Bahia los Frailes
02 November 2009 | Bahia los Frailes, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Eric/Beautiful November Weather

We are anchored right at the Tropic of Cancer, right under the inky line that runs right around your library globe, showing the northernmost limit of the sun's path. At noon on the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere the sun stands directly overhead here, more or less.
But it's not the longest day of the year, and at 6:00 it's already gotten dark. The moon, nearly full, glitters on the waves in this rather lonely anchorage whose vertically-striated cliff evidently reminded the 17th-century Spanish of friars leaning west. A couple of days ago, in the San Lorenzo Channel we passed Arranca Cabello Point, which seems to our modern ears a bit more honest. Arranca Cabello translates to Tear Your Hair Out.
In any case, today we had a lovely-and as the day wore on, increasingly blustery-sail past nearly fifty miles of points (Pescadero, Arena, Pulmo) before finally setting the hook in the lee of the Friars. Snorkelers ply the rocky shoreline, and we wish we could visit the reef a mile or so north; the only hard coral reef on the west coast of North America.
To our south, the Pacific; to the east, the Sea of Cortez. We have hardly any land left before we run out and head north. Here in the lee of the friars, with a stiff breeze and rolly waves just offshore we feel a bit as if we're clinging to a window ledge by our fingernails.