No matter which of the three options I chose from, I’d need to move the boat north to the La Paz area again. It’d be a better area to leave for Canada from, it’s the entrance to the sea of cortez if I was staying and it has some good places to leave the boat if I was flying back.
With that said, we waved goodbye to La Cruz and headed off (after one more spectacular Mobula Ray display in the anchorage)
In addition, there were also a bunch of Cow-Nosed Rays around
Out of La Paz, the first stop was Matanchen Bay, near San Blas as I was reversing my route of a few months earlier.
The way up was pretty unexciting, although we caught the first fish for a while, a Jack Crevelle
I also, marvels of marvels, got the windvane worked half decently. The trick was to use a different material for the vane, and the extra piece I had made so I could easily attach a handle while setting it up. I know, I can’t believe it either!
Once in Matanchen Bay, we hung out there for a couple of days waiting for weather while Liz surfed with Boomarang. We needed a bit of fuel, and all the ports were starting to close due to Corvid. So we struck out for Mazatlan, and ended up motoring over half of the 120nm distance. Once there we were able to swing into the fuel dock and take on diesel, before anchoring outside the marina district for the night.
The next leg was the 190nm to Los Muertos (or Frailes if the wind direction stopped us getting there). The last time we did this trip in this direction, back in October, it was a terrible 36 hour beat into 20-25 knot winds and tons of chop. This time was different.
We had light winds most of the first couple of days, often directly on our bow, meaning not only were we going slowly, but often not really in the direction (but that’s sailing!). We made only 80-90 miles in the first two days, as we refused to motor to save diesel but as a counter-point we saw a bunch of cool sea life, like this really fat dolphin who decided to chill with us for a while
then got kind of walloped on the third day by winds that were mostly 15/20 (and that awful sea of cortez chop) – but had enough North in we could point where we wanted to go and so we actually made Muertos. It was a long 12 hours though, but at least we were going fast!
Nice sunsets too
Fishing wise we had NOTHING – probably because we were going too slow the first two days, though I was disappointed not to get anything on the flying fish I salvaged from the deck one morning and rigged up with wire
Franken-Fish.
Eventually, we arrived at Muertos just after dark
and enjoyed a huge full moon
Great images to compliment the story, thanks for sharing Matt. I’m always a sucker for different fish pics. The congregation of rays is interesting! Too bad the flying fish didn’t entice anything. We’re you able to rig it so it was skipping over the surface of the water?
Yeah, though unfortunately we were beating into chop rather than running downwind so instead of skimming down swells, it was being pulled through choppy waves which I imagine was one of the reasons it didn’t entice anything.
Oh – did get 3 smalls sharks that got released on strips of dried fish. All the same type – I keep meaning to look them up.