Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

March 13, 2023  We remained anchored in the area of Bahia San Carlos for two days, which gave us some time to explore the shoreline, the bay, and the town.   The shoreline was beautiful and it reminded us of somewhere in the Mediterranean with the steep, rocky cliffs and large colourful houses.   It was fun to putter along the shoreline in Kiki and look at all of the different mansions.   Some of them had boat garages built into the rock cliff down at water level with large metal doors, others looked like they were sitting dangerously on an overhang, but all of them were well kept and painted with bright and differing colours which made it all very pretty.   When we went to check out one of the islands in the bay, we found that it was populated with pelicans that appeared to be preparing to nest.   We saw pelicans gathering up seaweed in their beaks, others flying with large sticks, and many of them sitting on already-formed mounds of l...

March 11, 2023 On March 11th at 02:45 we started our engine and headed out of Punta Chivato.   We raised our main sail before leaving the anchorage and we were sailing as soon as we rounded the point.   It was Falcon’s first day of sailing.   It was not long after the sun rose that we spotted land, and then over the next hours we watched the land behind us fade in the distance as the land in front of us grew in size.   It took us about thirteen hours to sail across the Sea of Cortez, but we had crossed the Sea!     The winds were very varied all day, sometimes we only had ten knots of wind, but other times we had closer to 25 knots.   We reefed our mainsail, then raised it back up to full, and then reefed it again before once again raising it back up to full.   Eventually we reefed it one more time and simply left it reefed even when the winds dropped back down.   Falcon watched us at work each time we went about reefing our sails, and he was...

March 8, 2023 The next morning we headed out of Punta Pulpito at dawn and this time we actually got to motor-sail our way up to Punta Chivato.   Although the wind was still from the north, the angle was such that we were at least able to get a push that helped us on our way. In the early morning hours we caught our only fish of our journey northwards.   It was a delicious Yellow Tail.   From talking to other people we have learned that because it was a colder winter than normal, the water temperature also dropped lower than normal pushing the pelagic fish further south following the warmer water.   This was presumably why we had such poor luck trolling in the Sea of Cortez.     A large pod of dolphins escorted us in to the anchorage and we anchored with two other boats in the large open bay, but well protected from the prevailing northerlies by the point of Punta Chivato.   That night we enjoyed a spectacular sunset from the bow of our boat. ...

March 7, 2023 Early in the morning once again we were up and on our way further north.   This time we motored to Punta Pulpito.   We were the only boat in the anchorage when we arrived, but there was a pod of about 20 dolphins already there.   We dropped our anchor and enjoyed the rest of the day while the dolphins remained in the anchorage with us.   They had one, maybe two, baby dolphins with them, not much bigger than Falcon, and they were all playing follow the leader swimming back and forth and around, then suddenly they exploded into a frenzy of action as they chased fish for a while before slowing back down and swimming around.   We wondered if they were teaching the babies.   They were still swimming around us as the sun set.  

March 6, 2023 From Agua Verde we traveled over more glassy-calm water, seeing humpback whales, dolphins, and one other type of whale.   Passing Puerto Escondido and Loreto we anchored off of the southern beach of Isla Coronados, which is an old volcano cone.   Next year we will plan to do the hike.   At anchor we watched dolphins pass back and forth in front of us, and back and forth along the beach several times.   In the evening the thermal-driven northerly winds came up, and overnight a small swell wrapped around the corner giving us a gentle rocking all night long.  

March 5, 2023   After our relaxing days of exploring at Isla San Francisco we took full advantage of the forecasted light winds to move our way further north.   Unfortunately, at this time of year, it is rare that there are any southerly winds, and knowing what an uncomfortable sea state the northerlies can blow up in a hurry, we knew that we did not want to have to bash our way against them.   So, we moved onward, making our way further north one beautiful anchorage at a time.   We stopped over night in Agua Verde, which was an absolutely spectacular, quite enclosed, and well-protected anchorage.   The shoreline was a mixture of rugged cliffs and beaches with large, eroding rock pillars.   With the almost full moon, it was a bright night and the crickets sang to us from shore.   It was the most peaceful atmosphere and we did not want to leave.   

March 3, 2023  On our second windy day at Isla San Francisco we went in to shore once again.   This time we walked along the sheltered sandy beach of the anchorage, out to the point that forms the hook of the anchorage basin itself.   We had noticed that there was a trail up to the ridgeline from the other end of the ridge, but now that we were at this end of the beach we noticed that there was a trail at this end of the ridgeline as well.   So, we decided to do the hike as a loop, and as we hiked up the trail at the hook end we quickly gained elevation.   The ridgeline was not overly high, but it was the highest point of land around, and so we got some beautiful views, and once we were at the top we found that it was indeed a true ridgeline hike.   On one side the ground dropped off with cliffs to the rocky beach below, on the other side the hill sloped steeply downwards towards the beach of the anchorage.   For the most part the t...

March 2, 2023 Our anchorage turned out to be very well protected from the strong winds. Being anchored fairly close to the beach we had almost no fetch, which meant almost no wave action, but also the shape of the land sent the strongest of the wind elsewhere, and we only saw just up to 25 knots and that was only for a short period.   It was a lovely place to ride out the strong winds.   With such light winds in the anchorage we were easily able to launch our tender and go ashore to enjoy the days.   Walking across the low-lying part of the land we got to the other side of the island where the full force of the wind was hitting, and we enjoyed a stormy beach walk.   The colours of the rocks were quite interesting, some were very red, while others were very green, and some rocks were a mix of many coloured rocks.   It was quite pretty.   Walking along the mainly rocky shoreline we saw the dead skeletons of some very pretty Rock crabs.   We didn’t get to...