Las Cocinas

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

028-13.844 N
111-22.535 W

Ahoy from Las Cocinas on Mexico's Sonoran coast!

When I last wrote we were Isla Tiburon, where we had successfully thwarted any attacks by the Serri Indian cannibals. The forecast looked as good as it was going to get for the foreseeable future, so 2 days ago we set off on a 78 mile passage between Tiburon and Las Coralitos, which is on Mexico's Sonoran mainland. That's a long day passage, but thankfully it was the summer solstice, which is also the longest day of the year. We departed a 6 AM and hoped that we have favorable current with us for at least half of the journey. Well, we did, but that was a mixed blessing.

The winds which were forecast to be NW, were actually SE when we left, which meant that the winds were opposing the current, which as frequent readers of this log know creates big swells and choppy seas. So, it seemed that we either were making good time or we had lumpy seas. The winds slowly built from 8 kts to 17 kts as the day progressed and just as slowly moved from the SE to SSW, which was almost sailable. At mid-morning we put the jib up to help motor sail and it wasn't until we were about 3 hours away that we were able to put the main up and actually sail. Our biggest issue was the seas which were almost on the nose. It seemed like just as soon as we picked up some nice speed that we'd bash into a series of waves that would slow us down. Well, we finally made it in at around 6:30 PM and amazingly Sue had managed to make chocolate chip shortbread bars along the way. What a woman, but man, that was a long day!

We had met a sail boat named Doubloon when we were in Tiburon and they had left the night before and were in the same anchorage. After getting the boat settled we swung over to their boat to say hello. We stayed for a couple of hours and had a nice time chatting with them.

Oh, backing up...The night that they left we had an incredible experience on the boat. We had dinner in the cockpit and were watching the stars come out when we saw the water in the anchorage begin to sparkle. This wasn't the normal phosphorescence that we've seen many times before. There were these squiggly creatures which emitted bright flashes. Suddenly all of these bright light sources within a 2-3' diameter would converge on one location. One can only imagine what kind of debauchery was going on there! This repeated over and over. I grabbed a flash light and shown it onto the water were we could see these tiny wiggly flashing creatures. Just below the surface there were LOTS of needle fish...I'm talking 3-4 per square meter and below them were other larger fish. We also saw free swimming conger eels, which are about 1/4" in diameter and 1-2' long. We also saw some kind of small water snake and a tiny flounder. The sheer amount of sea life in a tiny space was amazing!

We had planned on moving to an anchorage 14 miles SE of here, but first thing in the morning the winds started to blow out of the SE and we decided to hang out here for another day instead of bashing into 2-4' seas created by 20+ kts of wind. I worked on the refrigeration and Sue made bread. While we were out snorkeling Buzz, from Doubloon dinghied over to where we were and told us to come over for lobster, as they had managed to buy 13 small lobsters and some scallops from the local fishermen. We went over and had a great feast.

Tomorrow we'll leave early in the morning to beat the winds and begin a series of small moves down the coast line, ending up in Guaymas where we'll have BlueJacket hauled on July 4th. Then we'll fly home on July 7th.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser:

We anchored at 28-13.844N 111-22.535W in about 15' MLW over sand. Holding was good. I put out a stern anchor to keep us into a NW swell and I had a hard time getting the anchor out. The beach has good shelling, especially if you snorkel along the shoreline. Very nice view of the western sky and sunsets. Water is warm...84F and we;ve losgt the cool air. It was 81F at sunrise and 89F at sunset.

Log ID: 1459