Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

Puerto Don Juan to La Mona Anchorage

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Thursday, September 1 — One of our neighbors in the anchorage at Don Juan was throwing herself a birthday party this evening, and she had invited us to attend. The party was taking place in a different anchorage, called La Mona, which was about an hour ride away.

On Thursday morning, we got up early and hustled through our chores. Thursday was also Keith’s first day of school, so he did his schoolwork while Eric and Christi did chores.

One of Eric’s chores was to remove one of the alternator belts. When Eric had changed the alternator belts in Puerto Escondido, he used the same size belt made by two different manufacturers. Even though the belts were supposed to be the same, they were slightly different and it was causing a vibration. Eric figured that removing one of the belts would solve this (the alternator can run with only one belt).

Once chores/schoolwork were done, we got Kosmos ready to go to sea. We pulled up anchor at around 0915. We were the last boat to leave Don Juan. In transit, we passed “the window.” After enjoying the view through “the window” for several days from inside the anchorage, It was fun to see the view from the outside looking in.

La Mona was a lovely beach on the east side of Southern Bahia de Los Angeles, protected by large hills and jutting rock formations to the north. The beach was lined with homes. Some of the homes were nice, some were mobile homes.  

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Dive Compressor, San Javier, and Loreto

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Sunrise on Monday, August 8

Eric spent the morning working on the dive compressor. The first order of business was standard servicing: changing the oil, filters, and hose. The hose completely disintegrated, so it is probably safe to say it was time to change it.

As he started up the compressor, air was not coming out of the final hose. He spent some time trying to troubleshoot the source of the problem, but at noon, he had to put the project aside. It was time to pick up our rental car and play tourists! 

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La Paz to Bahia Candeleros (aka Ensenada Blanca)

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Sunday beautiful morning’s sunrise in La Paz

On Sunday morning, our first chore of the day was plan the logistics of moving Kosmos. The ideal time to leave seemed to be 1800 (6:00 pm), when neither the tides nor wind would be too strong against us. We picked an anchorage 18 hours away, which meant we’d pull in around noon, when visibility would be good.

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Bahia Falsa to La Paz

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On Thursday afternoon, we’d attempted to go to La Paz via the road. Unfortunately, the logistics hadn’t worked out.  

Here are a couple sunrise photos from Friday:

Still wanting to go to La Paz, we started Friday morning off by planning the logistics to take Kosmos. Once we realized that conditions would be more favorable to travel in the early afternoon, we went back to the shallow nook and frolicked in the water some more. Oddly enough, there were less fish and birds than yesterday.

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Keith’s First Ocean Adventure: Leg 2 Oceanside to Catalina

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This is part two of a three part series. Read part 1 here. 

On Thursday, June 7, we took off bright and early from Oceanside. Conditions were almost the same as Wednesday, except the wave interval was 8 seconds instead of 10 and they were hitting us on the nose. Eric and Christi were both green almost as soon as we pulled out of the harbor. The good news, though, is that Catalina Island offered some shelter, so the closer we got, the better the sea conditions became.

Keith slept about half the time. While he was up, he seemed unaffected by the seas. We brought his changing pad upstairs, so diaper changing was no longer an issue. We saw the Hover Crafts again, and this time one came up very close to us so we got a good look at it. And a couple pods of dolphins came to visit.

We pulled into Catalina Harbor in the early afternoon and radioed the Harbor Patrol to get a mooring assignment. There were about a dozen boats in the mooring field and at least forty empty moorings. We were assigned a spot with no one around it so it would be easy for us to tie up. Amazingly, as we were motoring towards it, another boat tied to the mooring next to the one we were assigned to. We asked if we could move one over so we would still have plenty of space to maneuver. The Harbor Patrol said no problem.

The moorings at Catalina are a little different than any other mooring we’ve been on. Since it had been so many years since we’d been there, neither of us really remembered the right way to tie up. After some arguing and awkward fidgeting with the muddy lines (that left us both coated in mud), we finally got properly secured. “Ah,” we said to one another “It’s time to relax!”

Literally one minute later, the Harbor Patrol radioed us and let us know the slip we were on had just been reserved and we needed to move one over. Sigh.Now that we knew what we were doing, the second tie up was simple and completed in a few minutes.

That night we stayed onboard and enjoying the peacefulness of the anchorage. Here is a picture looking back at the entrance of Cat Harbor from Kosmos’ deck.

We started Friday off with Continue reading →