San Evaristo to Agua Verde

Friday, May 20, 2011

025-31.400 N
111-4.427 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

It's been a while since I last wrote, but I wanted to wait until I had Internet access as the places that we've been have been too visually stunning to send out more e-mails without visible images. If you've ever been to the desert Southwest, you know how amazing the scenery can be. Now just imagine adding aqua marine water to the mix and being able to sail there, and you' ve got the Baja area.

When I last wrote we were headed to San Evaristo, which is a well protected anchorage which afforded us a good night's sleep after our sleepless evening at Isla San Francisco. We were tucked into a little horseshoe shaped bay which had beautiful green water and 100' hills dropping steeply into the water. During the day you could watch burros and goats clambering around on them.

From San Evaristo we headed to Puerto los Gatos and travelled along some dramatic coastline dotted with tiny fishing villages perched at the base of vertical mountains soaring 1400 feet overhead. The photo to the right shows the village of Nopolo. Note that the little white dots along the shoreline are houses.

Puerto los Gatos is a stunning place to stop. There's nothing there other than red sandstone cliffs which have been sculpted by Mother Nature into softly rounded forms. The color contrast of the red sandstone against the blue sky and green water is amazing. What was really interesting was how some areas of the rock were so smooth and others were highly angular with sharp edges. We spent hours climbing around the rocks and exploring before we headed on to Bahia Santa Marte.

Bahia Santa Marte is another nice anchorage with good protection from the W to the NE. One of the things that I really liked was that there was good diving on the reefs surrounding the entrance to the bay. The reefs were full of large fish, which was quite impressive, and it was interesting diving with long vertical cracks in the rock ledge and huge boulders. I got in 2 dives in and really enjoyed it.

After spending 2 nights at Bahia Santa Marte we headed to Bahia Agua Verde, which is one of the most popular anchorages in the Sea of Cortez. After spending 4 nights here, I can easily tell you why. First off, if you tuck way in, you can get protection from almost all wind angles and in general it provides protection from everything other than the E to NE. Agua Verde translates to "green water" and if you look at the photo to the right, you can see why.

One of the things that Sue really liked was that she got to meet a lot of boaters, which was something that we haven't been able to do, primarily because we've been moving on a regular basis. We've met lot of very nice people and really enjoyed our stay here.

One of the highlights of the our stay was when a Whale Shark visited the anchorage for a day. Whale Sharks are plankton eaters and don't provide any threat to humans. Both Sue and I have wanted to see and swim with them ever since we were in Honduras, but we've never had the opportunity. Well, when a Whale Shark spent the day in the bay, we all had a great chance to do so. I grabbed my camera and jumped into the water. I ended up getting a lot of good photos, but unfortunately my camera reverted to low res mode for the video. The video was good visually, but not very high quality. I'll post that to YouTube when I have a chance.

The Whale Shark that visited us was fairly small and was about 15-20 feet in length. It was very docile and allowed us to swim right up to it and it even seemed to like it when we petted it. When I petted it between the eyes, it almost stopped swimming and dropped it's tail. Amazing! I was also able to swim along it's top and peer into it's mouth, which was equally amazing. All in all we spent about 1/2 an hour swimming with it. Wow, what an experience!

One of the other things that I really enjoyed was diving at Roca Solitaria which is a spire which rises 115' out of the water less than a mile from the anchorage. I did 3 dives there, which was more than enough to see the entire thing. The N end has a beautiful vertical wall and the E side has huge boulders. Since it was around full moon, there were lots of large fish in the area, which were quite skittish and didn't allow you near them, but it was good to see them.

The photo to the right is of a Nudibranch, which is about 2-3" long. One of the things that I've learned is that I need Pacific based fish/creature identification books, as the ones that I have don't begin to cover the fish that I'm finding here.

We're currently in Puerto Escondido where we have Internet access for the first time in about 10 days and thus I was able to upload these images. We'll be here for a few days and then well continue heading N.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the Cruiser:

In San Evaristo we anchored about 24-54.821N 110-42.127W in about 22' in sand.

In Puerto los Gatos we anchored at about 25-18.201N 110-56.732W in about 20' in sand.

In Bahia Santa Marte we anchored at about 25-30.254N 111-01.030W in about 15' in sand. Good holding.

In Agua Verde we anchored at about 25-30.919N 111-03.727W in about 17' in sand. This was by the E wall which had good snorkeling.

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For the diver:

In Bahia Sante Marte I dove at about 25-29.989N 111-00.334W in about 58' max. Nice channels and large boulder.

At Agua Verde I dove at Roca Solitaria. My favorite sides were on the N end which had a nice vertical wall which probably descended to 100' or more. On the E side there are large boulders. I stayed between 30 and 60 feet. Note that a strong current rolls past this site, so plan appropriately.

Log ID: 1449