Cruisers in Mexico just call it "The Sea", and everyone knows you mean the Sea of Cortez. Bordering The Sea on the west is the Baja Pennisula, the second longest pennisula on earth (only the Malay Pennisula is longer), longer than the length of California. And mainland Mexico borders The Sea on the east.

This is a big body of water. It is very narrow (east-west) compared to long (north-south), but looking from one side of The Sea you cannot see to the other side (across the narrow way), and even when crossing the Sea, from the middle you cannot see either side. You are alone, just the water, The Sea, and all of the life found in The Sea, which Jacques Cousteau famously called "the world's aquarium".

So S/V Ubiquity and her crew now prepare to further explore The Sea. In 2017 we sailed up the west side of The Sea, the east coast of Baja, north to Santa Rosalia, and then crossed The Sea to the San Carlos.

Now we aspire to sail further north, further away from populace, from cruisers. The further north the fewer people, boats, and cruisers - especially in the winter when most cruisers head south for the "Mexican Riviera" - Puerto Vallarta, La Cruz, Zihautanejo.

But not S/V Ubiquity and her crew. We head north. Into the feared "northers", the fierce northerly winds that rake The Sea, especially the upper regions, in winter months. We search not for languid water, but for adventure, for solitude, for quiet, for remoteness. We will find it in the upper areas of The Sea, probably alone in our anchorages, solitary, devoid of other cruisers who are enjoying the comparative warmth and the dinghy raft-ups for happy hour.

But we will not be entirely alone. The other cruisers will not be there as we sail further north. We will not raft up for happy hours. The water will not entice us to swim with its warmth. But something else may be there to share our otherwise solidarity hours, the biggest creatures to ever live on the earth.

So instead of sharing our winter happy hours with fellow cruisers in the Mexico Riviera, we hope to share our up-coming happy hours north in The Sea with the blue whale.

The blue whales migrate north in The Sea in the winter months, precisely when most human cruisers migrate to the Mexican Riviera. The blue whales eschew the cruiser happy hour raft-ups down south. But the crew of S/V Ubiquity hopes that the blue whales may sense a kindred spirit, sense our loneliness, and bless us with their visit during our happy hours upcoming in the northerly Sea in winter.

Besides the blue whale, her smaller relative, the sperm whale, also heads north in winter in The Sea, as far north as Bahia de Los Angeles.

So as S/V Ubiquity and her crew assiduously prepare for the demanding journey north in The Sea to Bahia de Los Angeles, and then south along the east coast of Baja, they look forward to happy hours. They expect no fellow cruisers at their happy hours. But they hope for creatures much larger.