Ensenada de los Muertos-Puerto Balandra

17 March 2022 - The Cerralvo Channel is replete with warnings on the chart and in the guidebooks about strong tidal currents and strong winds and big seas. Neither of us wanted any of that and so we both fretted and schemed and planned and supplicated the weather gods.

In the end, something worked because we set off early in the morning, just about sunrise, motored around into the channel and up it. There was not a breath of wind and very little current. And so we motored. And motored. We motored from about 0630 until about 1330, something I hate with a passion, but which had to be done. Finally, as we could see we would arrive at Bonanza Bay by mid-afternoon, but would still be on the eastern side of the San Lorenzo Channel and not into La Paz Bay, we decided to press on through the San Lorenzo channel and anchor in the bay of Puerto Balandra. Just as we made this decision the wind really got up out of the NNE. Jimena had a hard time controlling the boat, we put a reef in the mainsail then I drove. I saw wind speeds of as much as 20 knots and we were flying along on a close reach or a beam reach.

We zipped through the San Lorenzo Channel and down to Puerto Balandra, locus of the famed Mushroom Rock (which apparently broke off and fell over but was picked up and glued back together by some intrepid locals with some corporate backing). There were several boats anchored in Balandra already but we found a good spot and got anchored too.

As we were coming in to anchor I saw a sea turtle swimming right in the bay, unusual given all the traffic around.

The anchorage was a little rough in NE or SW winds, but had shelter from any other quarter and good holding.

Despite having fixed the electric outboard motor, I was still worried about possible water intrusion and didn’t want to put it back in the water until I could get some metric hex wrenches and inspect it further. So, we were relegated to sitting on our boat looking out at the beaches and people swimming and frolicking. Jimena did not want to swim to shore and we were both too lazy to row the dinghy, so we stayed put for a couple of days.

We decided to move down closer to the marina in La Paz where we were due on the 24th so on the 19th we weighed anchor out of Puerto Balandra for Bahia Falsa.