Im going to start off with a sorry, the internet is so slow and i am annoyed so all the pictures will be at the bottom of the blog. I also uploaded the pictures for the last blog update. I hope you enjoy it! 🙂

We stayed in Juanico for about a week. Sean surfed his heart out! Finally he got to surf! Jon and I stayed in the shallows catching the small breach break and staying out of the way of the other surfers. We did not see one stingray while we were there.

The little town had little to offer and was filled with americans who were always happy to stop and chat. It is amazing how many cruisers don’t come to this amazingly beautiful bay. We teamed up with Scott and had a bon fire on the beach. We had done some fishing that afternoon and cooked it over the fire.

We left San Juanico in the morning and headed for Bahia Santa Maria, 90 miles. We sailed through the night, the passage was a rough one. The sea were very lumpy, there was enough wind for us to sail the whole way but our course kept the swell to our beam with the wind behind us. We stayed like this for about 18 hours, the swell never giving up its constant beatings. We pulled into Santa Maria just as dawn was arriving. This bay is HUGE the books are not kidding when they say they could house a navy in the bay. We anchored next to another group of boats, and went to bed to catch up on sleep that non of us had gotten during the night.

The next morning Jon and I made  our way to shore, the bay is mostly all beach break and can be tricky getting though the surf. We landed in a different area, a little cove with little to no surf just north of the little village. Smooth going, and we always remember to do the baja shuffle. Jon and I hiked up to the 3rd highest peak, over looking the bay and back out to the pacific where we has come from the day before. Some of the hike felt like we were going straight up, and i was reminded that I am not in the best of shapes and need to go hiking more often. Our boats looked so little from the very top.

On our row back to the boat Jon and I stopped and visited with some other cursers who invited us aboard. We chatted for a while, being the boat nerds we are, we geeked out about their boat and their gear. We had left Sean at the boat all day (he wanted to stay behind) so once it was dark we felt that we should get back.

The next morning we weighed anchor and made our way into Mag Bay, next stop would be Man of War cove. It was down, around and then back up almost the same amount. It took us 8 hours to go the 25 ish miles to the anchorage. We had hoped we timed the tides right  and would ride the flood though the 3 mile wide opening to the bay and then up to the anchorage. Yea…. we were early so we fought the max ebb going though the entrance. It made for one heck of a ride, the water was smooth during our approach and we could see the turning waters up ahead filled with rip tides and mini world pools. I wish pictures could show what we went though, but PRISM handled it like a champ and we slowly sailed doing about 5 knots but only making 1.5 knots against the tide for another 2 hours. AH SLACK TIDE! whoop we are making progress now! We caught the beginning of the flood just as we were getting to the anchorage. The books are a little vague about where the actual anchorage is, we were wondering if we go right off the village, do we have to be more to the east, bla baa bla. We were happy to see another boat up ahead so we dropped the hook near where they were. We have seen this boat a few times, starting back in Turtle Bay. We were determined to meet them as they seem to be on the same slow schedule we are for heading down the baja coast.

The next morning we made the short row to the village to check out the market and to dump our trash. Lets just say that from the water, this town look every cute and welcoming, once you are on the beach though… you smell the sewage that does not get treaded and it pumped right out into the water, there are dead fish everywhere on the beach, and there is trash everywhere.  We found our way to what they call the market, but we think because it was the day before christmas the place was bought out from all the locals making their dinners. We made haste back to the boat, after making diesel arrangements with the local sherif, we moved the boat about a mile or so further into the cove, we were welcomed with crystal clear water. We anchored in about 15 feet and we could watch our anchor set. We all jumped in and swam our hearts out. We were pretty far from the beach, and the water gets shallow very far out. The sea life here consisted of an all sand bottom, a lot of stingrays, puffer fish, and clams.

WE DID HOWEVER!!!… have a close encounter with a large marine species….I was in the hammock chair hanging above the water and Sean was just about to get out of the water, when i looked down and saw a HUGE dark shadow swimming our way, it took me less than 3 seconds to yell out DOLPHIN!!!!!!! BAH It was a single bottle nose dolphin, who came by to check us out. It swam around the boat a few times, just long enough for sean to get his mask on and go check it out. It was short lived the dolphin lost interest of us within about 10 min. We all hoped that it would come back for another visit… it didn’t.

We got to meet the crew from Sv Summer, John and Jen, we talked about our plans what is to come next. Both Summer and Prism were planning on bypassing Cabo, as it is just a little to pricey and bla bla bla. But with it being the next closest anchorage over 155 nautical  miles away, it was starting to look pretty good. Needless to say, we will both be stopping in Cabo and staying there for new years. This is going to be fun.

For Christmas dinner I had to pull something special out of the little food we had left. I made my very first home made chicken pot pie. Crust and ALL! I was very proud of my self. I am becoming such the baker. 🙂 We also brought out 2 nice bottles of wine. Jen from Summer came over to join us in a game night. We plaid liars dice and cards till it was way past all our bed times.  It was kind of different, this is the first christmas Jon and I have not spent with any family. ( Well Sean is on board so I guess I did have family…. but you know what i mean). There were no presents, but we did play the only 6 christmas songs we had on the iPod.

Our diesel came a day early, we were sure to check that it was clear and ran it though a baja filter before going into our tanks. With our tanks topped off, and good wind blowing that was not forecasted ( it was forecasted to be dead calm for the next few days) We checked the tides, and if we left at that moment we could catch the very last of the ebb and hopefully get out before the flood started. It was 5:30 PM and low tide was at 5:45. BAH all hands on deck! LETS MOVE!. We motored sailed doing over 6 knots out of the bay and made it out just after dark and during the slack.

We left thinking we would maybe (if we were lucky) average 5 knots and it would take us 36 to 40 hours to get to Cabo, and we would pass Cape Falso in the early morning and be in the anchorage at day break. The weather was forecasted to be 3-4knts of wind, billing to 9-13knts with small swell. Well that was not even close.. for the first 12 hours we had a full main and the drifter out, with about 10 knots of wind on our beam and swell behind us.. we really could not ask for anything better. We sailed doing 6.5 to 7 knots though out the night. Come morning with winds kept building and their was no sign of swell but we did have large confused chop right on our beam that even in our very dry boat we were taking some green water into the cockpit. We never dipped below doing 6.5 knots, at one point we were double reefed, with the staysail up and we were still  doing 7.5 to 8 knots! HAULING ASS as we like to call it. We knew at this speed we would be getting to cabo at dark, but we didn’t care.. we wanted to get the hell out of the annoying choppy seas. We were finally going fast enough that our fishing tackel was in its prime and we nailed a HUGE dorado. YUM YUM YUM!

Just as the seas and wind had built, as the sun started to set the winds and seas calmed, we shook out the reefs,  dropped the staysail, and raised the drifter again. Slowly it turned into nothing… we could see the cape just about 15 miles away. We could have just drifted and made our way slowly in, but we didn’t want to that. We fired up the engine and started in. Around 9 and just off of cape false we were hit with a counter current and steep chop that would shutter Prism into a complete stop. The wind had picked up just a little and of corse it would coming from the direction we were heading. We eeked Prism doing 2.5 knots against the chop, around the pinnacle rocks that mark the entrance to Cabo and motored into the large bay. We could only see 1 other boat anchored, we motored around and dropped the hook in 50 feet enough though we were only about 50 yards off the beach.  At 10:30 pm Prism was silent and we were all asleep after  going 170 nautical miles in 28 hours we were pooped.

When we awoke the next morning, the bay was alive. BOATS EVERYWHERE! JET SKIES! and all the people on the beaches, HOLY COW! Its a social shock compared to the small fishing towns we have been visiting. We had anchored on the very far end of the bay and very far away from town…. our dinghy would not make that trip, so we pulled anchor and made our way though the crowds and cropped the hook a little closer to the marina entrance. This anchorage is very rolly, but the water is 80+ degrees and the people watching is a fun pass time.

We are going to stay here thought the new years… we will see how that goes 🙂

CHEERS!!!! AND HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!!