The Great Boating Adventure (3)

Part 3 -Adventures in Mag Bay

A new day has dawned on the great boating adventure as we headed out bright and early. We’ll be heading to Santa Maria cove outside of Bahia Magdalena, most of us just say Mag Bay. The swells kept us awake and offered a slow rocking motion but wasn’t too bad. We saw multiple rays doing back flips, lots of birds but not very much marine life today. The trip took all the daylight hours and we got in after dark. We anchored between a couple other boats. This cove filled up with sport fishers and a couple other trawlers looking for a calm night. Golden Lion, with Jim and Steffi, should be rolling in sometime during the night.

The next morning almost all the boats that spent the night were gone by the time we got up, but we did see Golden Lion had made it in. They told us later they got in around 1 am, they were about a mile away, so they moved and anchored closer to us. Mike and I spent the morning working on a few projects and checking everything was in tip top shape. About 10 am came rowing lessons for Michelle. If you could only see the eye roll. Mike showed me how easy it was, and then I took us in circles …again. I guess like most things, I was over-thinking the process. Jim said I was having trouble because our oars are so short. I knew I liked him. It wasn’t my fault…it was the oars! Jim had a set of extendable oars they don’t use, so Mike and Jim came up with a plan to extend ours using theirs. Oh boy! Well that kept the guys buys and I got to varnish the front hatch I had sanded, cleaned, and brightened the other day. Slowly we have been getting wood care projects done. The last few days had been too rough at sea to them while underway. We had a fun day working on little things and we all had dinner together. Jim and Steffi are basically on the same route, so we’ve been traveling together. It makes it nice to have others around, and I think Steffi is a kick in the Pants! Listening to her speak Canadian style English with a German accent blows us a away.

The next morning, we headed out to Man of War cove in Mag Bay. Jim and Steffi started the trip earlier…sail boats are slower…ha. We caught up to them in no time and they took photos of us underway, so I grabbed our camera and got some good shots of them sailing. I threw out a line to try to catch dinner, and pretty quickly had a fish on the line. The pole was bending, I fought it the best I could, what ever it is…its big. And “whap” the line broke, and he took my trolling lure! UGH! I got another lure set up but didn’t have any other hits all day. Oh…we did find out that the fish I tried to filet wasn’t a yellow fin tuna, still don’t know what is was and by the picture that mike took, but it was a white meat fish. I’m just glad we don’t have to rely on my fishing skills to eat, we’d definitely starve! So, we’ll have fried chicken instead. We set our anchor about 1 pm and kicked back. Golden Lion came into the bay about 5 pm and we made a good dinner for them. The next morning, I ROWED the dinghy over to pick up Steffi so we could go on shore and check in with the port captain, we took Leroy with us so he could get in a lice long walk. The port captain wasn’t in, so we walked around the very small village and bought some fresh prawns and let Leroy play in the surf. He had a great time running, swimming, and chasing his ball. We rowed back to the boats and Jim and Steffi came along on our boat while we went to get fuel.

Getting fuel was a very interesting adventure. First, you must walk about a half-mile to pay for the fuel first. Then you take the receipt to some guy named Chicken on the dock. So, just imagine me wandering around asking “Donde esta Pollo?” Next you must moor up (side tie) your boat to one of the many commercial fishing vessels already tied up. The rust bucket vessels are dirty, rust, floating hunks od junk that your sure if you touch them either they will disintegrate into the sea, or you might catch something. We put out every fender we had out and still had to have two people hold us off. It was a very slow fill. I didn’t get a chance to take pictures because we were so busy, but that was definitely an adventure all in itself.

After fueling Steffi and I took our dock cart and went into town to stock up. We tried to find a bank and found out that there is a single ATM. We got directions a lot along the way, the locals kept telling us two more blocks, two more blocks, 4 more blocks. We finally found it, on a road on the very outskirts of town, in the middle of nowhere. There were no stores, no gas stations, or anything for at least ¼ mile. We joked about how if any of those people that we asked for directions from wanted to rob us, we made it really simple. We did some shopping and stocked up on the few things we needed. Every “grocery store” I’ve been to in Baja you could easily fit in the produce department of Vons! Don’t get me wrong, we still managed to find some good stuff! It took all day to get fuel and go to the store, we made it back to the anchorage after dark.

We did some minor projects the next day (November 3, 2006). We decided to check out the beach area just off to the north. Jim and Steffi took their dinghy, and we took ours to go out and go sightseeing. It was low tide, and we could see the bottom clearly. We watched flounder and sea rays’ scoot across the bottom, and needle nose fish were everywhere. We also watched a couple clams open and close and bury themselves. We took Leroy in to run on the beach, he had a blast! That dog loves playing in the surf. The beach was awesome, it was hard packed at the tide line, and was soft and bleached white higher up. I tried to dig up a clam, when I got close, I cut my finger on the shell and lost him forever. We had a great day exploring, found a few shells as souvenirs, and completely wore Leroy out. All in all, a great day. The next day we were planning on heading out to Los Cabos, it’s about 14 miles south of Cabo San Lucas. Instead, Mike crawled down into the engine compartment and found another fuel leak. He changed out all of the filters, inspected all the hoses, clamps, and connections. It doesn’t sound like much, but anyone who has spent time below the floor in a boat engine compartment knows its an all-day affair. We’ll now head out on Sunday, the next leg will be about 21 hours, there are no safe anchorages along our route. We plan on taking shifts, maybe 4 hours each. This will be the first time that we will travel all day and all night. We haven’t yet done any “overnighter’s” so we’re both a little nervous.