The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
It has now been more than two full weeks since we left La Paz. On two occasions we had had to wait our some weather for an extended period, but life was finally allowed to move on and we took advantage. Immediately we motored Meriwether out of our protection at Evaristo and pointed her bow to the North. Not far...
I was told by my co-captain – who does all this sort of research – that the prevailing wind changes around this time of the year. We were hoping to be riding those sweet, sweet, southerlies all the way up into the Sea of Cortez by now, but the upcoming week was not going to be the week the wind...
It took a bit, waiting on the wind to calm down a tad, but we eventually moved on from our island adventures on Isla Ispiritu just out of La Paz. We would turn Meriwether’s bow to the North toward Isla San Francisco, which the guide book describes as one of the most popular anchorages in the area – and proved...
Isla Espiritu is the larger of two uninhabited islands and part of the Archipiélago Espíritu Santo National Park. They are an easy destination from La Paz as they are a mere 20 miles from the big city and come with numerous anchorages with protection from all but westerly blows. The water and beaches are straight out of a travel brochure....
Well, we made it. To La Paz that is. This is the largest city on the Baja peninsula, and one that we have driven through a couple times but never stopped to explore. It is also a huge cruiser’s town, with many long time cruisers using it as home base for years or a launching pad to cross the Pacific...
We thought we would be done with these full-day jumps once we reached Mexico, but the lack of anchorages way down by the tip of Baja is still forcing us into very long days at sail. The next two legs would fall into that category, with full-on sunrise to sunset days on the water. Heck, it isn’t like we are...
The prevailing wind blows from the north at this time of the year. We rode that very northerly all the way down the Baja Pacific coast, but now we need to go *up* the Sea of Cortez coast – unless we wanted to stay in Cabo for a couple months, which I’m sure would cause our collective untimely demise. I had...
Our final leg of the Pacific side of Baja was finally happening. When we completed this voyage and anchored, we would officially be at the tip of the Baja peninsula and point Meriwether to the North for the first time in well over a year. The trip would cost us just over 40 hours at sea again, including two overnights....
Our sights have been set on visiting Magdalena Bay for some time. It is known for the visiting whales, and the geography of the place looked like we could explore it for weeks. That was the plan, but we threw it out as usual. First, we had to get there though. From our last anchorage at Bahia Santa Maria, Magdalena was...
It was to be another multi-day passage to get to our next destination further down the Baja coastline. There is a couple spots to have stopped along the way, but we both preferred to knock out some serious distance southward. Bahia Magdalina – a large protected bay where whales frequent with their babies – was our real destination, but just...
