Visiting Puerto Los Cabos - 11/6 - 11/11/11

We were happy to leave Cabo San Lucas, especially after a very noisy Saturday night in the marina.  Disco music until 0300!  We fueled up and headed out and into the Sea of Cortez for our next stop at the Puerto Los Cabos in San Jose del Cabo which is 19 miles northeast of Cabo San Lucas.

On the road again

Cabo del San Jose is an older town with a very active artist community.  The downtown area is being renovated and we have seen alot of improvements since we visited here in 2007.  The marina at Puerto Los Cabos is new, but incomplete.  They seem to also cater to powerboats, mostly of the mega variety, but they had a good deal for those boats who had done the HaHa.  We pulled into the guest dock at 1400 and planned to stay 5 nights and visit our Alameda friends, Charlie and Ricki.  They have a great surf condo up the road and have also been helping to keep an eye on our home.  We e-mailed them and next thing we knew, they drove over, picked us up and graciously invited us to stay with them at the condo.  This was a great treat!  They took us around the town, showed us all the best local tortillerias, places for great breakfasts, and municipal mercados.  We had some great dinners and did some excellent hanging out.  We really appreciated their assistance and knowledge of language, culture and places for the best food and drink. 

Views of the Central Plaza

One evening we were walking around central San Jose and went into a very interesting art gallery that features local Mexican artists, different media.  Of note was a surrealist artist, Lenore Carrington, who does both bronze sculpture and paintings.  Rich noticed that these looked like some of the sculptures that are featured around the Puerto Los Cabos Marina, very cool.  We googled the artist and found that she had recently passed away at the age of 94.  She lived a very interesting life and you too can look her up! Unfortunately, we neglected to take any pictures of her work, but below you can see how well the marina is being built.

View from the Container Restaurant

View from our boat towards the Marina office

 

On our last day, Thursday 11/10, Charlie took us and our friends, Paddy and Diane from The Islander, on a provisioning run at the Mega market. This is a huge store that is in all the major Mexican areas that has just about anything one might need.  There was really no need to stock up on so much stuff, but there are some things one cannot buy here (like Peet's coffee).  We then spent the afternoon at their pool and then they ran us all back to the marina so we could pack up for leaving the next morning.  We want to give a huge Thank You to Charlie and Ricky for your hospitality and generosity.

 

That night, we joined some of the folks from the dock for drinks and dinner at a local palapa, Bob and Ann from Charisma and Bob and Deann from Dos Leos. 

 

 

 

Leg 3 – Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas

On 11/2/11 at 0600 we pulled the anchor in Bahia Santa Maria to begin the last leg of this rally.  We left a little earlier than the majority of the fleet since we knew they would be passing us soon. We tried sailing with a reefed main and genoa (we find this works better for downwind sailing on our boat) but we watched as other boats raised their spinnakers and chased us down.

We enjoyed watching the beautiful spinney’s passing us, but since we only wanted to have one overnight during this passage, on went the D-sail again and we motored all the way to Cabo.  Since we had signed up for this rally early, we requested to have a berth in the Cabo marina and we were able to get one in this very busy, crowded, noisy and expensive marina.  We arrived around 2 pm on 11/3 and took our assigned berth, B-28 after dodging pangas, dinghys, cruise ships and the Baja HaHa Fleet.  The Marina staff were great, gave us 25% off their normal daily charge, and we were able to get our first real showers since San Diego!

The outside and inside of the Cabo (point around which is the harbor)

The beach around the Cabo, the majority of the fleet anchored off this beach, further down from this view

We spent the next few days checking into the country, doing laundry, provisioning, and walking all over looking for a Telcell chip for our international phone.  This ended up being one of the most challenging of our chores and would have to wait for Cabo San Lucas.  The second day of this stay was the Beach Party at the Baja Cantina on the beach.  We had a lot of fun as evidenced by these pictures:

The Awards Ceremony was the third night and was held in the Marina parking lot (sponsored by the marina).  Free beer, what all cruisers dream of, especially in hot Cabo!

We got 3^rd place in our division, the Desperado division, which everybody but the 1^st and 2^nd place boats got.  We actually know that we were last, we motored the most!  But it was good to hear that we were only one of the 13 boats who had double handed the whole way here (no crew) out of the nearly 150 boats.

Richard, the Grand Poobah, distributing awards

We did have fun in Cabo, but were very glad to have this rally behind us and now we can begin our real cruising life.  The race is over and we can start a more relaxed time.

Leg 2 – Turtle to Bahia Santa Maria

 Leg 2 – Turtle to Bahia Santa Maria

10/29/2011 the start of Leg 2 began at 0800 with very light winds, but warm and sunny, we are finally in Mexico!

By noon we were not making much headway so the Captain decided to start the D-sail.  Once we got some speed up, we caught 2 Bonito on the hand line.  We released them because they were too small to make much of a meal.  Another 2 were caught, but self-released.  The genoa was deployed for the night, but by 0700 the next morning, the wind had died off and the D-sail was started again.  The afternoon brought great breezes and we had a wonderful sail with comfortable seas, finally what we were looking forward to.  Again, by evening the wind decreased, the engine went on and we motored all night and arrived in Bahia Santa Maria and dropped the anchor at 0830 on 10/31.  Now it is time for some well-deserved sleep.  It is amazing how tired were doing a 2 overnight passage.  We can now understand why most boats have extra crew.

Sunrise on the second morning on our way into Bahia Santa Maria

By late afternoon we had rested and wanted to enjoy our surroundings so first thing was to go for a swim which was lovely.  The evening was spent resting, straightening up the boat and preparing a good meal, one thing that is hard to do on passage.  The next day was the HaHa party on the bluff.  This Bay is very remote, there are fishermen who come here seasonally and live in shacks, but there is nothing else here.  This rally brings some of the only activity that the area sees, so arrangements are made that bring folks from San Carlos (further inland) with food, beer, and even a band that drove in from La Paz.  They set up tents on the bluff and start cooking early for the afternoon party. 

Overlooking the dinghy/panga parking lot and below is one way of getting to shore…

 

The party was fun, we took a panga to shore and back since we are not experienced with bringing our dinghy in and out of shore break.  An early night because the next day was an early one, the last leg to Cabo San Lucas.