We are at Ensenada de los Muertos (an attempt is underway to rename this area Bahia de los Suenos as the name 'Muertos' has been deemed counterproductive by the local land developers).

We had a nice trip up here, leaving Los Frailes at midnight for an overnight motor and sail the 40 odd miles here. Not much wind for most of the trip, but we caught a nice light Southeast wind that blew us directly into the anchorage the next day. This was about as expected, as the local wind pattern has been afternoon NW winds building up, and accelerating around the little capes along the coast, then dying in the later evening. We left during the night time calm so that we could make good some miles to our destination and be within striking distance the next day for a more leisurely sail in.

Muertos is a nice anchorage, white sand beach, clear water, and the cruiser friendly restaurant 'El Cardon' with free wi-fi and internet phone. We sat out an impressive Northerly here a few days ago that brought wind in the mid-40 knot range. Pisces was plastered with sand from the dunes, but we held tight, a good confidence builder.

Actually, we did have one minor incident on the morning of the (well-forecast) Norther. A boat that had come in late in the night decided that morning to reanchor closer in to shore. When they dropped their hook they came to rest about 2.5 boatlengths upwind and only slightly off to starboard of us. In a crowded anchorage this would have been acceptable, but in such an empty and wide open anchorage with the forecast winds, it just seemed unneccessary and unwise. I think they realized that, because they called us on the VHF and offered to move if we were uncomfortable (a classy move). Unfortunately, when we said 'thanks, we would actually like you to move' they then declined (not so classy a move). After a brief discussion, Julia and I decided that the only course of action left was for us to reanchor. At that point it was blowing about 25kts, so the process was relatively easy. A few hours later when the wind was really howling we were glad that we had taken the steps to reanchor and preserve 'defensive' space around Pisces. Ultimately if we had choosen to not do anything and something had happened, it would have been both our problem and our fault for not proactively protecting our boat.

This anchorage is also the first place that we have really been introduced to the social side of cruising. As you progress along the common cruising routes you start seeing the same boats, overlapping here and there at anchorages, leapfrogging each other, etc. Eventually you start to get to know the people on the boats, and very quickly you can have more invitations to activities and dinners than you have time for. As you might imagine it's a diverse group of people, a wide variety of backgrounds and experience levels, but all with the same dream in common (and more than that everyone here is someone who managed to make good on their dream which is something worth respecting in itself). We've been very impressed at the sacrifices and leaps of faith people have made to be out here, it's truly humbling.

By and large the socializing has been a welcome change, but at the same time it's a bit of a challenge to not get completely sucked into the scene. Everyone communicates via VHF, so it's essentially a party line where almost everything you say is going to be listened to by everyone in the anchorage. It makes it a bit awkward to turn down an invitation, or to invite only a few people over instead of the entire anchorage. We're trying to work on finding a happy medium that still leaves us time to enjoy the solitude part of cruising while not 'brushing people off.' (We've also found the utility of using VHF codes to communicate with our good friends on Tao when we want to avoid public knowledge of our conversation:).

At this point pretty much everyone in the anchorage is out of all fresh food and provisions, so there is a pretty strong pull to make the 60 mile trip to La Paz. We need to be in La Paz in about a week and a half to see my parents who are visiting, but that's our only true time constraint, and there are some nice places between here and there. Julia, Shawn, and Chris are currently off on a hitchhiking adventure to the nearest mini mercado (about 5 miles down a dirt road) to try and get an onion or two, and if we're really really lucky, some queso! I somehow was able to avoid this task..erh..mission and have been hanging out at the restaurant and taking advantage of the fast internet.






23 59' N, 109 50' W