27 September 2006
We departed Ensenada Pescador (just south of Ensenada Quemado) at sunrise on the 23rd, and I had a little cry as the rosy desert mountains faded from sight. We both definitely prefer the Baja to mainland Mexico and hated to leave it so early in the season. I never get tired of the rugged, remote scenery and the numerous protected anchorages. The mainland has a more cultivated, civilized feel to it (could it be the jets and contrails overhead which we haven't seen all summer?), and we are cranky in the higher humidity. It's nice to see so much greenery, butterflies, and land birds again, but not enough to ever make me sad to leave it.
It took us until mid-afternoon that day to reach Isla Tiburon, four hours of which were nice sailing. We hit a lot of tidal current before Noon and had to motor against it the rest of the way. We anchored at Punta Willard (north side, east cove) which turned out to be the prettiest stop we made on the island in spite of the large amount of trash on the beach (including a few rusty refrigerators). John swam out a stern anchor to keep us pointed into the swell, and I jumped into the clearest water I've seen in months (okay, so the water visibility in BLA during the summer isn't the greatest). In just that one late afternoon snorkel I saw a nursery full of grouper with a few big adults, the biggest trigger fish I've ever seen, a nudibranch, a small moray eel, and big schools of bait fish in about three different sizes (S, M, and L). I'm sure the fishing there must be excellent.
Not knowing that this would be the best the island had to offer, we decided to press on farther east the next day to get through the channel formed by Isla San Esteban to the south. Less than 30 minutes after weighing anchor John pulled in a nice sierra for dinner. He had fun releasing skipjacks and a bonito (and we had a brief whale sighting) before we got tired of bucking the current and pulled into Bahia de las Cruces, just to the east of Punta Colorado. This was pretty, but the beach was gravel, we had to be careful to anchor in a sandy patch (there were many rocks on the bottom), and the water clarity had dropped.
We got another sunrise start Monday morning to get through Cactus Pass at low tide and calm water so that we would be able to see the reefs to either side. We took it slow and I don't think we ever saw less than 35', but we were glad that we hadn't tried it the day before when the wind was blowing hard in the afternoon. It only took us a couple of hours to rejoin SolMate who had taken the safe route around Isla Turner the previous day when we decided to stop at Las Cruces.
Dog Bay is where we really started feeling the humidity of the mainland. The bay was loaded with life - birds, at least one turtle, and fish jumping clear out of the water - but there was so much organic matter in the water that we were back to snorkeling in a snowstorm. It was so bad that when we got to where we could touch bottom we couldn't even see it very well. This makes me nervous since I'm afraid I'll run into a rock (or worse), so after a short beach walk I swam back to the boat. The flies, gnats and mosquitos were bad here so we didn't sit out on deck for long either. It seems as though that's the drawback to getting so much rain in the summer. Even the boats left on the Baja have been reporting annoying bugs in their anchorages.
Linda and John