10 March 2022 – We got an early start, after I took a quick cold shower (Jimena opted for more sleep over a cold shower as I almost had done) and we had coffee. We cast off from the dock about 0630. We headed out of the harbor into the ocean then turned off the engine and pulled out the genoa and were making 4 knots close hauled in a good NW wind and no seas, perfect sailing.

We sailed up around the East Cape as they call it, past some of the same places we had visited on land with my folks just a day or two before. The chart shows the waters off of San Jose del Cabo as the Gulf of California (aka the Sea of Cortez) but I just couldn’t buy that we were sailing in the Sea of Cortez until we had rounded the east cape and turned northward.

And so we did. We had a beautiful sail into Bahia los Frailes (the Friars Bay) and anchored just outside of another sailboat which had passed us coming up. They were making 7 knots with not a stitch of sail flying so obviously motoring. We did not care a bit.

We saw and heard several whales and began seeing the manta rays jumping clear of the water and doing back flips. There were lots of the acrobatic rays.

Once we got anchored in the beautiful bay Jimena made us a marvelous dinner which we ate in the cockpit with beers, then watched the sun set.

One day Jimena called me up to the top of the companionway to look for a whale she heard. When I got alongside her and looked out into the cockpit, I was somewhat surprised to see a pelican (which she had not mentioned) sitting on the coaming of our cockpit. I mentioned this to Jimena, she screamed, the bird was not perturbed in the least, and did not leave until a little later and then only after depositing a large load of processed fish on our coaming.

On the second morning we were in los Frailes there was another sailboat anchored not too far from us.

She was Maya, an Alberg 37. She had fetched los Frailes the night before, around 2300, after a two and a half day crossing from Puerto Vallarta. The three kids sailing her Mac, Jenny and Ned (with Disco the dog) said it was the worst conditions they had encountered, not barring Alaska or the Pacific Northwest. They were headed around to La Paz to haul their boat and go back home for a few months. They document their trips on Youtube: https://www.cruisingmaya.com/

On the 13th we inflated our dinghy and went ashore. We hiked up to the top of Los Frailes, looked over at Pulmo reef (where we really wanted to snorkel but it was way too windy) then walked on the beach and went snorkeling on the rocks. The water was a bit murky but not too cold so it was nice. Getting off the beach was a bit of a challenge. We took a wave and a bunch of gravel into the boat but no serious damage. We washed off, rinsed off and packed up when we got back to the boat.