We did spend a few days in Bahia de los Muertos. 23? 59.3'N 109? 49.6'W. We liked it there. The water was teeming with fish of all kinds, the beach was white and beckoning, the bluffs promised hours of exploration, the sun shone every day, and there was a restaurant on the shore that offered food and excruciatingly slow WiFi for those times when we didn't feel like cooking or we wanted to tease ourselves with almost-Internet.

We went snorkeling one day with some of the other cruisers anchored in the bay. We took our dinghies over to the reef, dropped down little anchors, and spent the next hour or so floating around among the rocks and coral with all sorts of colorful and interesting fish: long, thin filefish; bicolored wrasses; moorish idols; spotted damselfish; polkadotted cowfish; and schools of hundreds of small silvery fish, all moving as one unit; and many more.

One evening, we went to dinner at the beachfront restaurant with two other cruising couples. That was really fun.

Another day, Eric and I went ashore and explored the land behind the sand dunes. Developers had done their best to turn Bahia de los Muertos (Bay of the Dead, named for the discarded train axles (?deadmen,?) sunk in the bay, to be used to anchor moorings for ships) and its surrounding land into a beach resort, which they called ?Bahia de los Sue?os (Bay of Dreams). There was still a resort at one end of the beach, which seemed to have a few visitors, but the golf course on the bluff was toast, all sagebrush, tumbleweeds, and cactus. It was quite surreal, and reminded us of the setting of the movie, Land of the Lost. When I can, I will send a photo we took of the first hole, so you can see what I mean.

One afternoon, a couple dinghied over to SCOOTS, to ask us if they'd known us in Honolulu. We told them we hadn't been there, but SCOOTS had lived there for awhile, with her former owner. It turned out that these people had lived in the marina in Honolulu at the same time that SCOOTS had been there. That's one of the reasons that we left SCOOTS' name when we bought her: lots of people are familiar with her, from all the traveling she's done over the years, and when they come by, we get to meet them and hear about SCOOTS' former travels.

Interspersed with the fun activities, we also took care of projects and odd jobs. Eric repacked the forward locker with the now-dried-out items. I shaved my legs while dangling them in the water off the back swimstep. Nothing says ?I'm a cruiser? quite like shaving your legs on the swim step. I cleaned the head and galley; Eric spent an entire frustrating day aboard SCOOTS, using the slow WiFi from the restaurant, trying to renew our Obamacare coverage. He finally gave up, figuring that we'll be able to avail ourselves of some real WiFi before the Dec. 15 deadline.

The weather forecasts were predicting another ?norther? for the Sea of Cortez, with winds of 15-30 knots at the southern end, where we are, and steep, high waves, so we made plans to head to another anchorage with shelter from the north, and get settled in before it blew through. The night before we left Bahia de los Muertos, a ?coromuel? blew through. A coromuel is a local weather event, triggered by land effects, with strong winds (20 or so knots), from the south or southwest. All night long, SCOOTS bobbed and bucked at anchor in the wind and chop.

We left for Playa Bonanza, on the island of Esp?ritu Santo, at sunrise, expecting a full day of travel to this lovely spot, 43 miles away. The winds were initially still strong, but they mellowed out after a couple of hours so that we ended up motoring most of the way. Along the way, we fired up our little clothes washing machine for the first time, and within an hour had undies, t-shirts, and shorts flapping on the lifelines to dry in the sun and breeze. Yes, SCOOTS is a great vehicle, but she is also our home. We arrived in Playa Bonanza 24? 27.2'N 110? 18.4'W in early afternoon and dropped our anchor in fifteen feet of clear turquoise water (are you detecting a trend here?). The winds were calm as we motored in, but as soon as we dropped the anchor, they picked up to 15 knots and stayed that way for the rest of the day. What's up with that? It wasn't in the forecast anywhere.

The next morning was calm and bright, and I put on my snorkeling gear and swam around SCOOTS, checking out the sand a few feet beneath her keel and the anchor chain. I was amused to see a committee of large puffer fish congregated around her anchor chain. Maybe the movement of the chain uncovers things they like to eat in the sand?

Later in the morning, a small ship entered the bay and dropped anchor about a quarter mile from us. You know you're in a great spot, if people pay lots of money to be taken there. It immediately began disgorging Zodiacs full of wetsuit-clad passengers, who headed for the beach for a morning of snorkeling at the reef. Eric and I decided to put off our own snorkeling plans until the crowd left.

A couple of hours later, the Zodiacs whisked the people back to the ship for lunch. Eric and I went ashore to explore the beach (there were lots of shells!) and the land behind the dunes (a cactus-and thornbush- populated dry mudflat). We saw a gnatcatcher, shrike, mockingbird, and a verdin, which is a new bird for me.

On the way back to the dinghy, we stopped to talk to a couple of the ship's staff, who were enjoying a break on the beach. Their boat, named the Safari Endeavour, was one of the ?n-Cruise?ships, a small fleet of adventure cruise ships that hold fewer than a hundred passengers and take them to beautiful and out-of-the- way places. They told us that the Un-Cruise ships travel in Alaska in the summer and Baja in the winter. Not a bad gig.

At 5 pm we hopped in our dinghy and went to have dinner with the folks aboard the only other cruising boat anchored in the bay with us. After dinner, we taught them to play the card game, Oh Hell, which was a lot of fun.

That night, swells came into the bay and rolled SCOOTS all night long. Not nearly as bad as the swells at Cabo, but uncomfortable enough to keep both Eric and me up most of the night. At dawn, Eric and I examined our options: stay or go. We made the decision to leave Playa Bonanza - which, while being technically sheltered from the north, was completely open to swells generated in the larger Sea of Cortez - and head around the bottom of the island to a bay on the west side, Bahia San Gabriel, which we hoped would be sheltered from the wind AND the swells.

The forecast indicated that the winds would increase for a couple more days before dying down again, and we didn't want to spend the next few days rolling with the growing swells. So...in rolling swells and winds that varied from 15-25 knots, we pulled the dinghy close, hoisted the outboard onto the stern railing, and then had to get the dinghy from the water to its spot on the foredeck. Not a nice prospect in all that wind, as the dinghy catches the wind and weighs about a hundred pounds.

We strategized ways to minimize the dinghy's exposure to the wind and maximize our control of it. Clearly, our usual procedure needed some modifications, in light of the current conditions. We came up with a couple of changes that should accomplish these goals: (1) For control, Eric rigged an additional rope to one of the dinghy straps and tied it to a cleat on the deck, so that if the dinghy caught the wind it wouldn't fly and flap like a kite. (2) For keeping a lower profile: instead of hoisting the dinghy all the way up vertically, we would hoist it vertically up over the lifelines, and then bring it over horizontally (flat) and lay it on the deck. We also switched roles, so that I cranked the halyard winch and Eric controlled the dinghy.

I'm happy to say that our modifications worked well and we soon had the dinghy loaded onto the deck and lashed down for travel.

Travel was somewhat rolly but not too wet, as we were mostly going downwind or crosswind. The waves were indeed larger outside the bay, but quite manageable. I steered and Eric navigated us through the channel around the end of the island, carefully avoiding the reefs lurking there.

We were so happy, when we rounded the point on the west side of the island, to see that Bahia San Gabriel 24? 25.7'N 110? 21.8'W was indeed free of breakers, even with 20 knots of wind blowing. We sidled up to the cliffs on the north side of the bay, as far in as we dared with the shoaling bottom, and dropped the anchor in 18 feet of water. Yes, it was clear and turquoise here, too.

So we have now spent about 24 hours here, in winds ranging from 15-30 knots, and without any swells! We are sharing the anchorage with six other boats, including one monster mega-sailboat called M5. We had seen it docked in San Diego and remarked then at the size and design of it.

A little while later, the dinghy from the M5 came buzzing over, driven by the boat's skipper. He came to see if SCOOTS' original owner was still aboard, as they'd been friends back in the late '90s. We told him no, but we still keep in touch with him. We talked about our boats ?the full name of M5 is the Mirabella 5 - and got his email so we could put him in touch with the original owner. Then he buzzed back over to his boat. It's so much fun to meet people who know SCOOTS from her previous travels!

So today we're planning to put the dinghy in the water as soon as the wind lulls a bit, and visit some of the other cruising boats, and maybe go ashore for awhile. The winds are forecast to blow for at least another day, so we'll probably stay put here until things calm down.