Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

November 6th - 8th, 2024   We had one calm day at the Punta Chivato anchorage and we took full advantage of it.   Jason and I both did some snorkelling, and we had a great time on shore enjoying the beach and the water.   The other days that we spent anchored there the north winds blew, and as the steep waves and white caps rolled on past outside of the anchorage we waited for the next calmer time to sail on further south.   As the gusts of wind blew over the land and hit our boat making the snubber line pull tight on our anchor chain, and the howl of the wind passed through our rigging, we kayaked the short distance into shore against the wind each day and spent the days enjoying land.   We explored the abandoned resort that we had visited last time that we were in Punta Chivato, and Falcon had a great time looking through the old buildings and finding his own treasures, like a handful of loose screws.   One of the days, after a lovely picnic under a wind...

N ovember 5, 2024   At 06:00 on November 5th we were raising our mainsail and motoring out of the protected bay.   Because of the winds that we had been having the seas were jumbled, but the swells were not bad and we were soon sailing with good conditions, and we caught a Bonito early in the day.     We had a good morning of sailing, but gradually as we got further out into the sea, and the wind gradually increased throughout the day, the waves grew with it.   The Sea of Cortez is a very different sea to sail in than in open water.   With the winds that we had that day, it should have been near perfect sailing and swells in the open ocean would have had a spacing of about 12 seconds apart.   In the Sea of Cortez, however, the sea state quickly turns large and quick.   The swells become much higher than over open water, and the spacing is much shorter.   That day we had 4 seconds between each increasingly steep swell, and as the wind inc...

November 4, 2024   With westerly winds in the forecast we left Bahia San Pedro and sailed south to the protected anchorage of Bahia San Carlos.   We had a beautiful sail that day, perfect wind and rolling seas behind us.   Although we would not have chosen to return to a town port so soon after launching, it was the only anchorage in the area that is protected from the west, and in fact, has very good all around protection.   We had fun exploring the beach and hiking up the hill for sunset, but when the winds turned favourable for us to sail westwards across the Sea of Cortez, we jumped at the opportunity.    It isn’t everyday that you see a car boat driving like a race car speeding along the water through the anchorage.  

October 28, 2024   One night, on a day that Falcon had napped, I was in bed reading with Falcon before he went to sleep, when Jason called down to us that we should come up into the cockpit.   We both got out of bed and went up, and as we stood there in the dark with Jason we watched the dark water beside our boat.   There were ghostly, green glowing shapes, a school of fish lighting up the bioluminescence.   It looked so neat.    I have always wondered what it would be like to swim in the water with such active bioluminescence, so I got my mask and snorkel and went down onto the swim grid.   At the slightest touch of the water it sprang to life.   I slipped into the water, and watched the ghostly forms of the fish swimming beneath me.   Watching my hands and arms out in front of me as I swam was stunning, but the most incredible thing that I found was simply to float still with my hands in front of my mask and make very small movements....

  October 27, 2024   We spent lots of beach time at Bahia San Pedro.   On the second day we took Falcon’s sand toys with us, and he had a great time building sand castles, destroying them, and watching the waves destroy them.   On one of the mornings we went for a hike across to another beach.   We followed this beach along and onto a third beach.   It was a nice time exploring, and we found some cool shells, including two very pretty exoskeletons of Pacific Lobsters.   We also came across an interesting area that felt like an oasis.   It had a huge palm tree and several other trees that were not desert-like.   It stood out amongst the cacti and other desert plants, although there were other palm trees around, not many, but a few, which we found interesting.   Jason did some snorkelling around the rocky edges of the bay, and ended up spearing his first fish.   It was a Cortez Angelfish, which had a delicious,...

October 26, 2024  Our next anchorage was truly our type of anchorage; it was Bahia San Pedro.   There was not a building in sight, and the only other people were onboard one other sailboat that shared the anchorage with us.   There was a beach that stretched over a mile long, and beautiful rock formations were all around, with the mountains fringed by large cacti.   Pelicans, Boobie Birds, Gulls, and Frigate birds frequented the shoreline to feed, and we could watch schools of little fish leaping from the water that were being pursued by predator fish below the surface.   We arrived at this beautiful spot early in the morning, and were anchored by around 9am, so after packing a picnic lunch we kayaked to shore.   We landed, once again, in the swells.   The way that we go ashore in the swells with Falcon is that Jason goes ashore in his kayak first.   He then gets out of the kayak and takes it up onto dry land, and then he meets Falcon and I when w...

On October 25th, 2024 we pulled up anchor and motored our way a bit further north up the coast to an anchorage called Lalo Cove.   We were kept very busy on our journey there, between a bit of sailing, a lot of fishing activity, and watching a constant wildlife show.   We caught our first fish only a few minutes after putting our lines out after leaving the anchorage; it was a small Pacific Sierra, our first one of that type of fish.   The rest of the fish that we got to the boat were Pacific Bonito.   We kept two for sushi, and then proceeded to release four more.   We also got two other bites that got away that were clearly quite a bit bigger.   One of them took the hook right off of our lure, and lucky for us we got to keep the lure.     We put out our sails a couple of times to shake out the cobwebs and catch a little localised wind, but for the most part we motored through what felt like an aquarium.   Fish of varying sizes seemed to be ...