Lazy Daze

Playa Santispac, Bahia Concepcion, BCS, Mexico

One of the great things about not having to be anywhere is the luxury of just sticking around when you find a nice place. Bahia Concepcion is such a place.  After 6 nights at Playa Coyote, we have finally moved on; but only a very little.

Our original plan was, after spending the Easter break here, to start heading south towards La Paz and on to the Mexican mainland coast south of Mazatlan. However, Bahia Concepcion is such a beautiful place and there are so few boats here that we are having a hard time tearing ourselves away. One of the deciding factors is that we keep hearing from the boats further south (via the morning radio nets) talking about how busy the anchorages are and how windy and rolly they have been. Why would we want to trade our idyllic anchorage for that?

We did move north a couple of miles two days ago, mostly because the forecasts are for strong northerly winds and Playa Coyote is quite exposed to winds from the NE. We now find ourselves anchored off of Playa Santispac, which is very well protected from winds from all directions except the SE. Yesterday and today have seen some gusty North and NW winds up to around 22 knots and we are quite happy with our decision.

We were here last July, much later in the season, when there was hardly anyone around and everything was closed. Right now, there are quite a few "gringos" in residence (they have homes along several of the beaches here), plus quite a few campers along the beach. This means that the beachside restaurant that was closed last July is now open. We had a late lunch / early dinner there today and will no doubt be back. The clientele is mostly Americans but there were a few Mexicans as well. Great, inexpensive food. Apparently they have a fancy dinner and dance on Saturday nights; maybe we will try it out.

Just to reinforce our decision to stay put for a while, we heard from a couple of boats that did leave the bay this morning. They all turned back except one that had left around 3 AM - they reported that the steady 20+ knot winds have kicked up some very sloppy seas and they were having a very uncomfortable passage. Right now we have about 9 boats in the anchorage (the most we have seen so far). Lots of room though - this anchorage could easily hold 30 or 40 boats. The forecast for tomorrow is for slightly less wind, returning to stronger winds the day after - all from the north. What we are seeing is the affect of a couple of cold fronts that have hit the west coast of the U.S. Our temperatures have dropped from the highs of 35 a couple of days ago to around 26 now. It is actually cool enough at night (maybe 17 degrees) for us to want a blanket. Such a tough life!

One of the bonuses of these north winds is that the boat faces north most of the time, which keeps a lot of our solar panels exposed for most of the day, and the days are getting longer too. This all means that we have had plenty of power for such luxury items as a nightly movie. We have run the engine a few times for about an hour each time, mostly to allow us to run the water maker for extended periods of time (our tanks were not full when we left San Carlos and I would like to remedy that) and to generate some hot water for the ultimate cruising luxury of hot showers. Suddenly all that trouble and expense of putting in that new water heater back in Mazatlan last year seems like a very smart move.

In summary, we basically do not have a clue of how long we will be here. We have lots of diesel and a huge amount of food. We will just take it day by day for now.

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