I'M FINALLY GETTING CLOSE TO BAHIA DE LOS ANGELES

Today is Friday, September 12, and Mirador is anchored in Ensenada Quemado (Burned Bay) which is just south of Bahia de Los Angeles.  Here is a picture of Mirador in Quemado with the volcano at Isla Smith (also know as Coronados) in the background;

The west side of the bay is formed by black lava that flowed down to the Sea in some ancient time, thus the name "Burned Bay."  I had never been in here with a boat but had hiked over to Quemado from Puerto Don Juan.  The bay doesn't look like much when you approach on foot from the Don Juan side and I was reluctant to stop here.  But several boats that were already here talked to me on the various HF radio nets and convinced me it is a great place to spend a few days.

Now that I am here in the SE lagoon I see that it is a lovely and well protected anchorage.  There are currently nine other boats in here with me. 

Corazon and Mirador made the 44 mile trip up here from San Francisquito yesterday.  As you may recall in my September 7 update I was puzzling over the consistent favorable tidal current that pushed us north for 14 hours from the entrance to Bahia Concepcion.  At that time I mentioned that the tide programs said we should have encountered an adverse tide for the first eight hours of that trip northwest.

Yesterday we had the opposite problem.  We timed our departure to leave the inner anchorage at Bahia San Francisquito (shown below looking NE) to catch the north going tide that began about 10:30 AM.  

 We were expecting to have a one to two knot current pushing us all the way to Quemado since we were making our way NW in the Salsipuedes (Leave if you Can) channel which is about 13 miles wide and 1500 feet deep.  Most of the water for the north half of the Sea of Cortez flows back and forth in the Canal de Salsipuedes and the water level in BLA was supposed to rise eight feet between 10:30 AM and 5 PM.

What we experienced was a one to two knot current coming from BLA the entire way north, that is from straight ahead of us.  We thought that we might be experiencing a back eddy along the western shore of the channel so we headed three miles out into the channel and found even stronger south going currents. 

It is truly a mystery how the tidal current could be heading SW out of the north Sea while the water level in the north Sea was increasing.  I know the tide program is approximately correct because high tide and low tide occurs within minutes of when the program predicts it to be.  But, the currents flowing back and forth make no sense!  AH - cruising in Mexico - It's not what you expect!

And just to top it off- the weather forecast was for 10 to 20 knots out of the SW which would have been perfect since we were headed NW (311 magnetic).  We expected a nice fast reach up the channel.  But, it was not to be - we had five to eight knots out of the NNE until we got within three miles of Quemado when the wind finally went SW and increased to 10 knots. 

My stay in San Francisquito was almost perfect.  The weather was clear with light SE breezes during the day and light/variable breezes at night.  The daytime air temps were in the low 90s and the night time temps hit the low 80s.  The strong elephantes that boats suffered with every night in BLA never made it to San Francisquito.

We went fish hunting several times a day but were handicapped by murky water.  Visibility was about 12 to 15 feet in a kind of greenish water.  It was very difficult to identify fish below 10' while swimming on the surface.  That meant a lot of dives to 12 or more feet just to find out that the fish you were chasing was not the perfect grouper or bass.  It also meant that we often swam up to desirable fish  without seeing them.  By the time we'd realize they were there they'd realize what we had in mind for them and would disappear under a rock or into a crevice.

One morning we found the Happy Grouper Hunting Grounds.  There were so many fish it was hard to decide which one to shoot.  My first shot provided a very nice four pound Leopard Grouper that dressed out to a big dinner fillet and three good servings of fish tacos.  After that I could not hit a fish.  After missing three in a row from point blank range I decided to quit.  As I swam back to the beach I literally ended up nose to nose, in three feet of water, with a eight to ten pound grouper with, naturally, a spear gun that was not rigged to shoot.  He didn't seem to be afraid of me so I slowly backed up and tensioned the three bands on my gun.

Of course the grouper darted away as soon as it saw the gun pointed at it from 15' which is not close enough to get a fish that size.  I shot at three more fish in the next half hour and missed all three.  Every attempt looked like it was dead on for a head shot but every time the spear would pass an inch below the fish.  Each time I would think I was compensating by shooting high enough but I guess I wasn't.  Usually I get a fish about once every three shots.  I am now 0 for ten.  It got so bad at the end that I was getting close enough to the fish that I thought seriously about taking out my knife and stabbing them rather than wasting the time shooting.

We think the murkiness of the water was due to the upwelling caused by the big tides on the full moon.  The water was very cold, my thermometer was reading it at 76 degrees on the surface and Dicks was reading 81.  I could not stay below 15' for a full breath because it was way too cold down there.  The water at that depth felt like Puget Sound, i.e. 50 degrees of less.  Twice I had to climb back into the dinghy after 45 minutes in the water because I was shivering too badly to shoot straight, as if shivering could make the problem any worse.

And here is Mirador in Quemado looking SW towards the big hill (2000') that separates the Quemado from the south end of BLA.

I'll stay here a few days and then plan to be in the Puebla de BLA on Tuesday afternoon when the veggie truck arrives. Fresh fruit and vegetables are delivered to the Puebla only on Tuesday afternoon and you'd better be there by Wednesday morning if you want to get anything that is decent. 

After that I'll head north 38 miles to the north end of Isla Angel de La Guarda to spend several weeks in the Refugio anchorage.