Santa Rosalía

We had a nice sail north from Bahia Concepcíon, and stopped for the night at Punta Chivato. There is a nice shell beach, and a beautiful hotel where we stopped for a beer after our beach walk. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures. There was a lot of wraparound swell from the easterly wind, and it was a pretty rough anchorage until bedtime.

We are now buddy-boating with two boats: Windward, a Norseman 447, and Ithaki, an Island Packet 50.
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Winds were favorable as we left the next morning; in fact, this was the only time on the whole trip where I sailed onto the anchor, and off again, without starting the engine.

We flew the spinnaker for awhile, but unfortunately the wind died and we were soon motoring into the Craig Channel, between the Baja peninsula and Isla San Marcos far behind our two larger buddy boats. Anastasia (on Ithaki) radioed that wind had jumped from 5 to 20 knots as soon as they cleared the island. Assuming it might build even higher, we dropped the main, and fell even further behind the larger boats, both of whom continued to motorsail under reefed mains. The wind never got above 30, and soon we were tied up at the Singlar (government-run) marina in the small harbor at Santa Rosalía. We were surprised to find ourselves moored next to Cetus, whom we had not seen since last August in Fort Bragg.

Santa Rosalía will be our last stop before crossing the Sea to the mainland and putting the boat in dry storage at San Carlos over the summer hurricane season.

Its an interesting place to spend a few days. There is an old, disused copper mine and smelter,

a unique, prefabricated metal church reputedly designed by Gustave Eiffel,

and a number of other reminders of the French mining company that built much of the town.

This last picture has nothing to do with Santa Rosalía; you can find it just about anywhere down here. This is a typical Mexican speed bump, or "tope." Very effective at slowing down cars and making it easier for us pedestrians to cross the street!