Turtle Bay

A Mississippi stern wheeler mysteriously appears!

The voyage from Ensanada to Turtle Bay, just shy of 300 nautical miles, took us only 3 days. The first 2 consisted of a variety of winds; NW in the afternoons and into the evenings, one morning of a brisk offshore breeze from the SE, and little to nothing at all in between. Still, we managed about 150 miles in the first 48 hours underway. The forecast before we left on Monday had called for a more serious wind to develop on Wednesday. It was correct. All afternoon Wednesday we watched the wind and the seas grow. Pretty soon we were going about 6 knots (hella fast in this boat) with roll, pitch, and yaw sufficient to prevent already tired sailors from sleeping much. From noon Wednesday to noon Thursday we sailed 132 miles! Later Thursday afternoon we sailed into Turtle Bay and set the anchor.

Yacht carrying ship at Ensanada

We slept about 12 hours that night, and on Friday morning went ashore to explore the town. On Saturday our friends Don and Heather aboard their Hans Christian 38, Buena Ventura arrived from Ensanada. Some other Washington State cruisers arrived Saturday and Sunday. One boat, Carumba, is from the same marina we left in June. It turns out that everyone arriving from Ensenada knows all about the boat with the broken Sampson post. We have been told that we are famous on the cruiser radio nets.

They're sure taking a long time with my cervesa!

San Bartolome (Turtle Bay)

Dave resting under the only tree for miles.

Cygnus almost in the surf zone!

Sunday we moved the boat to a part of the bay away from the town but at a very nice beach. Pete and I went ashore to do some amateur geological exploration of nearby landforms. After 4 years of working alongside some of Washington State’s best geologists I was on my own puzzling out the shales and basalts of the beautiful hills Pete and I climbed to the top of. Tim Walsh would surely still be elaborating on what we had seen if we had had him along. We explored ashore again this morning (Monday). This time we went to a mesa about a mile south of yesterday’s hill. There were an amazing number of seashells eroding out of the exposures all the way up the mesa. Fantastic desert landscapes we got to look over.

Now we are back in the town of Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay) and getting ready to travel further south.