sailor's welcome home

Jarvis visits Little Italy on Halloween

We also rented a car for a couple of days and loaded the pup tent, sleeping bags, single burner backpacking stove, and Jarvis and headed for the desert. We ended up in Joshua Tree National Park and once again fell in love with the desert scenery. We’ve driven on the freeway across the southern edge of the Joshua tree area but have never really explored the part before. It was pretty amazing and well worth the drive. The previous Friday we had gotten pelted at our anchorage in San Diego by a fast moving front and thunderstorm. Apparently the weather made it over the coast range and dumped on the desert as well. Driving through the town of Joshua tree we laughed to see snow plows being used to move huge amounts of desert soil from the roads where it had washed down in the rare rainstorm. (We didn’t have the opportunity to travel to the south entrance of the park as the road was washed out!)

Jumbo Rocks campground Joshua Tree NP

Joshua Tree NP

From Joshua tree we headed south past the Salton Sea and ended up in Anzo-Borrego Springs State Park. I had been there as a child and once with Clarice and the kids always hoping to see the storied flower blooms only finding a dry desert. This time I chose to walk a trail to a small oasis up in one of the canyons – the transformation from a dry canyon strewn with house sized boulders rolled in the periodic floods from high in the mountains to a lush growth of palm trees and reed grasses was worth the effort. The GPS led us on a mountainous twisty road back to San Diego and we felt like we had left the sea behind for a few days.

Salton Sea

Trail in Anza-Borrego State Park

Oasis in Anza-Borrego State Park

My big purchase in San Diego was a new electric assist bicycle. We knew the battery on my old bike was near the end of its service life and a new one would cost $400. I had also ridden my bike through the winter in Sitka where the road salt and sand took its toll making my bike in much worse condition than Clarice’s matching one. I kept looking at a very nice folding bike with a couple of generations newer battery and motor at a local bike shop and finally bought a Pedagio Latch from Sean (I had been by the shop so many times I started to refer to myself as the “Latch Stalker”). The best demonstration of its capability was a 30 mile round trip ride (including a VERY substantial uphill run) to REI to buy a bike trailer for Clarice like one she had seen on another cruising boat.

I pick up my new Pedego Latch from Sean at San Diego Pedego

Our last two days we stayed at the city dock where we topped off our batteries and water supplies and headed out of the United States on November 1^st for a short run to Ensenada Mexico.

We had previously arranged to stay in Ensenada as the local marina includes a “get you through the paperwork” guide service as part of the moorage fee. Ensenada was really a nice place to visit so we stayed a few days. While we were there we took Clarice’s new bike trailer (no bike – using it as a hand cart) and went grocery shopping bringing back 40 # of oranges and other commodities we weren’t sure would be allowed across the border. We were docked near the cruise ship area and enjoyed the local market and splash fountain (kids (and I) play in it during the day and in the evening it is fenced off and becomes a music and light show). We were pleasantly surprised at the low cost (as long as we paid in pesos) of eating out and enjoyed many varieties of fish tacos and other local foods. After 3 days we finally had all of our papers in order (LEARNING POINT: customs is very easy on a Saturday after being closed for a Friday holiday when there is a long line forming just as they opened and they had 2 cruise ships in town to process ;-) ).

"Children" racing through the fountain trying to beat the spray

Fountain and massive Flag of Mexico

Ensenada

Cruise ship in Ensenada

We left Ensenada early Sunday morning November 4^th for our run to Bahia Colnett (Colnett Bay) the next major protected anchorage south.

Turning oranges from Ensenada into orange juice

Our next anchorage was Bahia San Quintin where we had a quiet night at anchor. On our way we managed to catch two tuna before we had fully let our hand line out each time. There was a small pocket beach where we could land the dinghy and climb up to a trail above the rocky beach. The trail ended above a small fishing village on an estuary. We didn’t talk ourselves into crossing the sandbar but watched a fisherman run his panga onto the bar while riding a larger wave and then push it across to the other side finally motoring into the village. We met up with another sister ship, Nordhavn 46 “One Life” here and continued south along with them for the next couple of anchorages.

Tuna caught before the line was fully in the water

Tuna converted to taco

Drone photo of Bahia San Quintin thanks to Doug on One Life

Drone photo of Salish Aire (foreground) and sister ship One Life thanks to Doug

From Bahia San Quintin we made an overnight run to Turtle Bay. It was a long night for Clarice as she had to frequent the bathroom frequently in addition to her regular watches. It was nice to have One Life in range of radar and radio should something go amiss. This may be one of the nights when Jarvis alerted me to the porpoises next to the boat during the night and one of the times a little black storm petrel decided to hitchhike on our bridge.

Jarvis takes care of Clarice when she's not feeling well

Several Storm Petrels hitchhiked on our Portuguese bridge overnight

Turtle Bay is a regular stop on the Baja Ha Ha and the locals look to the boats for income. There was a one armed man who watched for any dingy approaching the shore and was sure you must need assistance with garbage, or directions to the store, or moving your boat up the beach or something that would earn him a tip – sadly he overdid it and made himself rather unwelcome. On the other hand everyone else we encountered was friendly and helpful as we made our way with our pathetic Spanish. The town had a beautiful church that we understand was started as a gift of gratitude from some stranded sailors when they were helped by the villagers. The phone service only covered voice so I visited the internet café a couple of times. The speed was just above dial up and using a Spanish language keyboard was quite the challenge (e.g. to create an @ for an email address required pressing ctrl then 6 then 4 if I recall correctly). Needless to say I did a couple of emails only but the young lady running the store / internet café was patient with my Spanish, had cold sodas at hand, and a cool floor for Jarvis to rest on. I took a walk with Jarvis to the top of a little hill and decided that this and much of Baja reminds me of the Badlands of South Dakota. Doug from One Life and I walked up to check out a colorful little village we could see from the anchorage, it turned out to be one of two miniature villages / cemeteries. The best I could ascertain was that a family would bury their dead close to each other and eventually build a memorial house over the graves. The houses were quite crowded together and looking through the windows revealed that they were very elaborately decorated. This was an interesting contrast to the houses for the living that didn’t seem to be nearly as well cared for (keeping in mind that this was shortly after dia de los muertos when they would likely have been spruced up per Mexican Catholic custom).

Approaching Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay)

Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay) church

Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay)

Cemetery "village"

Looking through the window of cemetery village "house"

Pelicans enjoy a break on a local fishing boat

Terrain around Turtle Bay

From Bahia Tortuga we headed out for an overnight run to Bahia Santa Maria just outside of Bahia Magdalena. My notes indicate we had a starlit night as we headed south finally getting to Bahia Santa Maria with just enough time before dusk to take Jarvis for a run on the beach. The next morning we moved into Bahia Magdalena proper. The dune backed sand beach was a Jackhuahua’s dream come true where he could run as fast and far as he wanted, chase birds and bark to his heart’s content and sniff and pee and poop wherever he wanted just like his wild inner wolf said he should. This was our last stop before another overnight run to the tip of the Baja Peninsula and turning the corner to our current goal of the Sea of Cortez.

Village in Magdalena Bay

Beach in Magdalena Bay

First some orientation: Cabo San Lucas is a resort area at the tip of the Baja Peninsula. San Jose del Cabo is the original town and is a few miles north of Cabo San Lucas. San Jose del Cabo is also where the international airport is located. Los Cabos is a term dreamed up for marketing purposes and refers to the whole “Cabo” area.

Arch at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula

Southern tip of Baja Peninsula

Cabo San Lucas

We initially tied up at the rather expensive but very nice (and with potable water!) marina in Cabo San Lucas. This gave us a chance to get our land legs back and well rested. We also topped all of our water tanks and our battery banks. The Walmart in Cabo San Lucas is a really big and really nice store where we were greeted by an “English assistant” who helped out whenever we needed something translated. We rode our bikes to the store and came back with probably 50# on my heavy duty back rack and 50# on Clarice’s fancy trailer (our San Diego splurge purchases are proving their worth already!). We spent about $80 USD for what would have cost us about $150 USD back in Washington and much more in Alaska. I later rode to Costco but didn’t find it to be as inexpensive in comparison and curiously it seemed to primarily have USA folk as the customers who bought the same things they were used to getting at Costco in the States (it was nice to find unscented laundry soap in Mexico). We quickly tired of getting asked if we wanted to buy a hat or a trinket or a meal or if we needed a massage (hmmmm – not sure if legit or not). We did finally find the Port Captain as we are required to check in and out of every major port as we move along (this sounded strange until we learned that foreign boats in the USA face the same requirement). After two days we moved out of the marina and anchored off of the main beach where we swore we were in the middle of an interstate freeway with all of the tour boats and water taxies whizzing past us. There was a nice pocket beach where we could land the kayaks and let Jarvis run while we would take turns snorkeling and checking out the many fishes. Otherwise to get to shore we would just hail a passing water taxi and get a ride. The bad thing was the NOISE!!!!!! . Both in the marina and anchored was like being in the middle of a discotech 20 hours a day. Sunset tour boats would go out with loudspeakers blaring and lights flashing and the open-air bars on the beach would have music or DJ’s blasting and yelling with the volume turned to high late into the night. When the three day holiday weekend in celebration of the Mexican Revolution ended we were finally able to get in to see the Port Capitan and clear out before we lost our hearing for good.

Resort Row Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas beach

Anchoring in Cabo San Lucas was a bit of a concern as the water drops off into an underwater canyon pretty close to shore. We were a bit concerned that an off-shore wind might come up during the night and pull our anchor off of the drop-off. To allow us to sleep more soundly we decided to put out a stern anchor to make sure we stayed stern to the shore.

HOW NOT TO SET A STERN ANCHOR: We moved out of the expensive Cabo San Lucas marina today and set an anchor in front of resort row. The water here is quite deep and drops off pretty quickly so even with 300 ft of chain out we were concerned about the possibility of the wind shifting and pushing us off shore. THEN Clarice Gregory mentioned that she had read that folks sometimes set a stern anchor here to keep the boat pointed the right way. Setting a stern anchor before the main anchor is fairly straight forward but since we already had the main (bow) anchor set it seemed best to carry the stern anchor back and drop it. This is commonly done using a dingy but we didn't want to launch the dingy just for this purpose and I was concerned about balance if I tried to carry an anchor and chain on the kayak. So I opted to float the anchor with a type I life jacket and the chain with 2 throwable cushions and swim out with fins and snorkel through a virtual freeway of water taxis and personal water craft (AKA PWCs ). I managed to get far enough from the boat and not get run over (I also towed a bright orange diver down "sausage") AND get the flotation devices off of the anchor and chain simultaneously. It worked but definitely qualified as good cardiac exercise. Finally a word of thanks to the water taxi driver and PWC operator that watched out for me while I was in the water.

Recall that while approaching San Francisco we hit two logs one of which caused considerable damage to our port stabilizer fin. We had gotten new hydraulic cylinders and a new hydraulic pump in Dana Point and installed them so the system was back and operational. While we worked on it there we noted that there was grease coming out of the top seal on both fins which could be a sign that the lower seals were failing or that the grease had come through the seal two years ago after we replaced the bearings and we had never noticed it as there are covers over the top of the mechanisms. We decided not to panic but to be prepared so we ordered new seals and a used main casting and a used torque arm that we had delivered to Jerry in San Diego. Our hope was that once the grease was cleaned up it would not return and we would store the parts until our next planned haul-out. If the grease did recur then we had the parts we expected to need in hand and could make repairs wherever we could arrange to haul the boat. Sorry to say but the grease reappeared on our way down to Cabo. The reason for the main casting was that when we sent underwater photos of the top of the fin to a person very familiar with our type of stabilizers after the collision he mentioned that it appeared that the casting had been mounted too low when it was originally installed so it protruded about ¼ inch into salt water and was likely suffering from corrosion. In retrospect we recalled that when we had replaced the bearings in 2016 we had done some repair to corrosion damage on the lower edge and made a mental note to keep an eye on it. Since the log had apparently loosened the casting it seemed a good time to address both issues at once, the log damage and the installation issue. The torque arm had clearly bent about ¼ inch with the collision and I was able to bend it back only about half of that distance and then had to grind off a bit of the end of the hydraulic ram to make it fit. Again it was working as I had it but it seemed prudent to do a full repair whenever I had everything apart. While we were in Cabo San Lucas we started calling yards as far north as La Paz to try to get a plan for hauling the boat. We ended up deciding to use a yard in San Jose Del Cabo.

From the church, marina on the left, boat yard is the large building to the right, town is in the distance

From "Container Restaurant" (its build from shipping containers)

One of many sculptures around the marina is this massive cross that lights up at night

San Jose Del Cabo may only be a few miles north of Cabo San Lucas but it is as different as night and day when it comes to being quiet and relaxing. The marina is about a mile from town which is much less resort and much more local in nature. The boat yard was not inexpensive as we had been led to expect – apparently folks from southern California are used to very expensive boat yards and consider the Los Cabos yards to be a good deal but we are from Puget Sound and points north where yard rates are much cheaper. That said; the yard itself was very clean and had excellent equipment and staff eager to help. They agreed that we could work on our own boat and arranged for us to stay on it by providing us with an access key. (The marina allowed us to keep our keycard The manager was telling me his background and it turns out that he used to manage the Bayliner plant in Arlington only a few miles from where we raised our children while he lived in Mill Creek near where our final terrestrial house is located – talk about a small world. We worked our fannies off in the Mexican heat so we would be sure to find any surprises with enough time to correct them and not extend our yard time beyond what we had budgeted. As it turned out there were no major unexpected findings and we were able to enjoy our final day in the yard as it was a Sunday and no one was around to launch the boat anyway. The old casting was not as hard to remove as I had feared once I bought a “gato” at Walmart (it turns out gato translates to both “cat” and “car jack”). The bearings showed no signs of water damage (we didn’t have bearings with us so if they had needed replacement they would have had to come from San Diego) which was a relief. We did make a HUGE mess when we emptied the motor oil that the hydraulic system uses as a fluid and pulled out all of the 20 year old hoses as we decided to address another hose project while we had the system apart anyway. When we returned the boat to the water on Monday we had to do some minor corrections but we were able to head north the next morning.

Hoses where labeled before removal to aid in reassembly (hmmm - some of the labels washed off at the hose shop)

A big hole in the bottom of the boat once the casting was removed

The replacement casting

Out of the water we discovered that the log impact had crazed the gelcoat about a foot back on the fin, Clarice sanded it down and applied an epoxy coating then new paint

Scraping old sealant from the hole

"On the hard"

Getting hydraulic hose demonstrates some of the challenges of working in a foreign culture. One of the yard folk took the hydraulic hoses to a local hydraulic store as soon as we pulled the boat out of the water (we had pulled the hoses the evening and morning before being lifted). The next day we were told the new hoses would be ready at shortly after noon and that the yard could provide a translator / driver to get us to the shop where the hoses were being made. The plan was that we would pay directly for the hoses so that the yard would not need to add a markup for running the costs through their accounting system. When we arrived at the hydraulic shop I confirmed that they could take a credit card. As we stood around I realized that the hoses were not quite finished as they had apparently needed some additional fittings (likely from 2 different sources). We find this to be common in that small operations cannot afford to stock as much as we are used to so they will accept the order and then have an employee run to another location to pick up supplies (e.g. I’ve ordered orange Fanta pop a couple of times and rather than saying it’s not in stock, an employee zips out the door to the grocery store down the block to buy a single can.) When we tried to run my credit card it wouldn’t go through. I called my credit card company and they indicated that the charge request had never reached their computers but assured me they would accept the charge when it did. To make a very long story short, it turned out that the bill was for $Mx 32000 pesos (about $US 1500) but the shop didn’t normally get orders that large so the bank had only set their credit card system to accept charges up to $Mx 5000 pesos. Our next step was to go to the bank and try the cash machines but they only could dispense $Mx 6000 pesos. Even the bank manager couldn’t help with a solution (and the teller line looked like it was a DMV office). In the end we gave up and asked the yard to cover the bill and we would pay a premium for their service.

Monday morning we broke a few rules and paid for it. We generally try to watch weather forecasts for a few weeks in a new cruising area so we can get a picture in our minds of what happens when. We knew that there was wind expected from the north at 10 -15 knots but we didn’t know what that meant on these waters nor did we know how accurate forecasts are or aren’t in this area. We also usually try to leave pretty early in the morning so we get going before daily winds pick up in the afternoon, on this day we figured we only had a 4 -5 hour run so no need to rush. We generally have a rule that if our “gut” says something isn’t right then we need to consider why we are feeling that way – I felt rushed and noticed that a number of other boaters chose to stay in port rather than head out. We have always heard that when you cruise on a schedule you are asking for trouble and we chose to leave primarily to save paying another day’s moorage fee in the marina. Finally before we head out we walk and crawl around the boat to make sure everything is ready for the sea, since the water was calm when we headed out we ignored this step. About an hour into the trip the wind picked up off our bow to 17 -20 knots. Rather than have gentle swell of 2 meters we had short period wind waves of 2 meters making the boat slam up and down from bow to stern – did I mention we didn’t set up the paravanes that are our defense against this kind of motion despite our practice of always doing so when we head into open water? So we are bumping along and just enduring the trip when Clarice checks down below in our berth and finds a porthole that wasn’t battened closed. Salt water is gushing in with each wave onto our bedroom settee and onto our printer/scanner and DVD player which toasted their electronics. All we can say was that the anchorage in Bahia Failes was well protected and the beaches lovely and the snorkeling great and the friends who visited were great company so after a couple of days and nights it was all worth it.

Some parting shots of wildlife at sea including one of about 50 turtles that were resting on the surface in one area and dolphins jumping way out of the water. We have not yet been able to catch a photo of rays doing up to 3 head over tail flips out of the water or the schools of fish that visit the boat at night.