Friday 03-14-08 - Up the Mag Bay Panhandle

Up to a foggy, overcast morning.
Hmmmmm.... how are we going to see the shoals?
We send the "scouts" out in the dinghy with the dinghy depth sounder to find the channel! There are a few large boats that go up this channel on a regular basis, however there are no channel markings and we have no idea where the channel is. There are shoals all around, and some of them turn to beaches on low tide.
The large boats know where the channel is, know when to hug the right or left side of the canal and know which side of the many small islands to go on. And on top of this, we need to find places that are sheltered from the wind and enough outside of the channel to anchor.
We have no idea about any of it! We would have liked to follow one of the boats up, but our timing was never right and we really wanted to do it on OUR OWN!
So, Jim and one of the guys headed up the channel to explore these unknown places...

The rest of us ran the generator, made some water, did some laundry & hung it out to dry.




It is amazing how fast the clothes dry here - faster than using the dryer setting on my washer / dryer!



The "depth sounders" came back, so we crossed the shoal back out into the main channel. Then saw this coming down the channel! It is the "National Geographic Sea Lion"!So we know there is deep water somewhere!
The National Geographic has two boats that do trips out of La Paz - the "Sea Lion" and the "Sea Bird". We waved at each other like crazy and they seemed happy to see us up in this wilderness. This waving like crazy from this boat was explained several days later via two vhf conversations. In one of these conversations, I had hailed them to let them know Stan's sister, Maggie and her husband would be on their boat for a week-long trip in a few days. We actually crossed paths in the night with Maggie & Bob, but didn't know it until the next day. Anyway in the first conversation, we talked for a bit and gave them Maggie's name. In the second conversation, several more days later, the captain told us we were the ONLY private boat they had seen past the marked channel that year! No wonder they would wave like crazy - they don't see sailboats or boats other than fishing boats up where we were! The other thing that was cool, is they remembered our name and called us on vhf to let Maggie talk to Stan! And the captain, Mark has his sailboat at Marina de La Paz and told us he would share the charts for Mag Bay with us, when we get together after his spring trips.

So, back to this particular day cruising up the panhandle...

Our charts didn't quite match where we were and would often show us "on an island"...






There are usually mangroves on one or both sides of the canals, and often the sand comes right down to the water on the ocean side. It looks like the Sahara desert meets the sea.We cruised up only a few miles to a small (not so clean) mud beach to anchor for the night. But these not so clean beaches usually have a purpose ~ trash burning!The guys took our bags in and did their fire dance. It was great to get rid of our trash! This is how the Mexicans do it in remote places and they have old metal bins for this purpose. So this was ok to do.

Back to the boat for beers, books, talking, Sudoku, watching whales and frigate birds.












The channel in this area is not very wide, so the whales were pretty close!

Then we watched the seiner, "Oscar I" go down the channel. They also waved like crazy, honked and said on vhf, "Nice boat. Bye bye." After finding out several days later we were the only crazies in the panhandle, this all made sense too!We listened to Don on "Summer Passage" give weather. A full gale was expected on the outside of Baja, so tomorrow we wanted to find a spot to anchor that is more protected and more outside of the channel.

Pam made her "goulash" for dinner & I made cornbread to go with it.
Dominos, books and to bed!