Keith’s Perspective on Turtle Bay and the Passage to Ensenada/Le point de vue de Keith sur Turtle Bay et le passage vers EnsenadaKeith’s Perspective on Turtle Bay and the Passage to Ensenada

Turtle Bay is a nice bay. It has a small town, and some restaurants. There was a person who  had a water taxi service and could take us to the town on his boat. But he dropped us off at the pier, which was covered in bird poop! It was disgusting. So we did beach landings when we went to town one our own dinghy. 

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Bahia de Tortugas, Day 2

Sunrise on Thursday, February 23

This morning, we got dinghy down and went to shore, along with a fellow cruiser named Garth. Not wanting to deal with the scary pier, we opted for a beach landing on the south side of the pier. With the waves coming into the bay, the landing was a little bit tricky, but the shoreline was sheltered enough that we managed just fine. Here are some shots of the buildings along the shore where we’d landed.

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Bahia de Tortugas, Day 1

Continuing on with Wednesday, February 22 — We decided to anchor near the only village in the bay. We’re unclear on whether the name of the village is Bahia Tortugas or if it is Puerto San Bartolome — we’ve seen both. There were three sailboats and three trawler-style fishing boats already anchored there, though one of the trawlers looked to be abandoned.

At about 0730, we made our first attempt to anchor. Unfortunately, the anchor didn’t set. When we brought the anchor back up, we saw that it was covered in seaweed. We moved to a different spot. The anchor didn’t set a second time, either. We moved locations again. Fortunately, three times was a charm and the anchor did set. We saw quite a few dolphins while we were anchoring.

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The Rest of the Passage from Magdalena Bay to Turtle Bay

Tuesday, February 21 — The seas had been calm on Monday until about 2030 (8:30 pm), when the swells, swell period and wind chop all started to pick up. By midnight, Kosmos was pitching so much that we had to always had to have one hand holding onto the boat or else we’d get knocked over. The forecast didn’t have the seas picking up this much this fast; it was supposed to be a gradual worsening.

The wind continued to increase throughout the night. It was hitting us on the forward port quarter (for a visual, from 10:00 on a clock). Even though it was dark, from the incredibly uncomfortable motion, it was obvious that the wind chop was coming from that direction, while the swells were on our nose, making for confused seas. The motion was like a half-pitch, half-roll.

At 0400, an alarm went off which indicated that the autopilot couldn’t see the data from the navigation system. Christi woke Eric up. He turned it off and back on again, and it magically worked fine.

When it was finally light enough to see, we surmised that it was probably 5 – 6 foot swells at about 4 – 6 seconds, plus 2 – 3 foot wind chop.

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