Bahia Concepcion

Well, we spent a couple of weeks moving up the sea from Loreto.  We met up with Loon III and Icarian in the roadstead anchorage at Loreto and explored the town together.  For cruisers, this means wandering every street looking for the freshest produce, cheapest internet connection, cheapest beer, and fuel (and for those of us without refrigeration, ice).  We did manage to visit the old Mission museum, which was kind of interesting but that was about all we had time for site-seeing.  When we couldn’t walk another step, we headed back to the boats, weighed anchor and headed to Isla Coronado for the night, just a few miles away.  Sherrell and I decided to stay an extra night at Coronado and watched the sting rays jumping all over like popcorn.  We then went on to La Ramada, just north of our intended destination of Caleta San Juanico to get out of the strong SE winds and swell.  We found Loon and Icarian hiding in there as well and they showed us a nice hike that went over to the bay.  Gazing out on the beautiful bay of San Juanico, we all decided that we should move there.  No to mention there was a strange Northerly swell that rolled us from side to side making it very unpleasant and the late night Katabatic winds blew like a banshee from the west all night long.

 

There seemed to be no good summer refuge in this area, as we tried to hide behind some rocky reefs and rocks from the SE winds in San Juanico, while we explored the beaches and snorkeled.  But despite the beauty, after 3 days of suffering the steep wind waves, we left the other boats and did a long haul (12 hours) to Bahia Concepcion—a much more protected area.

 

On the way up, we had north winds the entire way, while the other boats down in San Juanico still had strong SE.  So as luck would have it, our own personal headwinds forced us to motor-sail almost the entire way.  We did see a large school of dolphins who leapt 6+ feet out of the water in unison, many large manta rays doing perfect back flips, and Boobies (the avian type) trying to land on our boat for a free ride.

 

Anyway, we’re going to hang out in this area for a while, before heading further north.  If you’re able to read this, then through the miracle of technology and the generosity of someone here, we are connecting to you via a wireless link that is routed through a satellite connection once a day at 7-8 am.  There are no phones here, no power, but we’ve found ice, some provisions and lots of little protected islands to explore.