A trip down the Sea of Cortez

I am in La Paz, after nearly a month of sailing down from the north end of the Sea of Cortez.  I started in Puerto Penasco, and got new bottom paint on the boat and a few other things done, and I also got a starlink Mini, which is much better at connecting to the satellites and also uses less power.  Anyway, my friend Nichole arrived and the yard put Aquila in the water...

And off we went!  It was pretty exciting to get into the water, navigate out of the harbor (which is shallow) and be out in a wide open and rough sea, with no place to hide for 100 miles.  So we put up the mainsail and washed the boat (very dusty) and then put up the spinnaker (since I didn't have the jib fitted yet)

It was an overnight right off the bat, but not too bad, and a couple days later we got to Isla Partida, and there were tons of bottlenose dolphins there.  

Its a volcano and it had a great lava dome with awesome basalt formations.

And a few nice lizards

In the evening the dolphins started having a jumping contest

After that we headed towards Isla San Esteban, and found Kevin!  He's a humpback whale (and maybe isn't really called kevin) and came to visit us and play.  He stuck around for an hour at least and kept investigating the boat.

Coming right up and looking around at the keel and the rudders and us.

At San Esteban I got this picture of a rock hatching.  There will be a new rock underneath!

We found some Orcas there as well.

Then we went to Isla Tiburon, which is the biggest island in the sea of cortez, and in all of mexico, I think.  There was a coyote there we found.

And these palo adan, which I think are like medusa hair a bit.  Everything is so green!

Nichole did the classic "pet the barrel cactus" move.  

Sunrise was very nice

We went to San Pedro Martyr, and there were tons of caves and sea lions there, but I didn't get great pictures.  Then we hoofed it down to Isla Tortuga, which was a long day with the spinnaker up.  We made great time though.  

Tortuga apparently has a super high concentration of rattlesnakes, but we didn't test that out.  We did discover the water was super clear and the snorkeling was great.  Its near Santa Rosalia

Then we zipped down to Loreto and went up Tabor Canyon, and found these neat caterpillars. 

I dropped off Nichole in Loreto and picked up another friend, Emily, and we continued the trip.  First, back to Tabor canyon to hike as far up as we could go.  There are lots of cool moths drinking the water

And nice pools to reflect on the world

Some of them were nice to swim in too.

We headed to Carmen after that, and then to Agua Verde, and walked over to a cave with hand paintings in it there, and found some bats!  I've seen bats in this cave before, but it seems only in the early fall before people start coming down to visit the cave.

On the way back we found some quail.

The desert is blooming and full of greenery now, right at the end of the wet season.

And we had a nice vulture sunning its wings

Then over to Isla Santa Catalina, to visit the giant barrel cactus there.  

Some of them are dancing

The next day it was very calm and we motored around and found some dolphins.  They rode the bow and we marveled at them, then got into the skiff and had some more bow riding from closer, then jumped out of the skiff and swam with them a bit before they continued on their way.  I dove down into the ocean a ways, in thousands of feet of water, a hundred feet away from the skiff and a mile from the sailboat, and 5 miles from land.  It was amazingly freeing.

Then we went to santa cruz island and found some more caves to explore

and found a marlin the next morning cruising by

Then to isla San Diego and looked around there, and snorkeled at the reef off the south point, which is the best snorkeling I think I've done here ever.  

Then on to Punta Colorado, and had a great time exploring and a wonderful sunrise on the red rocks.

It was a full moon the next day too.

We went to a canyon that doesn't have a name as far as I know, and hiked up it a long ways to finally find some water, but also found a lot of what I think is copper.  

And then we found some Sperm whales and another group of Orca!

Finally we headed down to Espiritu Santo and had a nice hike in the sunset

Up a hill.  

I've been having a great time traveling with such good friends, and now I have a few days alone in La Paz before another friend (Teague) comes down to help me sail over to Vallarta.  Its a busy fall, but it feels good to share adventures and Aquila with friends.  
 

Aboard Aquila again

 

I got back to Mexico about a week ago, and have been working hard to get my boat back in action.  I've painted the bottom blue again, and I have a few small spots to work on still (the places that have been covered by the stands), and also need to get some more paint to put on the aluminum sail drive leg.  I have copper paint and I can't put copper on aluminum, so I need a different paint for that.  

The boat is amazingly high off the ground.  When I got here it was still in a hole, so I could reach up and touch the bottom, but then they decided to move me around a bit and blocked me up on these sketchy looking (and feeling in the wind) legs that hold the boat up.  Everyone walking around is quite surprised by how tall the keel is.  

I haven't got all the rust off the topsides, since I wanted to get the bottom done before doing anything with the top.  I can do it in the water.  But I did get new chain, so I hope to not have as much rust in the future. 

I also got a new starlink antenna, the mini, and it works great.  It was a pain in the but to get it connected, and I had to buy a second subscription for the month of october, but it uses a lot less power, and I think it works better in motion.

There were a few rainshowers, but it is the desert here.  Very very dry and super dusty.  I have dust all over everything, and once I am back in the water I'll try and wash the whole boat again.   And get rid of the rust spots.  

End of the summer

I'm back in Bellingham now, and I just got a "new" camera.  Over the summer I have destroyed a few cameras, so here's the story on that:  At the beginning of the season, just as I was getting the boat ready, I did a few "crew skiff tours" where I took a skiff and drove around a bit to look around the area.  On one of them, I had my camera in a bag in the back of the skiff and it fell overboard sometime during the trip and when I noticed it, it must have sunk, because I couldn't find it.  So I wanted to have one for the season, so I bought a NEW camera (actually new) from a store in Anchorage, and spent about 2500 bucks on it.  I got a Z50 mark 2 and two lenses.  They worked great until about the end of august, when I went for a kayak up to the Northwestern Glacier, and got a little too close, and the glacier calved with a big huge avalanche and wave and it swamped my boat and (I was preoccupied) got in the dry bag that I didn't fully close.  

So now I have another Nikon, now it is a D750.  Its a camera from 2014, but it was made to be a good one back then, so it has more waterproofing than the newer but cheaper models.  Anyways, it fits stuff that I still have, and it wasn't too much money.  So I took it out for an adventure.  My friend Teague has a sailboat in Bellingham, and we went over to Lummi Island for the night.

His boat is a 30 ft aluminum boat and sails pretty nice, but there was no wind so we motored.

Here's a picture of the dodger that I helped him build over the summer.  Its plywood and works great to keep the wind off, and the boat dryer.

It was a beautiful day with Mt Baker shining behind us.

We hiked up to a secret lookout spot to look at the sunset, and saw Sucia and Matia...

Here's Cypress and Sinclair...

This lookout has a huge cliff under it, and is quite intimidating.

Here's Lummi Rocks from Above.

The textures were fun, so I took some shots of things in the light to play around with the camera a bit.

And some mosses

From another viewpoint Mt Baker is even more imposing.

We spent the night aboard and explored more the next day

Where we found some turkey tail fungus

And a nicely branched Big Leaf Maple

And some more mosses

And more textured barks

With more turkey tail

Of course I love the madronas too.

On our way back we had great wind and sailed the whole time from lifting the anchor to setting it back again.

Its a fun little boat to sail.