12/2/09:
The definition of cruising: “Fixing your boat in exotic locations with no parts.” But I’ll get to that later.
When last I updated this blob we were headed out of the Cabo marina to spend a few days anchored off the beach. Cabo is the vacation destination for more than 500,000 tourists each year and since the water is a major attraction, there is a big industry in renting jet skis, ski boats, and taking people parasailing. The Los Cabos bay was an absolute zoo and our boat was continually rocked and buzzed by all of the above as well as fishing pangas, water taxis, large sleek fishing trawlers, sailing boats, etc.
At one point there were three gigantic cruise ships anchored in the bay. It was fun at first people watching but got tiring quickly. The water was a tempting 82°F so we tried swimming off the boat, but we didn’t dare get more than a few feet away. After two days we had enough of that and decided to head towards a quieter anchorage.
We left the Cabo anchorage early in the morning on Wednesday 11/25 headed for Los Frailes, approximately 50 nautical miles (nm) away (1 nm = 1.15 land miles so this would be about 57 “statute” miles). After leaving the anchorage I checked our batteries and discovered the charging system wasn’t charging our batteries! Just like in a car, when we are running the engine the alternator should be making electricity and using the excess to recharge the batteries. We were worried about our electrical system since earlier we had lost the tachometer readout. We did some troubleshooting on the tach in Cabo but decided it would have to wait until La Paz to fix since parts would be more readily available and cheaper there. Now though with the charging system on the fritz it was a different matter. We discussed limping our way all the way to La Paz (170 nm) using the generator to top off the batteries each night and pulling up the anchor by hand, but decided that wasn’t the prudent decision and changed course to a marina about 20 miles from Cabo called Puerto Los Cabos.
Puerto Los Cabos is a brand marina advertizing all the amenities of a first class resort; showers, laundry, swimming pool, spa, golf course, restaurant, etc and one day it might be finished but at this point there was only one section of slips and some very nice landscaping. They had converted a trailer for the showers but the plywood floors and walls wouldn’t last too long. While slightly cheaper than Cabo, at $111 per night it was disappointing. The staff though was very nice and the maintenance manager helped Tom to determine that there was something wrong with our main alternator, but we discovered that there were two alternators on our engine and Tom got the smaller one working (after lots of swearing and burnt knuckles). We would have to be careful of power consumption but this smaller alternator should allow us to get to La Paz to do a better repair. Keep your fingers crossed for us. The last night in the marina we were treated to a beautiful sunset.
Leaving early in the morning, we made our way to Bahia Los Frailes. The wind was on our nose the whole way and the seas were choppy so we had to motor and bash our way up the entire trip. Without a tachometer we were guessing at how much we were pushing the motor and were worried the whole way about overheating. Going into the wind and seas sometimes it felt at times that the whole boat would come to a shuddering stop while it broke through a wave, not a pleasant journey.
We finally made Bahia Los Frailes (the Bay of Friars, so called because the rock formation on the point looked to mariners of old like Friars climbing the hill). We spent two nights in Los frailes to recover from the beat up. During the day we went snorkeling by the point, there were quite a few colorful tropical fishies and some coral. Around the other side from the anchorage is Cabo Pulmo Reef marine sanctuary, the only living hard coral reef on the west side of North America, and supposedly very good diving. We briefly though of trying to arrange a scuba dive there but decided that we were over budget at this point so diving would have to wait. Once we were rested we set out for the next stop; Bahia de Los Muertos. Once again the wind was on our nose and we spent the whole trip bashing into steep waves. If anything this was worse than the previous jump to Frailes. We averaged a bit under 4 knots and barely got into the anchorage before full dark, exhausted and cranky.
Bahia de Los Muertos ("Bay of Dead Men"; so named for the giant “dead-men” anchors used here to moor barges in the early 1900 while offloading ore from the silver mines at El Triunfo), is a nice wide pretty bay with a small fancy resort at one end and the Giggling Marlin restaurant (of Cabo fame) at the other. Developers don't like the name so they are renaming it Bahia de los Suenos (Bay of Dreams) but that sounds so cheasy that most people continue to call it Muertos. There are no other facilities but it’s well protected and there were lots of cruising boats anchored out. We found a good free internet wifi signal and spent several days just relaxing and recovering. We started to run a little short of beer so one day we loaded the bicycles in the dingy, landed on the beach, then bicycled the 6 miles to the nearest small town. On the way there was a palm farm.
We also stopped to look at the Cerralvo channel, our next jump before the La Paz area. According to the guide books, this channel can have fast currents and the wind tends to funnel down the channel, great..... It didn’t look too bad from 20 miles away :-)
The small tienda (store) had what we needed and once back at the bay we had a nice lunch at the Marlin and took some pictures of the pretty bay.
You can’t really tell but our boat is the farthest one out.
It’s now Wednesday, December the 2nd and we are running our generator to charge the batteries and plan to leave in the afternoon at the beginning of the rising tide so we will (hopefully) be able to ride the current up the channel. Hopefully this won’t make the wind chop too steep as it will be dark by then. It’s going to be a long night but hopefully by tomorrow we’ll be in the La Paz area. We plan to be in La Paz for a few weeks, refilling our provisions and repairing everything broken.
-Carolynn
The definition of cruising: “Fixing your boat in exotic locations with no parts.” But I’ll get to that later.
When last I updated this blob we were headed out of the Cabo marina to spend a few days anchored off the beach. Cabo is the vacation destination for more than 500,000 tourists each year and since the water is a major attraction, there is a big industry in renting jet skis, ski boats, and taking people parasailing. The Los Cabos bay was an absolute zoo and our boat was continually rocked and buzzed by all of the above as well as fishing pangas, water taxis, large sleek fishing trawlers, sailing boats, etc.
At one point there were three gigantic cruise ships anchored in the bay. It was fun at first people watching but got tiring quickly. The water was a tempting 82°F so we tried swimming off the boat, but we didn’t dare get more than a few feet away. After two days we had enough of that and decided to head towards a quieter anchorage.We left the Cabo anchorage early in the morning on Wednesday 11/25 headed for Los Frailes, approximately 50 nautical miles (nm) away (1 nm = 1.15 land miles so this would be about 57 “statute” miles). After leaving the anchorage I checked our batteries and discovered the charging system wasn’t charging our batteries! Just like in a car, when we are running the engine the alternator should be making electricity and using the excess to recharge the batteries. We were worried about our electrical system since earlier we had lost the tachometer readout. We did some troubleshooting on the tach in Cabo but decided it would have to wait until La Paz to fix since parts would be more readily available and cheaper there. Now though with the charging system on the fritz it was a different matter. We discussed limping our way all the way to La Paz (170 nm) using the generator to top off the batteries each night and pulling up the anchor by hand, but decided that wasn’t the prudent decision and changed course to a marina about 20 miles from Cabo called Puerto Los Cabos.
Puerto Los Cabos is a brand marina advertizing all the amenities of a first class resort; showers, laundry, swimming pool, spa, golf course, restaurant, etc and one day it might be finished but at this point there was only one section of slips and some very nice landscaping. They had converted a trailer for the showers but the plywood floors and walls wouldn’t last too long. While slightly cheaper than Cabo, at $111 per night it was disappointing. The staff though was very nice and the maintenance manager helped Tom to determine that there was something wrong with our main alternator, but we discovered that there were two alternators on our engine and Tom got the smaller one working (after lots of swearing and burnt knuckles). We would have to be careful of power consumption but this smaller alternator should allow us to get to La Paz to do a better repair. Keep your fingers crossed for us. The last night in the marina we were treated to a beautiful sunset.
Leaving early in the morning, we made our way to Bahia Los Frailes. The wind was on our nose the whole way and the seas were choppy so we had to motor and bash our way up the entire trip. Without a tachometer we were guessing at how much we were pushing the motor and were worried the whole way about overheating. Going into the wind and seas sometimes it felt at times that the whole boat would come to a shuddering stop while it broke through a wave, not a pleasant journey.We finally made Bahia Los Frailes (the Bay of Friars, so called because the rock formation on the point looked to mariners of old like Friars climbing the hill). We spent two nights in Los frailes to recover from the beat up. During the day we went snorkeling by the point, there were quite a few colorful tropical fishies and some coral. Around the other side from the anchorage is Cabo Pulmo Reef marine sanctuary, the only living hard coral reef on the west side of North America, and supposedly very good diving. We briefly though of trying to arrange a scuba dive there but decided that we were over budget at this point so diving would have to wait. Once we were rested we set out for the next stop; Bahia de Los Muertos. Once again the wind was on our nose and we spent the whole trip bashing into steep waves. If anything this was worse than the previous jump to Frailes. We averaged a bit under 4 knots and barely got into the anchorage before full dark, exhausted and cranky.
Bahia de Los Muertos ("Bay of Dead Men"; so named for the giant “dead-men” anchors used here to moor barges in the early 1900 while offloading ore from the silver mines at El Triunfo), is a nice wide pretty bay with a small fancy resort at one end and the Giggling Marlin restaurant (of Cabo fame) at the other. Developers don't like the name so they are renaming it Bahia de los Suenos (Bay of Dreams) but that sounds so cheasy that most people continue to call it Muertos. There are no other facilities but it’s well protected and there were lots of cruising boats anchored out. We found a good free internet wifi signal and spent several days just relaxing and recovering. We started to run a little short of beer so one day we loaded the bicycles in the dingy, landed on the beach, then bicycled the 6 miles to the nearest small town. On the way there was a palm farm.
We also stopped to look at the Cerralvo channel, our next jump before the La Paz area. According to the guide books, this channel can have fast currents and the wind tends to funnel down the channel, great..... It didn’t look too bad from 20 miles away :-) The small tienda (store) had what we needed and once back at the bay we had a nice lunch at the Marlin and took some pictures of the pretty bay. You can’t really tell but our boat is the farthest one out.It’s now Wednesday, December the 2nd and we are running our generator to charge the batteries and plan to leave in the afternoon at the beginning of the rising tide so we will (hopefully) be able to ride the current up the channel. Hopefully this won’t make the wind chop too steep as it will be dark by then. It’s going to be a long night but hopefully by tomorrow we’ll be in the La Paz area. We plan to be in La Paz for a few weeks, refilling our provisions and repairing everything broken.
-Carolynn
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