Celeste in the Sea of Cortez, 2018
Here’s a link to another of my articles, written a little while ago – after sailing Celeste around the southern part of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez in early 2018 – but published quite recently in the British magazine Classic Boat. I hope everyone enjoys the story!
Subscribers to Classic Boat should see what’s essentially the next installment in this story, an article about crossing from Baja California to French Polynesia, in a future issue.
Since everyone seems to have a different date for World Whale Day, I figured today was as good a day as any to share some whale photos 🙂
The humpback whales are here in Hawaii for the winter – saw five just the other day, including a baby! Seeing whales from a little outrigger canoe is possibly even more exciting than seeing them from CELESTE – one is so much closer to the water and very aware that the whale is a 40-ton creature and the canoe is a very tippy 40-pounds (she’s made of carbon fiber, hence why she’s so lightweight – and fast and fun!). Didn’t get any photos of the whales from the canoe (didn’t bring the camera), but here are some from back up in Alaska:
Humpback whale seen from CELESTE in Southeast Alaska, 2014.
This is probably my favorite. I love how well it captures coastal Alaska – the rocky shoreline, the steep forest climbing up and up in background, the wispy clouds, the cool, overcast weather, and, of course, the star of the show, the breaching whale. Do you see the two black specks above him? Those are bald eagles… gives you a sense of how immense this landscape is….
Humpbacks bubble-net feeding in Southeast Alaska, 2017.
Here’s another image I love. These whales are bubble-net feeding in the deep water right off the shore. Bubble-net feeding is a clever and cooperative technique that humpback whales use to corral small fish and krill into balls, whereupon the whales burst up through the center of the fish ball, mouths open wide, to enjoy their feast! There is incredible footage of this in the new BBC documentary Seven Worlds, One Planet – Antarctica. Highly recommended!
Grey whale diving off Mexico, 2018.
Here’s a grey whale in Bahia Magdalena, Baja, Mexico. Grey whales make the longest migration of any mammal, more than 6000 miles each way between the Arctic and tropical waters. It was pretty exciting to see these grey whales in Mexico after having seen them in the Arctic. Just like it’s wonderful to see the humpbacks here in Hawaii after having seen so many up in Alaska!
Spinner dolphins, Hawaii, 2019.
Obviously these aren’t whales, but as I don’t have any pictures of whales from Hawaii, I thought I’d throw in spinner dolphins instead. I love spinner dolphins – they’re so playful and they often show up around the outrigger canoe. It’s always so much fun to jump in the water with them. Though this photo was actually taken while scuba diving – this was a wonderful dive!
Sunset seen from CELESTE’s deck, Espiritu Santo, Sea of Cortez
It was hard to leave the beautiful bays and empty hills of Espiritu Santo island, but with summer (and hurricane season) approaching, it was time to sail back out of the Sea of Cortez and complete the final preparations for the Pacific crossing.
Since we’d been back in Mexico on the boat (after being away working for a few months), we had found the wind patterns to be the reverse of what they’d been in the winter. Back in February, we had made an upwind passage from San Jose del Cabo up to La Paz, fighting the strong north wind that prevails at that time of year. By May, we encountered frequent dead calms during the day and strong southerlies at night. This meant that we would be fighting headwinds again on our way south to Cabo (at least during the nighttime part of the passage). CELESTE sails pretty well against the wind, but headwinds make a passage longer (literally – you sail a lot more miles over ground to make good the same distance, as opposed to being able to sail straight on course with a favorable wind), so when we got a forecast for a calm day and night, we decided to swallow our sailing pride and make tracks to Cabo – we’d lingered long enough if we were going to the South Pacific that season!
Our route down Baja and up the Sea of Cortez (February) and then return to Cabo (May)
It’s been a while since I wrote about our first experience sailing in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, when we made the upwind (slog of a) passage from San Jose del Cabo to La Paz back in February of this year. So that was Part 1 and now I’m finally getting to Part 2. In between, we spent a couple of weeks in La Paz – touristing and doing boat projects in early March and then provisioning and doing boat projects in early May. (In March and April we were back in the US working ashore.)
Anyhow, that’s some background to catch everyone up since I’m so behind on the blog!
So here goes! Continue reading
I’m finally catching up on the blog! I left off with our time in La Paz, in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, so that’s where I’m starting up again.
The required photo op in La Paz
That last post ended with us leaving CELESTE in early March to go back to work for a couple of months. We returned in early May to find her almost as we’d left her, and to find Baja much, much hotter than in the winter! It was very pleasant to be able to stroll around in shirt sleeves at night, but the days were pretty awful… sweltering…made me yearn for Alaska! Continue reading
Hi everyone!
Thanks for your patience with my lack of blog posts this summer! We were off sailing and have only recently returned to the land of fast internet. 
I have to admit that (barring frustrations with getting work sent off), I really enjoyed being so disconnected and unplugged for so long. I know it sounds ridiculously cheesy, but it allowed me to focus on “the present” in a way that just doesn’t happen when I have Wifi and mobile data…. So the challenge now is to maintain that mental state while also being connected again.
That said, it’s been great fun to check my email (yes, you read that right – I hadn’t checked one of my accounts in literally 4 months!) and read all the wonderful comments from my readers! Thank you all for your kind words and positive thoughts! I’ll respond to them all right after this post!
And then I hope to start writing here fairly regularly again.
Thanks again to all my lovely readers, and wishing you all a happy fall (or spring if you’re in the southern hemisphere!),
Ellen
La Paz is quite a useful spot for cruising sailboats – a big anchorage, a bunch of marinas to choose from at different prices, almost any shop or service you might need. As the capital of Baja California Sur, it’s actually quite an extensive city but has a fairly relaxed atmosphere and a lovely waterfront area.
Statue on the La Paz Malecon
Several sailors we had met in Alaska had highly recommended the Sea of Cortez, saying it was one of their all-time favorite cruising grounds, so that was our goal in Mexico. So when we left San Jose del Cabo, we pointed the bow north again. At first – when our course was really more northeast along the coast – we had beautiful sailing on a close reach, once again flying along under clear skies. 
But as the land curved more north and we altered course, the wind was right on the nose. With relatively little chop, we nonetheless made good progress, despite sailing lots of miles out of our way, as you do when you beat to windward. By evening we had reached Cabo Pulmo, a national park that was recommended in our cruising guide for having the best protected anchorage south of La Paz. Continue reading
Great wind on passage to Bahia Magdalena
When we left Bahia Tortugas to continue south down the Baja peninsula, the light northerly wind we’d had on the first part of our Mexican voyage had built to a perfect 15 knots and CELESTE flew on her way. It only lasted a few hours, but it was a great start to our next two-day hop to Bahia Magdalena, a giant bay famous for the gray whales that mate and give birth there each winter.
Sailing off the desert hills of Baja
Desert hills and white horses. Fun, fast sailing off the Baja coast
We had a good time cruising down the west coast of Baja – it’s a beautiful, wild place, and it was especially interesting and unique for us as it was the first time we have sailed off a hot desert coast. (Much of the Arctic is a desert, of course, but it’s very different from the red hills of Baja!) It made quite the change from the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest that we’d grown so used to over the last few years!
