Yesterday we made the trip from San Jose del Cabo to Bahia Los Frailes. Imagine going upwind in the slot with 20-25kts of wind and a strong ebb, for about 30 miles. For you non-sailors essentially this means that we completely undid our boat cleaning from a few days ago, everything outside (this includes us) is now thickly coated with salt again, and a good bit of saltwater found its way inside around hatches, drenching the v-berth, the portside settee, the head, and the galley (ie. most of the boat). There was one particularly memorable moment as we bashed our way over the 5-6 foot chop, spray everywhere, when two humpbacks bigger than Pisces surfaced about 50 yards to windward heading directly towards us quite quickly. Things can get a bit hectic sometimes.

Los Frailes is a well-protected anchorage (our standard for this has definitely changed since we've left S.F.) that is only about a mile South of one of only three coral reefs in North America. A deep underwater canyon extends right up to the mouth of the anchorage, so you need to anchor on a very narrow shelf close-in to the beach. Depths go from off-the-sounder, to 90+ feet, to 70 feet, to 40 feet to 30 feet in a few boatlengths. When we arrived here at sundown last night there were approximately 10 other boats here, and we had to squeeze in fairly tight with another boat, but they were friendly about it and didn't seem to mind.

One of the things we have taken to doing at a new anchorage is making a little driving tour of the anchorage before anchoring. This accomplishes a couple of things. One, it lets you survey the anchorage for good spots, the best protection, depths, etc. But equally importantly, a friendly word or two shouted to each boat (a good icebreaker question is 'what depth are you set in?') seems to diffuse the normal 'new-boat-to-the-anchorage wariness' (generally when sailors see a new boat approaching the anchorage most everyone comes on deck to watch them, partly because it might be the biggest event of the day, and partly to make sure they don't anchor somewhere that they shouldn't).

This is truly a remarkable anchorage for the sea life. It's been referred to as a 'nursery for small manta rays' and we witnessed this last night. Tens and twenties of 2-3 foot wingspan baby manta rays were frolicking and leaping clear of the water. The way these guys play around makes dolphins look serious. Some of them were jumping 5 or 6 feet clear of the water, and flapping their wings frantically as if trying to fly between the swells, others were leaping straight up and down vertically and belly-flopping down in huge splashes, one kept jumping up and flipping head over...tail time and time again. There are also schools of fish about 6 inches long that skitter over the surface of the water for about 15 feet in a run, the pelicans are very interested in these guys.

All of this sea life made us think it would be fun to go swimming, but last night as I took a flashlight up to the bow to check our anchor snubber for chafe I noticed a whole bunch of eels or snakes, about a foot and a half long and a bright green color hanging around our chain...okay, no swimming for now. The plan for today is to put a bunch of our clothes and cushions on deck to dry in the sun, after that we may dinghy ashore and explore. After our experience yesterday we are not in a hurry to leave here until the weather forecast is perfect (the next upwind bit is about twice as long), so we will most likely miss Carnaval in La Paz...oh well. We are also hoping to meet up with our friends Shawn and Chris from Tao here soon (who we met at Cat Harbor over Christmas), they got in to Cabo San Lucas the day before we left San Jose and we were able to have a slightly garbled VHF conversation with them. It's great to be back at a nice anchorage after the craziness of Cabo and the marina at San Jose.

23 22' N, 109 25' W