Back To The Baja

Masquerade is now anchored at Isla San Francisco, a small island about 45 miles north of La Paz.

We enjoyed our visit in Altata and met some nice people there. We met a family that owns one of the beach restaurants. Only the daughter, a young woman named Wendy spoke English, and my Spanish is really bad. She said that she would like to see the boat, and we told her we would happy to show it to her. The next afternoon I was swimming of the boat, cleaning some growth of the bottom, when Cindy told me we had company. I climbed back aboard to find 3 pretty young ladies in the cockpit. Wendy came out with two friends (Diana and Dulce), ferried out in a cousin's panga. We had a nice visit, with Wendy acting as interpreter. She invited us to join her and her family for dinner that evening. We accepted and met them that evening at the restaurant. They insisted that we pull the dinghy across the road and into the open-air restaurant (it has wheels) so that it would be safe. We then walked over to a brother's house where they had a BBQ going to make Carne Asada. We had dinner with around 17 extended family and friends. Wendy again had to act as interpreter as only one other person spoke a little English. We had a pleasant evening and the Spanish/English dictionary got a lot of use. We hope to get back this way soon.

We had a long passage across the Sea of Cortez. We wanted to sail and not motor so the crossing took at least an extra 24 hours. We had light winds and winds from the wrong direction most of the time. We went from drifting with the spinnaker in 4kn of wind to reefed sails and 25kn in about 2 hours. We did end up motoring some as it was taking a long time. From here we will probably visit La Paz then head to the northern part of the Gulf of California.