On Wednesday (February 1), we awoke to a sunny, beautiful morning. However, we were dismayed to see that the rain had left the boat covered in mud, just as been the case in Santa Rosalia. What the heck was going on with the rain in Baja?
Instead of washing Kosmos, we decided to take care of the dinghy first. Eric got the dinghy down and gave it a good wash down, including eliminating the copious amount of sand that had accumulated inside. He also cleaned the dinghy motor.
After mulling it over overnight, Eric decided that he was not going to try to adjust the belt. on the dive compressor, so he put dive compressor back together.
On Monday (January 30), the wind shifted again. We knew that the rolling in anchorage would increase and soon it would become comfortable. It was time to move again. We also knew that there was a storm coming. We’d decided that we wanted to ride the storm out in a marina. We were excited to be able to procure a “real” slip at Costa Baja, complete with water, power and pump out!
We pulled up anchor at about 0830, right after One World did, and followed them towards the La Paz area. It was a 6.5 hour ride to Costa Baja. We were in small 1 – 2 foot (.3 – .6 meters) head seas, so it was mildy uncomfortable. The day started out mostly sunny with some clouds, but as the day wore on, the clouds steadily increased. By the time we arrived, it was mostly cloudy. The temperatures were cool, but not cold, in the high 60s Fahrenheit (about 16-ish Celsius). Thanks to the wind, we did need our heavy jackets to sit outside when the boat moving. Eric saw two whales while he was on watch, but he didn’t get a close enough look to tell which species they were.
At the turn off into the channel to Costa Baja, we saw that the world’s biggest sloop was on the fuel dock. When we’d booked the reservation, we’d asked about getting fuel on the way in, and the marina had told us the fuel dock was booked for the day. Now we knew why.
In the morning, Eric was sore from the inverter project. We added bleach to our water tanks before we topped them off, which is something that needs to be done every few months when consistently making your own water. We also turned our big freezer back on, which had been off since well before we’d left for San Diego.
We wanted to mention that there is a huge bird population that lives around the fuel dock. There are a lot of pelicans and seagulls, but there are many other bird species, too. Here are a few that have been hanging out by our boat:
We took the 0900 shuttle into town. Our plan was to rent a car and go grocery shopping. We’d noticed that there was an organic market called Nomada Fresh and Organics near the church, so we decided to walk over there and check it out before heading to Chedraui. It turned out to be a restaurant, not a market. So we had breakfast there.
A street vendor came by selling sweets, and we bought one. It was shredded coconut covered in caramel. It tasted just like the Samoa Girl Scout Cookies.