Santa Rosalia

We thought we were safe here, wrong!

When we planned to leave Bahia Concepcion, there was actually dense fog in the morning.  We wanted to leave at dawn, but you couldn’t see a thing.  The fog finally started to lift around 9am but now we were off schedule to make it all the way to Santa Rosalia before dark.  We decided to stop half way and anchor at Punta Chivato for the night.  Big mistake!  When we arrived there it was fairly calm with a light north wind and swell.  The anchorage has good north protection, but no south protection.  The weather forcast was for light north winds for the next two days, so we felt good about our plan.  However, that afternoon, the wind stayed from the north east, while a large swell built from the south winds blowing all the way down near Cabo.  We had 3-4 foot close swell hitting us all night long.  We finally got a little sleep around 3 am when it died a bit.  Next morning we were outa there!  Heading for Santa Rosalia, we had to negotiate a couple of shallow areas that always make us nervous.   When the depth gauge goes from 300 feet to 20 feet in a half mile, it’s a little freaky.  This was also the passage that gave us our biggest scare so far in Baja.  About 5 miles south of Santa Rosalia we were cruising at 6 knots in 180 feet of water and we hit something very hard.  Hard enough to throw the prop out of the water which is almost three feet down.  Rich had been keeping a watch on the bow due to a number of commercial fishing boats in the area, but had seen nothing.  We believe it was a submerged commercial net with large floats on it.  The lines on these nets are 2-3 inches in diameter.  We immediately went into damage assessment mode checking the bilge for leaks and the rudder for steering.  Rich put on the mask and fins and dove under the boat to check for holes or lines wrapped on the prop.  Nothing serious was noted at the time and the boat appeared functional, so we continued on to Santa Rosalia.  It was a very somber few miles.  We were concerned that the boat may need to be hauled out for repairs, and the closest place for that was 80 miles away on the other side of the Sea of Cortez.  We pulled into the marina and just docked in an empty slip.  We heard another boat earlier trying to call the marina on the radio and no one was answering.  We figured they had no one around on weekends.  We were greeted by one of the maintenance guys who told us to check in later when someone was around.  It is a very nice marina, but there are almost no boats here.  Everyone says it’s too expensive, but the docks are new, there is electric and water, showers, free wifi, and laundry for $20 US per night for a 43 foot boat.  Sounds like a bargain to us.

Looking toward the marina office

Rich dove on the boat two more times and inspected every inch of the hull.  Luckily, the damage appears minimal.  There is a large section of the keel and starboard hull where the bottom paint has been scraped off and another section of missing paint in front of the prop.  The prop, shaft, and rudder appear to be OK.  Good thing we have a strong full keel boat.  Any other type of boat would have had its rudder torn off.  So for now we are breathing a sigh of relief.  It appears nothing needs to be fixed until our next haul out for bottom paint.

Santa Rosalia was originally developed in the 1860's when copper was discovered.  The mines were soon bought by the French who brought in wood from northern California and Europe and built the town.  The town church, Iglesia Santa Barbara, was built by Gustave Eiffel in Brussels and shipped around the globe to Santa Rosalia where it was re-assembled in 1897.  The whole church is metal like the Eiffel Tower with some of the lower parts surrounded in wood.  The church is still in use as the main church in town.

 

Santa Rosalia is a great town for getting things done.  The downtown area is about 12 small square blocks in size and is located only about a mile walk from the marina.  There are three grocery stores, a bank, a bakery, a fish market, several liquor stores, two hardware stores, three ice cream stores, and five decent restaurants contained in this small area.  What took us all day to accomplish in La Paz, takes only a couple of hours here.  Due to the heat, we have been doing breakfast on the boat, a big lunch in town at an air conditioned restaurant, and then a small snack for dinner on the boat.  With the temp inside the boat in the 90’s we can’t bring ourselves to turn on the stove.  Besides, when you can get a whole cut up roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and cole slaw and baguettes to go for 180 pesos or $13 US, it’s hard to think of cooking for yourself!

The mining museum is located in a historic, original office building on the hill above the marina, and is free.  It has a great collection of artifacts and has all the desks and files still in their original locations from the late 1800’s.  The French were brutal.  They used Mexican Indians as slaves to work the mines for many years until a paid workforce was established. 

Mining museum

This year, a Canadian company bought the old mines and has reopened them mining for copper.  They hired 3,000 new workers who came from all over Mexico.  Problem is, these guys left their families behind to come here, and now on weekends when the mines are closed, they just hang around town.  Hugh crowds of guys just hanging out drinking beer.  With the old buildings, it feels like we are in an old gold rush town in the wild west.  Except everyone drives Fords instead of horses.

Enjoying a cold one

While we were here, a brand new restaurant opened up across from the marina.  We went there for lunch the day after they opened and discovered that they didn't have a stove yet!  They did have some great salads, drinks and ceviche dishes.  We had a plate of fish ceviche and a plate of shrimp ceviche.  They were really big, and really good.  We took the leftovers for lunch tacos another day.