Our trip North into the Sea of Cortez

    We just spent 3 weeks in the various bays traveling North into the Sea of Cortez.  Sometime we anchored on the Baja coast and other times out in bays on the many islands out in the sea.

    If the water weren't so blue and warm we could almost imagine we were just still sailing in Puget Sound.  Instead of seeing green evergreens we were looking at large and varied rock formations, cactus, dolphins, whale pods, beaches with shells, and turquoise waves.   To the right is a picture of the colors of the sea and in the distance is our boat,
SV Little Christian. We were on the beach exploring and shelling.

    We traveled with two other boats;" Lovely Lady with Rose and Jani from Seattle area, and "Happy Nest" with Joy and Dave Robbins from Colorada but more recently living in Gig Harbor while they learned the art of sailing. Joy is pictured above with me shelling at Bahia Amortajada on Isla San Jose. 
    Here are a few other pictures from our trip.

 

 

Hopefully you can see the variety of sea and land scapes from these pictures.  It was fun, we went all the way to Puerto Escondito, which is 14 miles from Loreto and then took a taxi into the city.
    Some of my pictures in Loreto were erased during a whale frenzy..We saw several pods of whales traveling north to give birth in the Sea and then on our way back we saw one large whale just frolicking, flapping his tail and lifting up one large fin.  It was determined from pictures of types of whales that it was a Humpback Whale.  We have quite a video of him or her.  It was the closest we have gotten to a whale.  We have seen hundreds of porpoise right by or very close to the boat but this was our very first whale, up close and personal.
    We even had some strong wind and one rain squall where we had to way anchor and go around to an anchorage on the other side of the island to get protection from the directions of the winds.  The interesting thing was we decided to do this and 4 other boats followed us to the other side and in the morning when we got up there were at least 3 more boats who arrived in the dark. That was on Isla San Francisco.
     Now we are back in La Paz, Getting provisions and planning on staying here for the "Carnaval" which last the week before Lent begins and is a smaller version of the ones in Rio de Janiero and New Orleans.  It will be fun to see what this is all about. 
    Today I attended a quilting class with Joy and we learned how to do a small landscape quilt..there is lots to do down here even quilting and beading.  Things that I never even thought of doing while in Mexico. Sunday we attended the little English Church we have found that many cruisers attend.  And we watched the Super Bowl with all the comments in Spanish..no great Bud commercials but we did see the game. The guys were thrilled to see it on a big screen complete with Negro Modelo, a beer down here. So life goes on and God remains constant in our life even if we are "on vacation" so to speak.
    I will catch up next during the Carnaval...I guess we will have to take naps to be able to party after dark during all the festivities and parades..I need to make a masks for me and probably for Don.

Happy Sails to you.  Jacquie