Gulf of California: Bottom to Top

Within a week, weather permitting, we are finally heading out of La Cruz for the Gulf of California. We look forward to beautiful anchorages, fabulous topography, spectacular islands, whales, dolphins and other sea life, blue-footed boobies… and on and on. This trip will be a bit rushed, but we hope it’s a good preview for longer, slower trips in the future.

What’s in a Name?

The Sea of Cortez is probably what most US folks call this body of water. But It is officially the Gulf of California. Did you know it’s also called the Vermillion Sea? That was a new one for me.

Our Voyage Plans

We are headed for Puerto Penasco in the very top of the Gulf of California. It’s a 1000 mile trip with hundreds of anchorages to sample, particularly in the southern half of the Baja. We want to see some things, but hurricane season is coming so we can’t dawdle too much. In a normal year we could be bolder, but this year we will be traveling without much in the way of communication or weather information because our HF Radio – which we use to download weather and get / send emails as well as talk to other radio folks – has died. We are taking it to Washington to the factory to see if it can be fixed, but in the meantime our communication is limited to our cell phones. And cell towers are very sparse in Baja.

We will cross the Gulf twice – once from Mazatlan to just south of La Paz (Los Muertos) in the first week of the trip – and again at the end of our voyage from Bahia de Los Angeles in northern Baja to Puerto Penasco. Aside from those two overnighters, one from Isla Isabela to Mazatlan, and possibly one more as we leave Santa Rosalia, we plan to harbor hop up the coast, doing 20 to 50 mile days and spending 1 or 2 nights in each anchorage. A few will have tiendas so we can refresh our veggies, but we are prepared to eat out of our supplies if we have to. Let’s hope Jon has luck fishing!! And we should be able to get lobsters from the fishermen at times. Luckily this trip we have solidly working refrigeration and a tiny freezer – a new level of luxury for these sailors.

The trip should take 4-6 weeks or more, depending on weather, whether we have boat problems, etc. We will update the web site with our latest position whenever we can get a cell phone connection. The pictures will probably be added later as I don’t expect to have much opportunity for that kind of bandwidth. But short blog posts about where we are should be possible.

Itinerary (projected)

For those that know something about Baja, here is our projected agenda, very likely to change.

Pacific Coast

Punta Mita
Chacala
Matanchen
Isla Isabela
Mazatlan

Baja

Los Muertos
Puerto Balandra
La Paz
Ensenada Grande
San Evaristo
Agua Verde
Puerto Escondido or Loreto
San Juanico
Santa Domingo (in Concepcion bay)
Santa Rosalia
San Francisquito
Animas Slot
Bahia de Los Angeles
Puerto Penasco

Follow our chart at Finding Eurybia to see what REALLY happens!