Passage notes: La Paz to Ensenada Grande

Isla Ballena.

Log Book

• Departure time: 11am on Wednesday, February 20, 2013
• Arrival time: 4pm on Thursday, February 21, 2013
• Total travel time: 27 hours (with a long layover in San Gabriel so we could sleep)
• Nautical miles travelled: 40nm (all the tacking added quite a few miles to the trip)
• Engine hours start – end – logged: 987 – 990.5 – 3.5
• Gallons of diesel start – end – used: 32 – 30.6 -1.4
• Weather: The forecast predicted 10-15 knots of wind from the west, with 3 foot wind waves (or “swell” as they call it, though I don’t think it quite qualifies as swell sometimes) on Wednesday. On Thursday the forecast predicted 10-15 knots from the N/NW with 3-5 foot waves. Not ideal conditions, but we thought the west wind would carry us the whole way.

We’re on the move again after 1.5 months in La “Pause”! On our way out to the island we decided to do a “quick” loop
around La Paz Bay (Bahia de La Paz) outside of the channel to see if we could
find Whale Sharks. Swimming with the Whale Sharks is a popular tourist
attraction in La Paz. Apparently they hang out on the outside of the mogote and
you can find them by following the pangas (local fishing boats) that shuffle
tourists back and forth from town.

We plodded along slowly looking for the bread crumb trail,
but there were very few pangas in sight and most of them were heading back to
town. Our depth meter showed us inching towards the shallows, which we skirted
to the best of our ability. Jeff was getting antsy to head north and we were
both still sorting out the moral quandary of whether we should actually be
disturbing these peaceful creatures. We didn’t sort out the ethical issues, but
it doesn’t much matter since we gave up the search without trying too terribly hard. Northward!

When we turned north towards the island we had the slightest
wind on our nose. We raised the sails (full main and genoa) and were just
barely able to keep them full. For the next five hours we were barely eking out
1.5 knots.

Just as I was pulling our hot dinner off of the hot grill a
prominent wind line became visible from the NW, illuminated by the setting sun.
Finally! We would make some progress! Not the west wind we were expecting, but
wind nonetheless. We had already resolved that we would arrive after dark, and
probably would not reach our anchorage of choice, but we were excited to actually
move (sans motor). Our excitement waned, however, when we found ourselves in 25+ gusts
(which far exceeded the predicted 15 knots) with big waves smacking us around.

Fortunately, the wind built gradually enough that we were
able to lower the genoa, raise the working jib, then reef the main, then reef
the jib (though each step happened in pretty rapid succession). We decided to
call it a day at around 11pm when we were within a few miles of Bahia San
Gabriel, the southernmost anchorage on Isla Partida.

The second leg of the journey to Ensenada Grande (our final
destination) commenced the next morning after a solid 8 hours of rest for Jeff…more for me. This leg was
almost as exciting as our first, though the wind had calmed to 18-20 knots, the
seas were a little less violent and we could actually see what was going on
(darkness makes everything a bit more chaotic and urgent). The wind was, of
course, blowing from the Northwest, exactly where we wanted to be (naturally). So we did
some long tacks and the trip, which was 8 miles as the crow flies, ended up
being 16+ miles and taking us about 5 hours. Not sure how the math works on
that one since we were going at least 4 knots the entire time.

Leg #1 to Bahia San Gabriel on Isla Espiritu Santo. Leg #2 to Ensenada Grande on Isla Partida