MAG BAY AND THE TRIP TO CABO
BY CAVAN

Magdalena Bay was a lot of fun. The weather was nice for a majority of the time. The water was the warmest temperature yet, 73 degrees. Everything we saw showed us that we were getting very close to the tropics.

The morning after we arrived, we all wanted to go swimming except Mom who thinks Hawaiian water is barely warm enough. Tommy and I put on our wetsuits for the first time. Dad and Sophia don't have wet suits but they swam any way. We practiced diving by swimming down the anchor chain. The water wasn't clear at all and you could only see about 3 or 4 feet in front of you. I got out after doing a lap around the boat in which Tommy's fins hit my finger and opened up a gash that wouldn't stop bleeding for half an hour. Now we say that Tommy has razor fins as well as a habit of skate boarding on whales (that's a story for another day!).

The town we anchored near in Mag Bay was small with dirt roads and tall hills behind it. A sign announced that the population was 200 adultos and 40 ninos. We went to a small store (tienda) and bought some really good tortillas. There were a bunch of whale bones in front of a restaurant by the beach. We walked over to the Port Captain's office, but nobody was there. This town was like a small Mexican town you might see in a picture of Southern Mexico.

The morning of Thanksgiving was hotter than it had been on any other day. Tommy and I went swimming, while Mom and Sophia got stuff ready for dinner later. We had a huge dinner: pork chops, mashed potatoes, corn bread muffins, corn, green beans, carrots, and fruit salad. We took pictures of each of our plates all loaded up. Later we had a pumpkin pie that the girls made. We had been invited over to another boat, but we were so busy with our dinner that we couldn't go.

We planned out spots to sail over that had good fishing markers on the gps chart, on our way to Cabo San Lucas. We caught two small Bonitos that we let go. There are certain times you don't want to catch a fish and this was one of them: the motor sputters and dies because we ran out of fuel on our first tank and we switched to our second tank while everyone, but Dad, doesn't have a clue what is happening and starts freaking out. We made it into Cabo and tied up to the fuel dock with no more than a gallon of diesel left in our second tank, and only a small spare tank left.

Magdalena Bay was great. I got cut up by Tommy's razor fins, but it was okay because swimming was still fun. The village was nice and so was the weather. The trip to Cabo put us over the tropic line, and closer to the Sea of Cortez.