Six weeks in San Carlos, Sonora.
Six weeks…
Shawn was “so over” San Carlos.
The first week back in Mexico, Miette was “on the hard”, sitting on stands in a boat yard. Hurricane Kay had just flooded the area with rain, and mosquitos swarmed out of the swampy flood plain around the boat yard. At night, the temperatures dropped to a miserable 95°F.
We got back in the anchorage, then back to a slip at the marina for 4 weeks. We made friends, we came to terms with our electrical capacity, and we got back to living aboard a small sailboat.
The marina life has some advantages in that you develop friendships with the crews nearby, you swap stories, and you hug and hope to cross paths again. Going out after dark is much easier, since taking the dinghy out at night is a little strange.
After our time at the marina was up, we spent another week at anchor in the San Carlos Bay, with a few day-trips a couple miles west to Lalo Cove, where the water was clean enough to swim and run the water maker.
Finally, we saw weather favoring a passage due West. Winds from the north, 15-20 knots, waves 4-6 feet at 4.5 seconds. Ok, the waves part was an orange flag…not quite red. It meant it would be a rough ride.
And a rough ride it was, but it was a mercifully short 75 nautical miles. Although we left at 4:30am, we should have left a couple hours earlier, because even though our speed over ground was very fast, we arrived in Santa Rosalía after dark, not far from a new moon. It was so dark!
The marina at Santa Rosalía didn’t honor our reservation, having over-booked themselves three boats deep. So we anchored in the tiny harbor, paid our anchorage fees (about $9 for a week) which includes access to the government dinghy dock.
The town is SO charming. We are very excited to spend Día de los Muertos in this old mining town, which has not succumbed to tourism.