Blogzilla - Into the Sea of Cortez, on to La Paz part 1Tres Marias

We had just spent several weeks exploring and soaking in the richness of Banderas Bay.  At about 300 square miles in size, Banderas Bay is one of the largest deepwater bays in Mexico.  It’s filled with abundant sea life and at this point doesn’t seem to be overfished.  It’s southern shoreline is rugged, wild and beautiful, bounded by a lush and seemingly impenetrable mountain range.  The protected waters of the bay are a paradise for sailors like ourselves who enjoy sailing it’s protected waters that feature gentle seas, moderate breezes and numerous opportunities for viewing whales, dolphins, sea turtles and even the occasional manta ray.  It seems to be a favorite place for whale mother & calf pairs who be can often seen swimming together around the bay. 

Banderas Bay and Yelapa turned out to be the southern most terminus of this sailing season for us.  As they say; all good things must come to an end, so too did our time in the bay of wonders but it was not with sad faces that we departed that magical place.  Fortunately for us we are now headed for another place with an amazing reputation; The Sea of Cortez

Sea of Cortés 


The Sea is big and deep!  It has a coastline of approximately 2,500 mi and a surface area of 62,000 sq miles.  It’s also rich in life, it’s thought to be one of the most diverse seas on the planet.  The Baja is the second-longest peninsula in the world with many places listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  The Sea is 700 mi long and 30–150 mi wide and has a mean depth 2,684.0 ft.  But first we had to get there. 

We hove our anchor at 9:00 am and sailed through dozens of other sailboats in the La Cruz anchorage that were quietly sitting at their anchors like a great flock of seabirds bobbing together upon the waters.  Malo made the best of the morning’s light breezes.  As we sailed past Punta Mita, the northern point of the bay we watched through binoculars and cheered as a crew on shore managed get a 37’ sailboat upright that had gone on the rocks about a month ago.  Up to this point that boat had mainly served as a grim reminder of the potential cost of a few moments inattentiveness by any of us mariners, but not today, today it was rising back up off the beach, it’s mast pointing again up into the sky, a symbol of hope and rebirth for us all…

One of the Tres Marias Islands

On the morning of the second day out we came upon the Tres Marias, a group of rugged and barren volcanic islands that comprise a penal colony that is off limits to boaters.  “These are neither tombs nor hells, rather tropical lands with luxurious vegetation, someone said of these islands. They may not be tombs, but they are a prison”.  Until 1950 this prison colony was known as a feared detention center, due to violence, disease, and forced labor. It is calculated that the total number of prisoners to be housed there is above 29,000 .

In order to go up the Sea of Cortez and explore the inside of the Baja Peninsula we had to first cross the 265 nm mouth of that Sea.   Once we cleared Punta Mita and the reefs, rocks and associated little islets that surround it we made our way out into the open Pacific Ocean where we were met by gentle, long period, swells and increasing but sill moderate wind.   We were now on well our way, headed Northwest towards the tip of the Baja Peninsula.  Our specific destination was the tiny anchorage at Bahía Los Frailes (Bay of the Friars).


Hounds to the left of us jackals to the right, back in the middle again…

The above photo shows our chart plotter as we made our way across the mouth of the Sea.  Malo is the black boat shaped icon about in the middle of the display.  The large 5 sided blue icons represent large freighters and tanker ships.  The smaller blue icons represent smaller boats, usually sail or fishing boats.  You can see how busy the mouth of the Sea is with boat traffic.


Favorable winds allowed us to almost lay our rhumb with very little tacking.  Once our course was set and the wind filled in to a very pleasant 10 mph we soon settled into enjoying the vast blue ocean before us that was capped by a light blue sky above, garnished with just a few, small fluffy white clouds.  As near perfect sailing day as anyone could wish for.  Sea birds flitted around us as Malo gently surged up and down with a steady, relentless perseverance towards our destination.  And we, her crew settled into an easy happiness that comes to sailors in our chosen and natural environment.  

It took us four days to make our crossing of the mouth of the Sea.  It was a beautiful, gentle, even magical passage until we met El Norte (the Norther) and then it wasn’t, then it was more like a bar fight; fast, violent and leaving a big mess afterwards.  But the first two days and nights were a blessing and a gift of sublime beauty involving majestic skies, divine seas, dozens upon dozens of dolphins, several sea turtles, surprising seals way out off shore and several persistent birds.  Bev and I sailed Malo together during the days and separately, watch upon watch through the nights.  Speaking of the night’s they too were especially superb; clear and star filled early on and then later brightly light by an almost full moon.   

We’ve been admiring the flying prowess of some large sea birds who are such agile and graceful flyers both high above the ocean and just inches above it too.  I took some photos so we could try to identify them later.  Little did we know that we’d soon get a very close to look at them.  



A rare sky dragon showed up at sunset to inspire us to; be bold, be bright, be beautiful.

Right after the appearance of the sky dragon one of the sea birds had been hunting around Malo all day long perched on the bow.

Later, after dark the first bird was joined buy four others for the night.  

The next morning, after much preening they took off leaving behind quite a big load of poop on the deck bringing new meaning to that old nautical term; Poop Deck.  After cleaning the foredeck we enjoyed another day of idyllic sailing.



Things were going so swimmingly until a new and unwanted guest showed up.   Senior El Norte showed up like an unwanted, drunken guest at a garden party.  Loud, unruly and boisterous he is.  I’d heard of this hombre before as his reputation precedes him but I’d been deceived by his numbers; 20-30 knot winds and 6’ high, steep, close chop didn’t seem that formidable to me.  We had faced double those numbers before but it seemed that I had more to learn and to respect about this bad hombre…  It wasn’t the wind that got us, although there was plenty of that.  We saw those 20-30 knot winds but it’s really never the wind that gets you.  It’s the water.  The seas.  Most of us face 65 mph winds or greater almost everyday in our cars but how many of us have driven into head high waves one after another, by the hundreds?  I’ve been faced with much larger waves too but never such relentless and numerous sets.  When the north wind blows the relatively short fetch (length) of the Sea cranks out these steep, stubby waves by the thousands.  Mariners describe waves by two numbers; their height and period (the time between peaks).  The shorter the period, the steeper the wave.  Long ocean swells that are 6’ high often have periods  of 1.5 to 2 times their height.  A 6’ wave with a 9 to 12 second period is a gentle hill to climb, whereas the same height wave with a 6 second period (what they call a square wave, 6x6) is quite a steep wave to bash into.  In this El Norte we were seeing 6’ waves with 3 and even on occasion 2 second periods in these weird two wave sets that came on like a quick boxer with a fast 1,2 punch that snaps your head back and sets you on your heals.  Ouch!  At the end of our crossing we had two days and one night of that sort of beating, leaving us worn out as well as beat up. 

On the second night of the El Norte Malo charged north into the teeth of the fiend with a small jib and double reef in her mainsail and still she was going seven and a half knots as she careened off one wave top after another.  The shaking was so violent that the next day we found a few loose cotter pins and nuts and bolts on the deck that had come undone in the night’s pounding.  In addition, the catch on one of our deck hatches had broken off,  causing some minor flooding below from the waves tops that had been passing over Malo’s deck.

Bahía los Frailes


We arrived in the lee of Cabo los Frailes 4 days after setting out from La Cruz, we were tired and soaked and ever so grateful to be out of all that wind and water after sailing 344 miles.  We anchored in sandy bottom in 30’ of water just off a beautiful beach and thankfully behind a nice big hill that effectively blocked out Senior Norte.  We were grateful for the amazing crossing that we’d just safely completed and also for the break from the past two days of violent shaking.  Simple pleasures…and we were very excited about exploring the inside of the Baja Peninsula and the Sea of Cortez.  

Malo at ancore at los Frailes