A “flopper-stopper” flop
20 December 2013 | Puerto Balandra, Mexico
Photo: Enchanté at anchor in Puerto Balandra, Mexico
Many cruisers who have hurried south into Mexico after the end of hurricane season do not visit or dwell in the Sea of Cortez but scurry down to the mainland coast, usually south of Mazatlan. The reason given is that it is too windy and cold in the Sea. After our winter in Olympia, WA, we could not believe that this could seem like the case to us, so we planned to meet Martha for Christmas in La Paz and looked forward to enjoying some time sailing around the southern end of the Sea of Cortez before crossing to meet Mike in Mazatlan in February.
Now that we are here, we are beginning to understand why plenty of people keep going south. We are not as put-off by the cool nights as some of our cruising friends seem to be but the winds are quite influential on what can be done comfortably. Initially we were a bit surprised that our friends from Canada and Washington were the most vocal in their complaints about the temperatures (especially in the shade and wind) but, as one of them pointed out (wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt), they came all this way to find warmth and La Paz is not quite as warm as they had anticipated. We start the morning in sweat pants and long-sleeved tee-shirts but out of the wind or in the sun it soon becomes very comfortable. We all know that when summertime comes, the complaints about the heat will be much more vigorous.
Although the anchorage in La Paz is sheltered from the large chop in the Sea of Cortez, dinghy rides are a little damp on windy days and, as we discovered, other nearby bays can quickly change from placid havens to intolerably rolly anchorages. So, it is critical to pay attention to the weather-, and specifically, the wind- forecasts.
With a lull between “northers” predicted to start on Tuesday (December 17th), Randall and I decided to take a break from La Paz and try to get to Isla Espiritu Santo which has many bays that are well protected from the east or north. That morning we went ashore to buy annual passes for the Mexican National Parks, necessary items if we were to anchor or go ashore at Espiritu Santo. By lunchtime we were motor-sailing north into the residues of the last norther aiming to try to catch-up with Enchanté on the west side of Espiritu Santo. With the current against us, we were going to be lucky to complete the 21 nm to the intended anchorage before dark but fortunately Lindy called to tell us that they had not gone to the Island but instead they were at Puerto Balandra.
Being considerably closer, only 12 nm from La Paz, and being an attractive bay that we had passed in the dark on our way into La Paz, this was good news for us. Why this uninhabited, three-lobed bay is call a “Port” was not obvious but when we arrived there were five other sailboats anchored in the central lobe including Enchanté. We dropped our anchor into 13 feet depth (4 m) of beautifully clear water and watched it set perfectly in the good-holding, sand substrate.
Once stationary, Tregoning started to roll every few minutes when slightly larger sets of waves arrived from the residual chop left by the fading norther. Knowing that this should settle down overnight, we were not too perturbed but decided this would be the ideal time to get our large, wooden “flopper-stopper” out of the forward cabin. We had not used it since we were in Hawai‘i and sadly we had failed to take photos of it in action then, so we had to guess what the distribution of weights had been, knowing that the nose of the triangle needed to be slightly heavier than the other two corners. Lindy rowed over from a neighboring boat where Al was visiting friends of theirs from Lummi Island who were guests on “Dawn Trader”. With great optimism and bravado we explained the working of the flopper-stopper to Lindy as Randall fastened it all together.
Fortunately, Lindy left before the deployment of the flopper-stopper which was an agonizing debacle that lasted until well after the sun had set. Randall sent me off in the dinghy with the heavy, wooden contraption connected by lines over a block at the far end of the boom. He then had a horrible time on his own, trying to position and secure the boom out perpendicular to the boat. The heavy rolling of Tregoning made this particularly precarious while the boom was swinging loose and many cuss-words were muttered with each large wave.
Once the boom was in place, the flopper-stopper was raised off the dinghy and I hastily paddled out of the way of the wildly gyrating, wooden hazard. Sadly, when lowered into the water, we discovered that the nose was too heavy so that instead of diving down gracefully on each down-roll and then providing horizontal resistance in the water on the up-roll, the flopper-stopper just hung vertically and uselessly, nose down. After I removed two weights from the nose, the whole board was then not heavy enough to sink at all so we could not even lower it to the bottom and leave it there for the night. So as it got darker and I was getting cold in the dinghy, we had to give-up and haul it on deck again.
As we prepared to sleep in the berths with lee-cloths, we decided that in the morning I should row around the other boats with a hat and ask for donations for having provided a full evening’s entertainment. Fortunately, around mid-night it calmed down and the rest of the night was very peaceful. In the flat conditions of the next morning, Randall reconfigured the flopper-stopper and, now that it was not needed, he got it working smoothly.
While Al and Lindy and their friends left for Isla Espiritu Santo, we went snorkeling on the small reef and nearby rocky shore just southeast of Tregoning. It was wonderful to see our usual reef-fish friends again and we spent several minutes staring at a small octopus that would move to the end of a piece of reef and then seem to disappear as its coloration changed to blend exactly with its background…amazing!
With southwest winds forecast for that night, we had planned that once we finished snorkeling we would move from the central lobe of the bay to the southern lobe where we would get some protection from Punta (Point) Diablo. One boat arrived in this intended anchorage while we were snorkeling, the next arrived as we rowed around looking to see if there was still room for us, and a third pulled-in as we were raising Tregoning’s anchor. Luckily, from our reconnaissance trip in the dinghy we knew that it was safe to anchor inside all of the other boats, fairly close to the shore in the most sheltered area of the cove. We would be surrounded on two sides by low cliffs but the sandy bottom made for good anchor-holding and being fairly shallow we did not need to let out a long-length of rode.
That night the winds did not switch to the SW but were fairly light from the NE so we slept pretty well and the next morning the boat was calm enough that I could scrape-off most of the goose-neck barnacles that were starting to grow on the hull. Towing the dinghy, we also snorkeled along the shoreline to Punta Diablo and then out to an unmarked reef just off the point. Our electronic chart showed that this reef should be marked by a light but its red buoy had broken-free from the reef and the light was uselessly flashing along the shore near where we were anchored.
We saw some large fish on the deeper, unmarked reef including many, glamorous King- and Cortez- angelfish. Our immediate neighbors, Mark and Karen on “Witch of Endor” told us that one of the boats that arrived in the cove late the previous day had clipped the reef on the way in. We had noticed many small pieces of broken coral on the seaward side of the reef so they were clearly not the first to make contact. Needless to say, we swung wide around the area when we came to leave Balandra.
By the time we got up on Friday morning, the wind had started to blow from the WSW and by 7 am the waves from Bahía de La Paz were wrapping around Punta Diablo and rolling us quite impressively. It was clearly too rough to stay there or to finish cleaning the hull, so a few hours earlier than intended, we decided that we might as well head back to the shelter of La Paz. Using just the jib, we had an invigorating sail to the entrance of Canal de La Paz and then motored to anchor back near El Mogote, having established that Marinas de La Paz and Palmira were both full. Even though we had not begun to explore most of the sights of Puerto Balandra (which include a famous mushroom-shaped rock, various hikes to viewpoints and the neighboring bay, and an extensive estuary that drains at low tide) we knew that we would be returning there and we had completed our most important objective of getting wet while snorkeling.