BAJA HOPPERS: Sanispac in Bahia de Conception, April 17-18, 2010

From San Juanico, we wanted to head north about 45 miles to Bahia Santo Domingo (26 51.96'N, 111 50.85W), just inside the entrance to Bahia Conception. We normally motorsail around 5.5 knots to stretch our fuel, but around Punta Pulpito noticed that our speed over the ground (thank you, GPS, for giving us too much information to play with!) had fallen to less than 4 knots. What the heck??? Oh yeah, we're on the ocean and it sometimes has contrary currents!! That slowed us down for a couple hours, but we continued up the coast and eventually rounded the corner into Bahia Conception, a 100-square mile bay with loads of anchorages and beaches. Since it is the Baja, however, those beautiful, dramatic islands and volcanic peaks you see often extend well off-shore underwater. In the middle of the bay you end up in water that is only 24 feet deep.

Baja's major highway, Route 1, runs down the western side of the bay, so there are loads of RV sites, vacation homes, and campsites along the shore. I know it's hard to believe, but it's getting late in the season here and most of the sites were empty. As a result, it's very quiet here except for those 18-wheelers that have to come down this steep hill with their breaks screeching the whole way and then when they hit the bottom of the grade they have to accelerate to climb back up on the other side of the mountain. All night long you not only hear the waves lapping against the boat but the piercing wail of those breaks.

The wind and swell continued strong right into the Santo Domingo anchorage, so we made the decision to continue further into the bay in search of a more sheltered spot. That's not a decision to be taken lightly, since it's another 8 miles into the bay to the next anchorage. But, even after 45 miles, with that much wind blowing, it was a no-brainer. After a nice sail down the bay (yeah, Phil made us shut off the engine for a while just to remind him how beautiful water sounds rushing over a hull), we ended up in Playa Santispac (26 45.78' N, 111 53.17 W) with a bunch of other boats that were also trying to hide from the wind. So after 9 hours and over 50 nautical miles we finally had arrived. Kelly and dad inflated the dinghy so we could go ashore.

Kelly bouncing on the pump to inflate the dink

There's a restaurant at Santispac called Ana's, and we felt like a break from the galley, so we dinghyed ashore to check it out. Well, the place was hopping! Apparently, we arrived on one of the big nights in town. As we ate dinner, more and more people (aka RVers) kept arriving until every table and bar stool was filled. There were probably 80 people in the place. There were two or three groups just waiting for us to finish so they could take our table. They figured it was a safe bet that with kids we weren't going to be staying till the bitter end. The place jumps until 10 PM when it shuts down cold.