19 January 2022 – It is a math problem: there are only about 8 hours of daylight in a day during the winter at our latitude. It is a bad idea to fetch an unfamiliar anchorage in the dark. The wild card is always our speed, which is dependant on the wind conditions. For planning purposes we conservatively use three knots. So if any destination is more than about 25 nautical miles away, and all of them are right now, we will never fetch it before sundown in one day’s sailing. Thus, in winter, we must plan overnight trips to arrive in the light of morning.

And so we did with this trip to Bahia Asuncion, a distance of about 50 NM. We weighed anchor out of a lovely anchorage in Bahia Tortugas around 1600, put a single reef in the mainsail straight away (our policy being to put a peremptory reef in for nights for safety) then headed out of the bay into the ocean. The wind was good. We pulled out the genoa and ran at about five or six knots.

Just before sunset, as I set the preventer to keep the boom from accidentally swinging over while we sail with the wind behind us, the genoa sheet tightened up and knocked my Western Helicopter cap off my head and into the water. Another cap bit the dust. Or more accurately, the deep. Western no longer exists and I had worn that cap all over the world. C’est la vie I reckon. Luckily, I could switch to my Baja Naval cap and press on.

Another long night ensued after the wind died off just before midnight. We rolled and slatted around, often making less than 1 knot (the current runs that fast). Jimena took the helm until about 0300 but I could get no rest for all the banging and slatting. I took the helm back around 0300 then the wind got back up around 0330 and we sailed on. I found that if I kept Orion’s belt just above the lower spreader then I held our course perfectly. The stars and planets were spectacular all night until washed out by the moonrise. Early in the morning Venus rose like a searchlight.

I made out the lights of Asuncion from far out, which surprised me as I figured the town would lie tucked behind the point. The sun rose, we identified the false shortcut then rounded the point and got anchored in 22 feet of water in front of the town.

Two days after our arrival, we went ashore in our dighy through some light surf and walked around the town. Each of the towns on the coast of Baja California has its name in a sign of large colorful letters near the shore. We first saw this in Ensenada and did not realize that we would see the same all along the way, and it makes a nice way to keep up with where we have been.

We had a lunch of shrimp tacos and beer in a restaurant behind the municipal library, and we bought some groceries and water as well. The town has a small concrete pier wide enough for a person to walk down but we did not try to use it as landing on the beach looked easier. We got a little wet getting out through small surf but had no great disaster.

Bahia Tortugas-Bahia Asuncion

Bahia Asuncion-Bahia Abreojos

Bahia Tortugas