La Paz

A brief note about our trip from Bahia de Los Muertos (near the Cape) to Balandras Bay ( which is a trip thru the Canal Cerralvo). We had been waiting several days for a weather window to make this trip to La Paz. Being a bit impatient we decided to leave which wound up being a day too early. The "Norther" was still blowing...which in sailing terms means the wind was coming out of the direction we needed to sail. In addition the strong winds over the past few days had created large swells coming from the direction we needed to go. Ugh!! After turning the corner we were instantly into very strong wind and it was a struggle all day to make good progress. Since there was also a good current we were down to 3.9 knots at some times under power. I did manage to have the mizzen (reefed) as well as the new staysail up which helped a bit. A lot of the other boats decided to sail right up the middle of the channel but I opted to run close to the shore. This meant a longer trip mileage wise but we were able to mitigate the wind and waves a bit and were able to catch up on boats that had left several hours before us. Kathy was in the prone position almost the entire trip...seasick despite taking every medication known to man!! I was able to maange the boat myself which is a handful! Thanks to the new autopilot I was able to run around a take care of the sails, etc. We arrived at the anchorage about sundown which had been our goal. We were now a few hours from La Paz. After a restless, windy night in which the boat rocked excessively keeping me awake.

At one time I woke to check the anchor and discovered that the boat was a complete 180 from the place where we had dropped anchor. Odd that, which I should have realized might create a problem later...and sure enough Kathy woke me around 5:30 after hearing the anchor alarm go off!! We had dragged our anchor into deeper water and were drifting towards other boats. I immediately fired up the engine and moved away and decided to leave for La Paz. Unknowingly our neighbor had seen what had happened and thinking that we were still sleeping chased us out to sea in his Dinghy. He had mistakenly thought our nav light were still our anchoring light(seen from the back you can only see the white light, not the red and green.0 Fortunately he realized we were OK and returned to his boat, GRACE but not before there was a little concern about his whereabouts. Thanks Paul and Judy for your concern.

Since we were awake we decide to continue on to La Paz rather then re-anchor and arrived at the Marina around 8:30 AM. The photo is a view from our dock....not very exciting but will post more later.

Robert (Captain SV Blue Dolphin)