WE'VE NOW MET A BAJA NORTHER

It is Thursday, December 13 and we are once again anchored in Bahia de Los Muertos (Bay of the Dead). We arrived here on Tuesday afternoon and spent a quiet day exploring and fishing on Wednesday. This morning we got up at 5:45 AM with the expectation we would have an easy 55 mile trip to La Paz. The weather forecast had been for variable to northerly 10 knots.

We pulled anchor a little before 7 AM and headed Northeast toward Punta Perico. Within 20 minutes we knew this would not be an easy day. We found 15 knots out of the north and 5' wind waves outside the Los Muertos cove . By the time we got a mile NE of Punta Perico, about seven miles from where we started, we were seeing a steady 18 - 24 knots of north wind and 6' to 8' breaking waves that were about four seconds apart. Poor 'ole Mirador couldn't fit between the waves.

We fell off several waves with a resounding thud and spray over the top of the solar panels. Once we cleared Punta Perico our problem was that we had to turn NW for about 4 miles until we cleared Punta Arena de la Ventana where we could fall off more to the west. That course put us exactly abeam of the breaking seas. We tried to head NW for about five minutes but were taking way too much water over the side of the boat.

The other, more significant, problem was our 12' Portabote stowed between the mast and the bow. The Portabote was moving fore and aft about three feet, occasionally banging into the mast. The bow of the Portabote was moving side to side, constrained only by the pulpit rails. I was afraid the boat would damage something on the bow, or heaven forbid come loose. We were burying the bow sprit at times in the steep wave faces and it did not look good for the Portabote.

After about 45 minutes of bashing into the seas we turned tail and had a fast run back to the Los Muertos anchorage where we anchored at 9 AM in 19' of flat water and 20 knots of wind. It is now 5 PM and the wind has been blowing steadily in the 20 - 30 knot range. These are the Northers that Baja cruisers come to hate. They come up very quickly and can blow for days and days.

We are hoping that a Pacific weather system that is headed for Southern California will have enough energy to push a cold front all the way to the south part of Baja. That front would kill the north wind and maybe even give us a SE or SW wind for a while. We'll find out in the next 24 hours since there are high cirrus clouds , "mares tails", streaming in from the NW.