Bahia Concepcion

Saturday, June 4, 2011

026-43.893 N
111-54.318 W

Ahoy from Concepción Bay, Mexico!

It's been over a week since my last log and I guess that's good as we've been slowing down and spending time enjoying where we're at. It's also really helped that we've met some very nice other boats that we have a lot in common with. But more on that later.

Right now we're in Concepción Bay, which is more or less mid-way up the Sea of Cortez. When I last wrote we were in Isla Coronados getting ready to make the 60 mile jump to Concepción Bay. We actually broke that trip into 2 segments. Well, actually into 3 segments, as we started to head to our first stop, which was a little bay known as La Ramada, but we turned around when I realized that the wind/seas weren't as forecast which would make the anchorage very rolly. Our friends on s/v Endorfin, who did go, spent the night rolling from side to side. The next day we made the passage and we found a beautiful horseshoe shaped bay with dazzling aqua water. The snorkeling there was quite nice and there was even a cave that you could swim completely through. After a delightful happy hour on the beach, we got the boats ready for the 50 mile passage to Concepción Bay.

Concepción Bay is about 25 miles deep and maybe 5 miles wide at it's widest. Within Concepción there are many smaller bays which are anchorages and homes to many people. Mexico highway 1 parallels the bay, which makes it convenient for campers, tourists and locals to visit this beautiful place. Unfortunately it also means road noise, but it's surprising how little traffic there is on the road, considering that it's the only paved road through the Baja. And the traffic basically is non-existent at night. Anyhow, we spent about a week moving between bays and exploring the area.

One of the more interesting bays is called Playa el Burro and what makes it interesting are the houses which are built on it. Most of the houses appear to be built out of materials which, if a strong storm were be blow them away, wouldn't be hard/expensive to replace. I guess that this makes sense as one guy owns the land and leases it out to the home owners. Some of the structures are just huge garages that RVs pull under to keep out of the sun. Others are beautifully handcrafted works of art. One house was crafted over decades by a woman who is now in her 70s. Over the years she's hauled car load after car load of material down and has built a stunning home. What a woman!

There's a small point separating Playa el Burro from Playa Coyote, but the differences in the homes are day and night. First off, the beach at Playa Coyote is lined with date palms, which makes makes this beach a delight to look at. Then all of the houses are substantially built (I guess that the people own the land and don't lease it) and are very well maintained. Believe me, when you come around the point, you think that you're in a different universe. But, I must say that I liked Playa el Burro better, and I don't know why.

One of the very cool things about Concepción Bay is the number of Whale Sharks which hang out in the area. On some days there were up to 4 Whale Sharks cruising through the bays that we were anchored in. Unfortunately there were lots of people on jet skies who would circle them and scare them away. After a few of these episodes, we became good at stealthily communicating their position.

One of the other things that I really enjoyed was diving at some of the islands in the area. While the diving doesn't begin to match the beauty of the coral reefs in Belize, there are a tremendous variety of fish and creatures which inhabit the area. This has kept me busy editing photos and identifying the critters.

Other than that, we've been having a great time getting to know the crew on Endorfin. Dan, Lisa and their daughter Savannah who are on their 53' sailboat. They're from the Channel Islands of CA and are on their first year out cruising. Dan's a retired techie, Lisa works for PADI certifying dive instructors and Savannah can be a handful! :-) Dan & I can talk tech and Sue & Lisa love to cook and talk girl talk. Savannah is a typical 5 year old with no kids her age to play with, so she looks at us as her playmates. We also met Randy from s/v Makana, who's a 59 yo surfer from CA who's down here solo sailing after his now ex-wife jumped ship. He's a really nice, normal guy and will be taking applications for crew :-)

What's funny is that Dan had no intentions of going this far north, but we keep cajoling him into moving further and further north. I'm not quite sure how far we'll get him to move, but we're enjoying our time together.

From here we're headed to Santa Rosalia, which is about 50 miles N of Concepción Bay.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser:

We first anchored in Posada Concepción to provide protection from the NW. We had good protection until the wind turned NE and then it got windy. Playa Santispac, which is just NE of Playa Concepción is windy in NW winds, but much calmer in N to NE winds.

From there we headed to Playa El Burro, which as described above was quite nice. We anchored in 15-20' over sand. In Playa Coyote we had to anchor in about 30' as it shoals very quickly.

To get the Bertha's Tienda, find the steep ramp near the S end of Playa Coyote and walk up the road between the buildings to Mex 1. Then go right about 1/4 mile. The rest of the beach is gated and you can't get to the road. The tienda has basic supplies and some fruits and veggies.

We also anchored at Isla Requesón in order to dive at Rocas Frijoles. We anchored on the SE side of the island and tried to tuck ourselves in to avoid the waves wrapping around the island, but couldn't get ourselves very far in due to shallow depths. Not much there.

We ate at Ana's restaurant at Santispac and at Bertha's at el Burro. By far we thought that Bertha's was the better of the two. Nothing fancy, but good, local food.

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For the diver/snorkeler:

The cave at La Ramada is located where the on the W side where there's a pile of red rocks which meets where a wedge of white rock in the cliff enters the water. Swim around the N end of the red rocks and head S and and you'll see day light through the cave.

I dove/snorkeled on the W side of Isla Coyote. Lots of small fish and interesting things to see.

Lisa and I dove at Isla Guapa and had a beautiful dive there. We circled the rock on the N end of the island and then worked our way along the shore heading S. Beautiful grottos in the shallows near the shore with lots of interesting things to look at. I think that the deepest that we got was 40' with most of the time in the 10-20' range.

I also dove Rocas Frijoles from the Isla Requeson anchorage. We took the dinghy out to explore what was described as a pinnacle only to find that it's really more of a sea mound with the top at about 5' MLW. It would have been easy to anchor BlueJacket on the surrounding sand/gravel and saved the 2.8 mile dinghy ride.The diving wasn't very interesting. Don't go out of your way to dive here.

Log ID: 1452