The First Leg North

On Anchor
Location: Bahia Santa Maria on the west coast of Baja California Sur
LATITUDE: 24-46.54N
LONGITUDE: 112-15.35W

It seems that the weather god on duty Friday night for Cabo Falso did not care for our sacrifice of rum and he/she cranked up the winds and seas to show their displeasure. It was a rough rounding of the cape but that only took 6 hours and when we were 20 miles north of the cape things settled down and the rest of the trip was acceptable if not pleasant. Saturday morning we found ourselves in a different world, grey skies and seas and temps 30° below Thursday's in los Muertos. It's as if the storm around the cape propelled us out into a far different location on the globe.

We had favorable weather forecast from three different sources for rounding the cape and all of them were wrong. VERY WRONG! All predicted 5-10 kt winds and but what we had was sustained winds of 30-35 kts for six hours. For us that made the passage uncomfortable, for a lesser boat it might have been dangerous. We'll do a post in the future on the miserable state of weather forecasting in Mexico.

We are now in Bahia Santa Maria and have had a restful nap after arriving at 9 AM. The rest of the Bash fleet opted to anchor inside Bahia Magdalena at Man of War cove so we are the only boat in the outside bay. Santa Maria has an wild look to it, high dark hills on the west side with a long sandy beach backed by sand dunes and mangroves stretching for miles around the bay. Ocean swells wrap around the point and there is heavy surf breaking on the beach. We have the paravane fish in the water and gently rise and fall as the swells pass under us. The low marine layer of clouds give the area a solemn and wild look reminiscent of SE Alaska.

The weather forecast is for higher winds on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so we're going to stay here for at least 3 days waiting for the wind to die down.

I was able to post 4 position reports to winlink so that's up to date.

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