I know that I’ve been a little silent on the blog, and well, it’s for good reason. I am writing a book! A memoir, really, about our life as liveaboards in Sausalito and our cruising exploits since setting sail in October 2019. I’ve been pouring all of my creative energy into the book, trying to catch up to where we are today, drafting and re-reading and editing and doubting myself and falling in love with sentence structure and experiencing all of the emotions that come with giving yourself over to creativity. At the end of the day, there isn’t a lot left over for the blog.
Still, though, I would like to catch you up. So much has happened since Cruising Down the Baja Coast: Chapter Two. We were in Los Frailes then, and I had just for the first time fallen in love with cruising. This is what I’m doing this for, I kept thinking while we were there, this is what it’s all about.
We spent five days in Frailes, snorkeling along the only hard coral reef on the Pacific side of North America, hitch hiking to Cabo Pulmo, lounging on the white sandy beach and watching cattle walk by at sunset. Frailes was magical. I didn’t want to leave. But a storm was coming, so we begrudgingly packed up our dinghy and set our course and took off to our next destination, Los Muertos.
Los Muertos is an open roadstead anchorage, meaning that it isn’t very enclosed. The land offers protection from the north and the east but everything is exposed to the south and the southwest. The weather system was coming from the north, which made the anchorage look like it would be protected from the storm, and a lot of seasoned boats were heading to Muertos, so we followed their lead. There wasn’t much wind on the day that we left Frailes, and it took us eight hours to motor-sail to Muertos. We dropped anchor just before sunset.
The rain came the next day. It poured. Everything around us was gray. I broke my no-television-during-the-day rule and watched a movie. Garrett gave the boat—and himself—an outdoor rain bath. He got antsy and we eventually went to land with another sailing couple; I wore a black bathing suit and a black jacket in the dinghy. I was slightly embarrassed when we walked up to the clubhouse dripping wet and found it full of resort dwellers. I excused myself and changed into dry clothes in the bathroom, my hair leaving a big wet circle on my pink sweater. We drank beers and ate dinner and dinghied back to our boat in the dark. The swell had picked up by then; I struggled to climb on board.
That night was awful. Maybe the worst we’ve ever had. The swell was coming from the south and the west, throwing four-foot seas at us in two different directions, making our boat rock side to side and front and back and up and down for eight, maybe ten hours. Our mast was tossed back and forth like some type of bewitched metronome. Everything fell onto the floor. Garrett sat outside and watched the waves. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. We both felt sick. Scared. Wondered if the boat would roll. I blanched when I peeked at the other boats in the anchorage; they were 70 feet long, twice the size of us, and were rocking so hard it looked like their anchor lights at the top of their masts were about to touch the water.
We got to land as quickly as we could the following morning. I napped in a hammock. Garrett ordered a margarita. I checked my watch and ordered a mimosa. It was 10AM. We felt like zombies. It was Thanksgiving Day, and we stayed at the clubhouse of the resort until dinner, which was served at 5pm. We sat at a long table with a group of, oh, maybe fifteen other cruisers. It was a memorable experience that almost made up for the night before.
But then we left to go back to our boat and the surf pounded in our ears before we could even see the water from the beach. Waves were cresting and breaking in sets of five and six spread out across fifteen feet. There was no way we could have safely gotten off of the beach, through the waves, and back to our boat. We would have flipped our dinghy. We slept on the beach that night, well, back from the beach, on an outdoor couch under the bright lights of the clubhouse. I used a towel that Garrett had found as a blanket. We woke up at dawn the next morning and climbed into our dinghy as the sun rose.
It’s safe to say that I hated Muertos. Our experience there nearly broke me. “I don’t know how long I can do this for,” I told Garrett. The extreme ups and downs were driving me insane. He knew.
We left Muertos as soon as the storm abated and the seas calmed and headed for Isla Espiritu Santo, a saguaro lined red rock island not far from the city of La Paz. The irony of going from a place called “death” to one called “Holy Spirit” was not lost on me.
I loved Espiritu Santo. We both did. We anchored first in Bahia San Gabriel and then in Partida Cove. The beach in Gabriel was reminiscent of the Caribbean with its ripples of shallow crystal clear water stretched out over white sand. I collected shells and Garrett found blowfish skeletons and we practiced yoga in the wet sand with our friends.
Partida Cove was not as spectacular as Gabriel; the wind funnels down onto the water through an isthmus, making the anchorage choppy and cold. I wore a sweater during the day for the first time in months and pulled out our heavy blankets for us to sleep under at night. There were, however, tons of sea turtles in the cove, which made up for the wind. We spent two nights there, drinking and dining with other cruisers the first, nursing our hangovers the second. We were nearly out of water and food; I boiled pasta in sea water for dinner. By that point, we had been at anchor for two weeks. I was in need of a hot shower and vegetables. We sailed the three hours to La Paz the next day.
I experienced a little bit of shock when we got to La Paz, the type that I’ve only heard people talk about up until then, the kind that happens when you go from being in a remote place to a busy, developed, overcrowded one and can’t handle the contrast. La Paz isn’t a huge city, but still, I was overwhelmed the first night we got there. We had met up with a group of other cruisers for street tacos and I could barely talk.
We docked at Marina Palmira for a week to refuel, fill our water tanks, provision, and shower. I made Garrett walk the Malecon with me at sunset and stop to look at all of the marine-inspired statues. We ate pizza for dinner and ramen for lunch and picked up jalapeño cheese and cilantro dressing from a local market. We synced up with friends at Marina La Paz and bought snorkel gear at a boat supply store. We left the boat for two nights to go to Todos Santos for my 31st birthday. The middle of December was encroaching on us, though, and with its approach came the need to cross over to the mainland. We were flying back to the States out of Puerto Vallarta on the 22nd. The crossing would take two nights—we would sail 8-10 hours down to Muertos (yes, that Muertos) and anchor for the night and get up early the next day to do a 24-hour sail across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlán.
Garrett and I motored out of La Paz into horribly choppy, confused, and breaking seas. It had been windy for a few days, and although the wind had died down by the time we left, it had kicked up the water around us. I laid on my back and breathed deeply; my stomach didn’t feel very well. Garrett was quiet. We both were. As soon as he turned into the channel, a big wave broke on our bow. “We’re not going today,” he said. We went to Espiritu Santo instead.
We spent two nights in Espiritu Santo waiting for the wind to die and the water to flatten, one night at Gabriel and another at Candelero. I snorkeled and Garrett spearfished and I saw maybe a hundred manta rays swim under out boat like a big gray cloud. Our noses turned pink in the sun and a jellyfish—one that I didn’t even see—left a curl of sting marks across my right boob. On the last night of our stay, we decided to forego Muertos and instead opted to cross the Sea of Cortez in one go.
The conditions were much better when we finally crossed. We had consistent winds of 8-10 knots and sailed the majority of our course to Mazatlán on a beam reach. Nobody was around, so we stripped down and sailed naked, waggling our butts at Baja and waving big hellos to the mainland. Garrett caught and filleted a mahi mahi. I saw the moonrise from the sea for the first time. It was so big and bright and orange it might as well have been the sun. And, finally, miraculously, after months of night sailing, I was able to sleep while underway. Garrett and I alternated on three-hour shifts between 6pm and 9am. We dropped the table and set up the double-bed in the saloon and it made all of the difference. Sleeping made all of the difference. It made me actually enjoy a 40-hour passage.
Garrett was on watch as we approached Mazatlán and hove-to just outside of the channel as he waited for the sun to rise. The channel is narrow and can be treacherous—the whole of the Sea of Cortez funnels into its 15-foot wide mouth—so it’s wise to wait for daylight to enter. I was sleeping below and woke up in the dark to Garrett repeatedly yelling “hooooollllly shit, hoooollllly shit, hoooolllly shit.” In my daze I slowly asked what was wrong. He was shaking. A humpback whale had jumped completely out of the water twenty feet next to our boat. I blinked, a little worried that it might come back and do the same thing closer this time, but tiredness won out and I went back to bed.
Thisldu was docked at Marina El Cid in Mazatlán for just shy of a month. We left her there while we flew back to Chicago for Christmas and Ireland for my cousin’s wedding over the New Year. The break from the boat and sailing and talking about boats and sailing was welcome. We were so happy to spend time with our families and listen to Christmas music and wear sweaters and long pants. The change of pace was refreshing. We missed the sunshine and the warmth, though, toward the end, and although I cried the morning we flew out of Chicago, I was happy to return to Thisldu and Mexico.
Garrett and I spent an extra week in Mazatlán to nurse the head colds we had picked up in Ireland and wait for a good weather window to sail southwest to Isla Isabela. We were still in Marina El Cid, which is in the middle of a resort, and we spent our days languidly lying by the pool, venturing into Old Town, falling asleep early and waking up late. I loved Old Town with its colorful broken down charm and brick laid streets. The restaurants were good and cheap, the people friendly, the energy of the town quiet. Our experience in Mazatlán was good, but we were both itching to go.
We embarked on our 20-hour passage to Isla Isabela as soon as the weather looked clear. The conditions on our sail were fine, but Garrett and I were not. Nausea overcame us both and we couldn’t do much other than stare out at the water and land disappearing in our wake. It had only been 29 days since our last sail, but our sea legs were gone. We were both relieved to reach Isla Isabela at 8:30 the following morning.
Isla Isabela is a nature preserve and protected area for Frigate Birds and Blue Footed Boobies. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, all over the island. There are no predators, so they perch and fly and roam freely. Humans are no cause for their concern. Walking on Isla Isabela felt a bit like stepping into Jurassic Park. It was wild.
The snorkeling off of the island was spectacular, too. The water was insanely clear. A lot of people choose to skip Isla Isabela because the bottom is lined with boulders and your anchor can get snagged and lost for good in rough seas, but the conditions for our two-night stay were good, and we anchored in 20 feet in case Garrett needed to free dive to release the hook. All we had to do was jump off of our boat to be in this amazing ecosystem of marine life. I was excited to use my new snorkel that I received from my brother-in-law for Christmas and the swim ladder that we brought back with us from our holiday in the States.
Two days and two nights felt like enough for us to spend at Isla Isabela. We sailed eight hours southeast back to the mainland and anchored in Matanchén, a beautiful mountain-lined cove three miles south of San Blas. Matanchén is infamous for its noseeums, or, jejenes, as they’re called here, and I had already gotten eaten alive in Isabela. My legs were covered in red itchy bumps and my skin was sticky with bug spray. Although they have screens, we kept our portholes closed, because, well, noseeums are very tiny and can get through almost any opening. Matanchén was gorgeous, but I felt too cooped up, itchy, and hot. We did a jungle tour and saw lots of crocodiles and swam in a fenced-off fresh water hole one day and took the bus to explore San Blas the next. I was ready to leave on the third morning. We set sail for Chacala.
Chacala has a reputation for being a place of an “ah-ha” moment for cruisers. Kind of like what Frailes was for me. A place you get to and think, this is what I’m doing this all for, to be somewhere like this. Big palm trees line the coast, palapas sit on the sandy beaches, bougainvillea hang over the dirt walking paths. The town is tiny and sells street tacos for $15 pesos a piece. Street dogs sleep under restaurant tables and tag along with you when you go for hikes. They’re all a little bit fat. That made me happy. Chacala is also notorious for being a rolly anchorage, but we, along with all of the other boats, put out a stern anchor, and I slept in the sea berth, so it wasn’t that bad. We met a group of likeminded young cruisers there and ended up extending our planned two-night stay to four. We snorkeled at a private beach and watched a mama and baby humpback swim near us while we were in our dinghy. We hiked up a hill through the jungle before sunset to a clearing that overlooked the boats. We fed the street dogs and made ceviche out of trigger fish and enjoyed our time wholeheartedly.
After being convinced over and over again to extend our stay in Chacala, I finally put my foot down and told Garrett that we needed to head south. La Cruz and Banderas Bay were calling our names. A few friends were there and, well, we’ve been hearing great things about La Cruz for years. We needed to provision and find an ATM for cash and refill our water tanks. The night before we left, however, we had our new friends over for drinks and ceviche on Thisldu, so, well, we got a late start on our sail to Banderas Bay. Garrett and I decided to drop anchor in Punta de Mita before the sun dropped and sail the six miles to La Cruz the next morning.
Coming around the point of Banderas Bay was—uncomfortable. Rocks extend underwater off of the point to the Northeast and the first of Islas Tres Marietas is close by to the Southwest. There’s a very, very narrow passage to get between the two landmarks; otherwise, you can go south of the islands and cut back up, but we wanted to make it to Punta de Mita before dark. For a while, Garrett and I felt like we were back in the San Francisco Channel with clashing currents and 10’ waves. The differences, though, were that, for one, the sun was shining, two, it was hot outside, and three, we knew that the choppy seas would only last for forty-five minutes or so. Still, I found comfort in staring down at my hands instead of the surrounding high seas while Garrett quietly navigated us safely to the anchorage.
We were too tired—from the last hour of the sail and the residual hangovers from the night before—to go on land, so we just watched the sunset from our cockpit and gasped as a humpback whale completely breached next to a catamaran anchored not too far from us. Seeing a ton of whales almost daily has been one of my favorite things about being on the mainland side of Mexico.
Garrett and I woke up early the next morning and quickly made our way out of Punta de Mita. I sipped my coffee behind the wheel as he manually pulled up our anchor (if you remember, we found out that the windlass that we bought from a couple in the Bay Area before we left was no good the first time we used it in Dana Point). The sail to La Cruz was brief, maybe three hours. We danced on the cabin top and kept our eyes peeled for whales (lots were breaching along the south side of the bay) and, by lunchtime, pulled into Marina Riviera Nayarit.
The cruising community in La Cruz is huge. In the week that we’ve been here, we’ve ran into so many familiar faces from the Baja Ha-Ha, people we’ve connected with on social media, and families that we’ve met at other anchorages and marinas along the way. It’s comforting, in a way, to see all of these people that we kind of know in a place that we’ve never been to before.
Garrett and I spent two days in the marina to provision, fill our water tank, clean the boat, and run other errands, and then moved to the anchorage two days later. The anchorage is quite bouncy and rolly, something that I will just have to get used to. I already am, slightly; every night I wake up less and less. We are alternating between spending our days on the boat and knocking out projects—making bug screens for our portholes, wiring a new 12V outlet so we can charge more devices while we’re at sea, converting our oven and stove system from CNG to propane—and exploring on land. We’ve walked the streets of La Cruz, shopped at the spectacular Sunday market, and took a 30-minute Uber ride for $7 to Sayulita.
We will likely be in La Cruz for a couple of more days before exploring more of Banderas Bay, like Puerto Vallarta (I’ve never been), Yelapa, and some of the islands. We need to make our way south but aren’t in too much of a rush. With cruising, if the weather cooperates, we stay as long as we like in the areas we enjoy and move on quickly from those that we don’t. It’s nice to be so in control of our timeline, with only weather having a voice other than our own when it comes to planning. I am settling in to this lifestyle with greater ease than I did at first, and Garrett, of course, is living his best life. We wake up grateful every day.
So, that’s it. What we’ve been up to in the last couple of months. I hope to check in more than I have been, but because most of my creative energy is going into the book, I would love your help and know what type of content you would like to see more of. What would you like to read about on Thisldu?