Ease The MainWith Benevento and its crew

After making our way down the coast of California, visiting family and friends in Santa Cruz, Morro Bay, Santa Barbara, Dana Point, and San Diego, we cleared into Ensenada and felt like we were finally on our trip.

After spending a few days in Ensenada, we sailed to Turtle Bay, a beautiful and protected little anchorage down the coast of Baja. We were the only “yatistas” in the bay.

We then proceeded down to Magdalena Bay, where we rode out the remnants of Hurricane Raymond. While at anchor, we rode the rocking horse of wind waves.

From Mag Bay we headed south to Cabo San Lucas, and that’s when the weather really started to get warmer. We spent a few days in Cabo getting provisioned and that’s when we decided not to go straight to Panama, but instead spend some time in the Sea of Cortez.

So, we went around the cape and beating to weather and anchoring in the afternoons.  Took 2.5 days to travel 120 nm but it was worth it! We found a beautiful anchorage on Isla de Todos Santos where we did some snorkeling in clear blue water, and explored the island a bit.

The next day went to an even nicer anchorage that had a small reef nearby where we could do some “epic” snorkeling (Dante’s quote) and took the dinghy out to the locally famous “Sea Lion Rock”.

From there we sailed over to La Paz and spent a few days in that lovely, mellow city.

We had planned to go from La Paz straight to Acapulco, but after 5 days at sea (including going through a low pressure system and a barracuda caught by fisherman Dante) we decided to head inland to the Gold Coast. We’re glad we did.

Bahia Chamela was absolutely beautiful. It was clear that we were getting into the tropics: palm trees, humidity, lush greenery everywhere.

Bluenose dolphins swimming and jumping around the boat as we made our way next to Bahia Tenacatita, also extremely beautiful. We made our second ever landing on the beach in our dinghy and then rolled our boat over to a small river.  From there we motored up a little river in the jungle enveloped by mangrove trees.

Next it was on to Barra Navidad, a beautiful location and picturesque hotel overlooking the marina.

Now let’s see if we can make it to Acapulco!

PS- If you click on the sailboat icons on the landing page with the map, it will reveal little bits about our trip..