I enjoyed my time at Punta Salinas. It has salt flats that used to be salt mines; they were fun to explore. We went on the salt flats, which felt like snow and ice. But there were other salt flats that had a layer of mud under it. Well, not quite mud. It was this icky black stuff.
Sunrise on Saturday, January 28. The island in the middle of the photo is Isla San Francisco.
This morning, the wind was light and the anchorage was totally calm. Ahhhhh. We were so happy to have a break from the constant motion. The temperature was a bit warmer, too, so we didn’t need the heavy jackets when we went outside (the wind was still bitter cold, but there wasn’t much wind). The water was also amazingly clear. We could easily make out fine details in the sand below the boat. The downside to the wind dying down was that there were quite a few bees flying around the boat.
In the relatively early morning, Keith went to shore with the kids. He said they mostly played on the salt flats. Christi and Eric stayed aboard to get Kosmos ready for sea. As the forecast had predicted, in the late morning, the wind picked up from the south, a direction from which this anchorage was not protected. The anchorage immediately started to get rolly.
Continue readingSunrise on Friday, January 27
We were pleased to see that the wind had calmed down significantly. However, it still at about 16-knots sustained, so it was still windy.
The four boats had all agreed to go to Punta Salinas (also called San Ysidro) on the southwest side of Isla San Jose this morning. According to the cruising guide, there were ruins of an old salt mining operation that sounded interesting. We’d wanted to go there before, but we’d heard that bitey bugs were a big problem there. Now that bitey bug season was over, it was the ideal time to go.
Since it was only a 45-minute ride, in the morning, we took our time getting ready to go. We were last ones to leave. The ride over was uneventful. It was 56-degrees Fahrenheit (13-degrees Celsius), the sun was totally blocked by dark clouds, and the wind was bitter cold. Christi was freezing as we anchored, even in a heavy jacket. The first shot is looking northwest, at the tip of the point that protects this anchorage. In the distance is Baja. San Evaristo is just north of what you can see of Baja in the photo.
Sunrise on Wednesday, January 25
The wind was pretty much the same as it had been yesterday. One World called us on the radio and told us that he’d heard that if we went around to the reception desk and asked to eat, they’d open the restaurant for us. He offered to pick us up in his fast dinghy at 1100.
Continue readingSunrise on Tuesday, January 24
The wind had picked up during the night, and by morning the wind was back to screaming with sustained winds in the low-20-knot range and gusts to 30 knots. We even had one gust of 39 knots! There were whitecaps in the channel.
We all slept poorly from the wind causing so much noise and motion. The motion was different here than it was in most anchorages — there wasn’t much fetch, so we weren’t really pitching or rolling; instead, the erratic gusts were causing us to glide side to side. It wasn’t an uncomfortable motion by any means, but it was still motion none-the-less. We were well aware of how uncomfortable it would be in other anchorages and were grateful for the motion was mild.
At 1300 (1:00 pm), we met some of the crew from One world, The Mob, and Moin. One of the boats with a fast dinghy kindly gave us a ride, since our dinghy was a little tenuous in the heavy winds. We went on a walk to the salt flats, which were on the north end of town, on the other side of the ridge that made up the north side of the San Evaristo Bay. As we were putting on our shoes, a dog came up to us and jumped into one of the kid’s laps.
We walked over to the road that paralleled the beach (the road that the market was on). The dog happily followed us. At the north end of the beach, the road veered inland.
