: I got up early on the 11/22 and checked the weather. The east coast of the Baja Peninsula has few anchorages, they are spaced about 50 miles apart, and they’re mostly capes that offer protection from wind from the north, or the south, but not both. The weather showed wind from the north at 10-15 on the 22nd, increasing to 15-20 on the 23rd, light on the 24th and turning around to 30+ out of the south by the 27th. We had three 50 mile steps plus a 12 mile step to get to la Paz, where we had a space in a marina with all around protection. With the weather forecast, I made the decision to take the first step to Ensenada de los Muertos (aka Enseneda da los Suenos by condo developers) before the north wind increased. Linda’s been hoping for our first rest day since Man o’War cove, but I woke her up and we were on our way by 7:30.

We had 50 miles to go, and the wind was right on our nose. The seas get steep and short period with a north wind in the Sea of Cortez. To keep our speed up as we bashed through the waves, we kept quite a bit of sail up, all working sail. We were making better than seven knots through the water, but taking waves over the bow which slowed us down and tacking into the wind. The lee rail was just about in the water. Our tack angles were about 45 degrees either side of our course, so simple trig says our effective speed was only about .7 times the speed over the ground. It was exhilarating (or terrifying, depending on your point of view) sailing. We eventually reefed the main and took in some jib, which had little effect because the wind was still building. Linda was clearly not having fun, and some quick estimates showed we were going to arrive in Ensenada de los Muertos (an unfamiliar anchorage) after dark, so about 1 in the afternoon, we decided to go back to Frailes and try again a different day. We turned onto a broad reach, the relative wind decreased the seas were with us and it was a quite pleasant sail back to Frailes. We met our friends from Ragtime in the anchorage and watched the manta rays jump out of the water and belly flop back in.

I checked the weather the next morning at 6 and it predicted that the south winds that were coming later in the week would have gusts to 50. The safest course was to get out of the way, and in order to reach la Paz ahead of them, we needed to head north. I woke up Linda again, and this time we were out by 6:30. The wind was about 5 knots faster, 15-20, and the waves were a little bigger. This time, we set the main with 2 reefs and the stays’l before we got out of the anchorage. It was still a rough wet ride, but the stress on the boat was less and she sailed more upright. We figured the lesser danger between being caught with high winds and a lee shore or going into an unknown anchorage at night was anchoring in the dark.

We pounded north, less terrifying than the previous day, and arrived at Ensenada de los Muertos at 9:30 pm on a moonless night. There were 5 boats in the anchorage and we used our radar (B&G 5G is very accurate at short ranges), depth sounder and forward-looking sonar to anchor with no problem. The next morning we were amazed to see our friends on Ragtime anchored near us. After pounding north all night. They also anchored in the dark, at 5:30 am.

Ensenada de los Muertos has a nice restaurant on shore, so Linda finally got her day off from sailing. We did a few boat chores and then shuttled the Ragtime crew in for a great meal and quiet afternoon at the restaurant on shore.