What a beautiful anchorage! After making our jaunt from Turtle Bay, we decided to anchor in Man o War cove—which is 5 mi inside Bahia Magdalena - a massive, massive bay (think San Fran Bay massive)

When we arrived in the late morning, we were welcomed by a few whales just outside the entrance to the bay. As we rounded the point, the seas and winds calmed substantially making for a very easy motor, no sail in. In the distance, we could barely make out what looked like little rocks far off in the distance, straight ahead of us. None of our charts or guidebooks outlined low-lying rocks in the middle of the bay, so we kept a vigilant watch on them trying to figure out what in the heck they were. Fishing boats? Buoys? Weird Mexican traps of some kind? Retarded boaters floating in the middle of the bay? After watching them for awhile, we noticed four of them would shift together, racing towards a specific direction in a group. Ok, maybe drunk fisherman playing some odd game? Eventually and now within about 200 yards of them, we realized they were whale watching tours and, how we didn’t notice this before, but a TON, and I mean a TON! of whales! There was at least 10 pangas and about 10-15 whales just surfing around the bay, some in groups (parents with their small young, elderly grandparents taking a romantic afternoon swim, some punk teenagers out looking to cause a rucous--because, yes animal groups have the same social systems as us, obviously!) and some that were more loner style. So cool and so incredibly hilarious to watch these tour boats racing in the direction of the whale spouts, coming within inches of the whales, who didn’t seem to mind at all being on display for their audience of onlookers. THIS is what Sea World should be about!! Happy little whales cruising around in their big ocean habitat, and us, the foreigners, quietly and respectfully observing from a distance. It was breathtaking, really. I tried unsuccessfully to video both the hilarity of the tour boats scurrying about the bay in packs as well as catching these massive marine beasts floating along. Sadly, my previously impeccable timing was a bit off today and every video is just of rolling seas or grainy, shaky video of the tour boats. Actually, more commonly, its just video of my thumb squished against the screen and muffled sounds of me ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘aww-ing’ at the whales, none of which are even remotely clear as to what I was trying to capture. So in any case, you just have to take my word for it on what it looked like :) It was cool—whales, boats, people, nature and a lot of seawater.

Man o War anchorage was a DREAM!!! Seas were like glass and incredibly quiet! On anchor we felt like we were in a slip it was that calm! And literally no sounds at all, besides one other sailboat we were the only other boats anchored—dead quiet day and night. It was absolute bliss!



Man o War is a big open bay, with a gradual sloping shelf leading to the beach. Little sand bars begin to peak out about 50 yards away from us and then become fully exposed like little islands during low tide. There is a very small, ittsy bittsy teeny-weeny town on the beach comprised of about 40 houses, one restaurant, two small “tiendas” which I was sure where actually peoples homes with front area retrofitted to resemble a store front.

We stayed for about three days. Day one and two we took the opportunity for some much needed rest and down time. Literally do nothing; no boat repairs, no cleaning, no rearranging, no travel planning, no must-go here and do this chores…literally doing. nothing. Jay sat in the cockpit, headphones on and listening to his book slash cat napping all thru out the day. I finally busted out my Paddleboard, tied off to the stern and floated, fully stretched out with my book and life vest as a pillow. Talk about multitasking with all of my favorite things; getting a tan, catching up on reading AND floating on the water with my SUP—who says you cant have your cake and eat it too?! I of course, tried to take a selfie here to capture this— which was a total fail. Oh well, like I said, still working on my portfolio for Nat Geo—it make take me a decade or two to get the right material, but practice is a start. I'm sure Ansel Adams probably shot a few terribly lit landscape shots with his thumb blurring the entire lens in the beginning, right?

As I shared before, there is a really small town just nearby where we anchored. We ventured in one day to explore, but quiet honestly it was so tiny that we had seen everything in about 30 minutes. The locals were kind enough to open up a store for us to buy some snacks, which was occupied by a younger man, sitting outside the “storefront” on his phone, I think watching Youtube videos (hows that for some odd juxtapositon?!) He yells to his grandmother to come and help us (because obviously too busy watching Youtube to get up and walk the 5 inches to help us, but instead doesn’t even move a muscle and just yells for his poor grandmother to walk/hobble around from the back house and help these dumb gringos—nice kid! Isn't mexican culture all about respecting the abuelos?!)

After we leave a gang of local dogs comes up to us and decides they want to be our friends. Most of them were little tiny mutts, some cute, some not so much. One of them slightly resembled the Anthony Weiner look alike dog meme (anyone else know what I am referring to?) However, this one massive dog comes over and decides to take a particular liking to me (why not pick the smallest in the group to harass, right?!). Like all dogs, he starts shoving his face into my stomach/crotch area (he was waist height to me and was basically Courtney horse size—no clue what mix he was.) Well, Jay of course notices that this dog is, errrm, still intact AND very interested in me. So, naturally because he knows it will get a rise out of me, starts teasing me that the dog wants to mount me. I, being only half the size of this massive dog, and noticing his uhm, man parts are like medium size floatation devices—I freak out, and try to get away from the dog. This only encourages the dog more to follow me—sticking his nose in my butt and basically acting as if he was in on the joke with Jay. Thankfully, the dog was being playful and not aggressive at all with me, but still, strange dogs that are massive in size AND getting up in my business trying for sexy time—yeah, no. Look Muchacho, you might be the king of this town and a hot tamale to the other perras in this hood, but I aint one and I am not interested in playing this little game anymore.

Meanwhile everyone else is laughing hysterically, including likely some locals watching this all go down. I am not. I sprint towards the water hoping the dog won’t follow me

....and then I remembered his “floatation devices”—crap! Dog, of course follows me into the water, crouches down just down stream of me and then proceeds to relieve himself. I guess that was his equivalent of the middle finger to me for my rejection of his Bailando de Amor (love dance)

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Our last day in Mag Bay, Jay and I take the dinghy to go explore San Carlos—which is a commercial port and Port of Entry. We had heard there was a small town there and wanted to go check out. The dingy ride was a good distance away, so Jay decided to rig our dingy for comfort



While it look ridiculous and I almost told him to take the chairs off, it was actually quite comfortable and I appreciated it after the fact for the long ride into town. (With the winds and sea chop coming at us, this was a very wet and slightly uncomfortable ride there. Took us a good 40 minutes to get to San Carlos.)

[Quick side note: I had brought the GoPro with us to take video and pictures of this trip. And wouldn’t you know, 5 minutes into the dinghy ride, I go to bust it out to shoot some video and the damn thing is out of batteries—Son of a….!!??) Anyway, my description will have to do, as I have no pictures to share whatsoever!)]

Anyway, continuing on with my story, as you round the point of San Carlos, the commercial dock comes into view. It is a massive cement dock, with a few old tires nailed into sides acting as pseudo bumpers. There are only two big fishing boats tied up and absolutely no one around. You can kind of smell the eau de fishing boats, which I guessed the seagulls could smell as well as there was a LARGE swarm of them circling the boat. So big a grouping of birds, that Jay and I both commented on how it was slightly Alfred Hitchcock-eque with the amount of seagulls circling and sitting on the tin rooftop of a nearby vacant and run down building on the dock.

We round the corner of the commercial dock looking for a safe place to land the dinghy. There really isn’t anyone around, a few houses dot the coastline, but everything seems pretty desolate and uninhabited. We know the whale watching tour boats (medium sized pangas) must have come from this direction, so we are trying to find their dock. Finally, in the distance, we see a small shoreline and a few brightly colored pangas beached with anchors. Nearby are a few two story building, well maintained and a few huts just beyond on the beach. Building are traditional Spanish style adobe, thick cement structure with arched open-air doorways and windows, clay red and orangish yellow in colors, giving a bright cheerful look. Decks are shaded with straw and bamboos screens. A big outdoor bar area is covered with a straw thatched awning and decorated with hanging lights and brightly colored strings of “papel picado”.

As we beach the dinghy, this super creepy dude slinks out of the bush about 20 yards away…and is staring/ignoring us but trying to be low key and watching us… Clearly homeless, or tweaked out. Jay turns his back and tells me to ignore him. Um—no! I defiantly stand, fully facing him and staring right back—making it very clear I see him there. Jay tells me to run up towards the buildings and see if there is actually anything there before we decide to stay.

As I am coming back to report of a cute little hotel and restaurant, totally unexpectedcted from what it looked like from the rest of the land, Jay has pulled the dinghy back into shore much closer to the other beached pangas. Creepy dude is gone and no where to be seen. I had run into the owner of the hotel on my walk about in, kindly asking if we could beach our dinghy and if safe here. He speaks perfect English and tells me its very safe and to, of course, bring our dinghy, come and walk around. His staff will watch our dinghy for us and make sure ok. GREAT!

San Carlos is unexpectedly super cute! Tiny town, with one major street, lined with convenient stores, restaurants and hotels. Some with nicer facades then others, and some total abandoned, open for lease. Streets are extremely clean and well maintained. The main street's divider island is newly landscaped, with tiny palms and bougainvillea bushes peeking out and beginning to cover the dirt/rock landscaping.

Being late in the afternoon and not having eaten anything yet for the day, Jay and I are starved! Tempted by our noses, and being well beyond the point of hunger, we settle on a TO GO BBQ chicken shop. We take our meals, quickly stop by a convenient store to pick up two beers and head back to the beach for a late afternoon picnic on the beach.

OH--I forgot to mention! This was Valentine’s Day!

So, we have our romantic BBQ chicken and beers lunch on the beach watching the whale pangas tours workers clean and repair the pangas; lively, hilarious bunch of guys. They are yelling back and forth at each other - making jokes, splashing around and teasing each other with the occasional suggestive thrusting of their hips dance. Who knew we would have lunch and entertainment! Best Valentines Ever!

As we ready to leave, we notice that the tide has gone out and where before we beached our dinghy with about 20 yards to deeper water, we now have about 50 yards to water…..whomp, whomp. Guess we are getting our exercise in!

After a good 15 minutes dragging our dinghy, huffing and puffing, we finally get it into deeper water and we are off back to BOAT!

Heading out the next morning for a 150nm jaunt and FINALLY TO CABO!!!!!