SNORKLING IN WARM CLEAR WATER

Today was our first tropical snorkling experience in crystal clear warm water. Now I see why people get so hooked on diving!

We are anchored in 20' of water over white sand. The bottom looked like it was about 6" below the surface. It is a real treat to be able to jump in and swim without any concern about water or air temp (78 and 82 respectively). I have read about diving on the anchor but now I've done it. It is way cool to follow the chain to where it disappears into the sand. No sign of the anchor - I sure hope the 44# Bruce is still there. I dug around a little but it had buried itself a ways.

It probably is because we had 15 - 18 knots of west wind and a 3' wind chop from midnight until about 9 AM. The boat was bouncing a lot but we didn't move. Good thing 'cause we're anchored 75 yards off a white sand beach in a small cove with 25' rock walls on the north and sound sides. We look west toward the mountains of southern Baja, about 20 miles away.

The whole setting is just like you read about, or in our case, the reason we sailed 2000 miles to get here. We are in Estero Ballandra (Schooner Inlet) about 9 miles NE of La Paz. We were headed for La Paz early yesterday afternoon but this cove looked so inviting that we stopped and now have decided to spend several days here. We had the place to ourselves until about an hour ago when a Catalina 36 from Newport Beach, CA parked about 100 yards from us.

We left Ensenada de Los Muertos at 7 AM Friday in almost calm winds with the intention of making La Paz (55 NM) by dark. Too bad we encounterd very lumpy seas and 15 knots of head wind as soon as we cleared Punta Perico! The seas got up to 6' and were pretty steep and confused. The wind increased for a while to close to 20 knots, right in our face. We were tempted to turnback once again but the weather forecast was for NW and then N winds beginning sometime today and lasting for many days. I heard the Chubasco Net weather guy tell Wayne, (our friend from Chula Vista who is still in Cabo San Lucas), that it may be a week or so before they can try to get north to La Paz. So we decided that yesterday was as good as it was going to get and continued to pound our way north in the Canal Cerravlo. Actually it was Arlene who decided to push on 'cause she was afraid we'd be stuck in Los Muertos for another week. I probably would have turned back.

The seas got ugly and the wind was 20 knotsout of the Northwest at Punta Gorda (Fat Point). It seems that name brings bad weather since we saw 35 - 40 knots at Punta Gorda just south of Cape Mendocino in July '00. It then got much more pleasent about five miles north of there. Punta Gorda is the narrowest spot in the Canal Cerravlo, between Isla Cerralvo and mainland Baja. The swells were coming from the north Sea of Cortez, about 250 miles away and had had 36 hours of 30 knot `winds to encourage their growth. .

We now carry the fully assembled Portabote right side up on the foredeck, just in front of the mast. The portabote hardly moved but it was scary to see the seas breaking on the bow. I was pretty concerned that the portabote was going to get washed away. When we finally anchored I found about three gallons of sea water in the boat. It was dry when I tied in down before we left.

We managed to motor sail with the full genoa, no mainsail, and a very slow turning engine to cover about 12 miles up to Scout Shoals in the Canal de San Lorenzo where the wind died. It is only about 2 miles from Scout to here. The passaged between Scout Shoals and Swanuee Rocks is about 1/2 mile wide and should have been clearly marked.

Hurricane Juliet must have made some big changes here. The lighted marker tower for Swanuee Rocks in the north part of San Lorenzo channel is gone. The water depth 100 yards from Scout Shoals light was less than 10 feet and getting shallow quickly; not the 30 feet shown on the chart. I guess we will have to be careful around La Paz.

We'll probably go to the La Paz City anchorage tommorrow but may stay here a couple more days. We last went grocery shopping on Nov 15 and are getting low on some stuff. We still have a couple weeks food aboard, but no fresh vegtables, or fruit, or bread. The patches where we cut the mold out of the bread are now bigger than the slice remaining.

Estero Ballandra is your classic Sea of Cortez cove. It is enclosed on three sides and is about a 1/2 mile across. A reef guards part of the anchorage, there are big rock walls separated by white sand beaches and no people, no boats.