Punta Chivato, April 20/21, 2010

From Santa Rosalia, we said good-bye to the northern Sea of Cortez and headed back south around the outside of Isla San Marcos towards the multi-pronged headland around Punta Chivato. When you read the guidebooks, you'll see that the water gets a little skinny between the headland and the low-lying, reef strewn Santa Ines islets. Reefs and shoals extend from both the shoreline and the islets, making the passage a little "interesting." The low point seems to be about two fathoms of water around Punta Mezquitito. It's a pretty passage with the wild, rocky desert all around you, but a little nerve-wracking until you've done it once. And, of course, just as the water was getting the skinniest, we had dolphins show up to relieve the stress. We had two or three dozen dolphins doing their version of a Sea World show, leaping and dancing all around us. It was hard to tell who squealed louder, us or the kids. To quote Kelly “It was like going to Sea World without having to pay the admission.” These dolphins put on a show. It was almost as if they were all competing to show us which could do the best aerial maneuver. We anchored in 15' over sand next to the luxury hotel on the point and in front of the beautiful homes on the beach around the private, dirt airstrip.

One of the better acrobats that we saw

It was blowing pretty good when we anchored and we were debating whether we should go ashore when one of the other cruiser boats brought their dinghy up alongside our boat and told us we had to go ashore for if no other reason then to collect shells.

Just to give you the scale of the size of some of these shells

There's a picture in the Sea of Cortez Cruiser's Guidebook (which we call the "Om Shanti" guide after the authors of the guide’s boat's name) of the shells in this anchorage, but even that doesn't do the place justice. There's at least a mile where the shells are stacked up 3' deep, and go inland for 20 or 30 yards. 20 minutes on this beach and you'll have enough perfect shells to fill your bag.

We decided to search for the restaurant in the Om Shanti book, but were told by a couple of local construction workers that it has closed. Never fear, across the dirt runway, over a couple of barbed wire fences, and through the dirt golf course, there's a great little restaurant that's taken the other one's place. On the way there, we met "Baron", a dog belonging to one of the gringo families on the beach. He's only a puppy, but at 75 pounds or so, he was a bit too aggressive for the kids' taste. The restaurant is posted as "pet friendly", so those with pets feel free to bring them along. Maybe that's why Baron tagged along with us? Anyway, according to the bartender, Baron gets his own burger at the restaurant when his owners take him there. No telling if he gets his own Margarita or not. The food was excellent and the margaritas icy-cold. It was getting close to dark, and there were no other customers, so the bartender even gave us a ride back to our dinghy. How cool was that?

Even cooler was the fact that the same couple that stopped to tell us about the shells came by later to drop off some used movies they no longer wanted and they brought to our boat what would come to be the BIGGEST hit ever – JOHNNY ENGLISH. Over the course of the next month our kids would make every other kid boat endure that movie. I never want to see it again.
The unusual east winds continued through most of the evening, bringing swells curling around the point towards us. It made it a bit rolly last night, but the anchor held nicely in sand. I know it held because the anchor alarm went off twice last night, waking even the Phil out of a dead sleep. Phil had to get up to check the anchor at 3 AM and 5 AM. And, yes, it was seriously dark then, but the stars were gorgeous. Turns out that Phil had the alarm set to go off if we moved more than 60' from our position. Well, with the better part of 100' of chain out there and shifting winds, we drifted over our chain about 150' from one extreme to the other. Yup, that's more than enough to set off a 60' alarm! Of course, it was sunrise before the cobwebs cleared enough for Phil to figure that one out. Chalk one up to reviewing all those default settings on your electronics.
West winds predicted for tonight so that wipes out our plan to go to Bahia Santo Domingo just inside the entrance to Bahia Conception since Santo Domingo is wide open to the west. Come to think of it, Santo Domingo is pretty open to everything except in calm weather. Looks like we'll be heading deeper into Bahia Conception to Playa Burro. That'll be an extra 10 miles into the bay today, and an extra 10 miles out tomorrow morning on top of what already was supposed to be a fairly long day. Hmmm, that sounds like we'll be getting underway early tomorrow since those extra 10 miles will take an extra 2 hours against the tide coming into Bahia Conception. You've just gotta love it.