Baja Sur to San Carlos (Sonora): A Smooth Crossing Photo Show, March 2018

Our return crossing from Baja California Sur to San Carlos, Sonora, was easy. Unlike our trip over to BCS in February, we had almost no wind. This isn't good for sailing, so our Yanmar engine guzzled diesel for nearly 20 hours. But the water was beautiful—glassy and reflective, even otherworldly at times, especially in the middle of the Gulf, 40 miles from land.

Sunset in Caleta San Juanico, BCS, the night before our crossing.

We departed Caleta San Juanico on the BCS Gulf coast around 9:30 a.m. on March 9 and pointed Cilantro north, our ship's compass hovering around 000ºM (magnetic north). A light wind picked up, and we sailed for an hour or two. When the wind died, we furled sails and motored; our Yanmar engine would not be silent until the next day.

Motoring out of Caleta San Juanico, BCS, on March 9.

Ship's compass showing a heading of 000ºM (magnetic north).

Mainsail up for a short time on our March 9 crossing; Mexican flag (for the
host country) flying from the starboard spreader. 

The sea was calm enough that Sue practiced yoga
(modified Warrior III pose) on the foredeck.

Cilantro motoring on glassy seas.

The birding was good from the start. (One advantage of motoring on calm seas is that you can spot birds more easily and keep them in sight.) Blue-footed and Brown Boobies were in good supply, along with Heermann's Gulls and occasional Magnificent Frigatebirds. The winter pelagics (birds that spend at least the winter months on ocean waters) were the stars of the show: Black-vented and Pink-footed Shearwaters, a Pomarine Jaeger, lots of Craveri's Murrelets, Black and Least Storm-Petrels, and Red-necked Phalaropes. We also had a great look at a Red-billed Tropicbird.

Male (left) and Female Brown Booby.

Blue-footed Booby.

Red-billed Tropicbird with its streamer-like tail.

We submit our bird sightings to eBird (ebird.org), a worldwide citizen-science database of bird sightings managed by Cornell University. We use the eBird app to report what we see, and there's a related app called BirdsEye that maps recent eBird sightings of each species. Because the Gulf of California is a big place, our sightings are often the only ones for a particular spot. Check out the BirdsEye maps below for sightings over the past 4 weeks of Black Storm-Petrel, Craveri's Murrelet, and Red-billed Tropicbird in the Gulf. Because this date range happens to include both our southbound trip to Baja Sur on Feb 18–19 and our northbound return to Sonora on Mar 9–10, the lines of red dots are miniature maps of our crossings! (You may notice that our route does not trend straight up or down; this is because we navigate on a magnetic, not geographic, heading: 000º magnetic north is a few degrees to the east of 000º true or geographic north. The difference between the two is known as magnetic declination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_declination.)

We both look happier in this selfie than we did on our southbound crossing!

Lasagna and steamed broccoli for dinner.

Sunset in the middle of the Gulf of CA.

Chartplotter showing our location at 1:00 a.m.: about 25 nautical miles from San Carlos/Guaymas, Sonora.

The moon rose
like a melon slice,
right on time.

Sunrise arrival at San Carlos, recognizable by the twin peaks of Tetakawi
(Cerro de las Tetas) at left.

Back in our home port, greeted by a pesky fly (or did it
stow away with us from Baja?).

As of March 18, Cilantro is sitting in a slip at Marina San Carlos, and we are home in southeast Arizona. We will be back down in April and may take a short trip up the Sonoran coast, followed by prepping the boat for haul-out and dry storage for the summer. If the opportunity (and inspiration) arises, we'll update the blog. Thanks for reading!

Hunting Borrego, Steinbeck-style, on Isla Carmen, Baja California Sur

In 1940, novelist John Steinbeck and biologist Ed Ricketts were invited on a bighorn sheep hunt at Puerto Escondido, south of Loreto on the Gulf coast of Baja California Sur. They were partway through their 4000-mile biological expedition along Baja and in the Sea of Cortez, and they agreed to join the hunt. Their hosts were three local men—a rancher, a schoolteacher, and a customs official. Two Indians led the group up a canyon in the nearby Sierra La Giganta, easily outpacing (on foot) the five men riding mules and a horse. While the Americans and Mexicans relaxed in camp, the Indians went out with a rifle to find bighorns (borrego cimarrón). They returned some hours later with a handful of droppings, which they carefully divvied up among the several parties. The gun had not been used, but it hardly seemed to bother anyone.

The glow of sunrise and a full moon setting on the Sierra La Giganta, BCS.
You can see the shadows of Steinbeck Canyon between the moon and the
left edge of the photo.

Steinbeck writes, “Our hosts…had taught us the best of all ways to go hunting, and we shall never use any other. We have, however, made one slight improvement on their method. We shall not take a gun, thereby obviating the last remote possibility of having the hunt cluttered up with game. We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors….For ourselves, we have mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect borrego dropping. And where another man can say, ‘There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead and I am alive, and there is his head to prove it,’ we can say, ‘There was an animal, and for all we know there still is and here is the proof of it. He was very healthy when we last heard of him’” (The Log from the Sea of Cortez, pp. 137–8).

We did not get to the now-famous Steinbeck Canyon outside Puerto Escondido on either of our Baja Sur trips. We did, however, visit Isla Carmen just offshore, and in March 2016, we conducted our own bighorn search, Steinbeck-style, on the island. At 37,000 acres, Isla Carmen is the largest island in the Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto, but it is privately owned, with a healthy (imported?) herd of borrego cimarrón that are managed for hunting. Two rams and a ewe had been sighted on a ridgetop from the anchorage before we arrived, so we knew we had a chance.

Map showing Isla Carmen (center) off the Gulf
coast of Baja California Sur.

Anchorage at Puerto Ballandra, Isla Carmen, BCS.

We took a scrambling hike over ridgetops and following diffuse dirt trails. We hiked the dry, gravelly, desert interior of the island. We found flowering brittlebush, ocotillo, agave, cholla cactus, and palo blanco trees. We found intriguing rocky canyons and high points with views of the sea. 

Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) on Isla Carmen, BCS.

Curtis hiking the dry Sonoran Desert interior of Isla Carmen, BCS.

Ocotillo (Fouquieria diguetii) on Isla Carmen, BCS.

Agave flowers on Isla Carmen, BCS.

Peninsular cholla (Cylindropuntia alcahes var. alcahes) on
Isla Carmen, BCS.

Palo blanco tree (Lysiloma candidum) on Isla Carmen, BCS.

Sue hiking down a dry waterfall canyon on Isla Carmen, BCS.

The small estero at Puerto Ballandra, Isla Carmen, BCS.

Despite the hours of hiking, we didn't see any bighorns. We did, however, find abundant ovine evidence. Here is our trophy:

Evidence of desert bighorn sheep (borrego cimarrón) on Isla
Carmen, BCS.

WHALES! Gulf of California off Baja California Sur, 2016 and 2018

We never posted our whale photos from 2016, and we added only a few in 2018, so this post is a combination of both trips. (Caveat: all our marine IDs are our best amateur guesses informed by field guides and online sources.)

LEAP DAY: 29 FEBRUARY 2016

Every 4 years, people born on February 29 can celebrate their real birthday. For them, leap day seems only fair, but for the rest of us, it’s a bonus day. For a variety of reasons, on our 2016 trip along the Baja California Sur coast, we chose leap day to start making our slow way back north, having been cruising southward for a month.

We departed from tiny Ensenada la Ballena around midday and have been motoring in light to no wind for a few hours. A queen butterfly outpaces us, flying faster than the 5.9 knots that our 52-hp Yanmar diesel is making. A single manta ray ghosts carefully past us, just at the surface, its large pectoral fins pointed south. The weather is hot and still, so Sue is sitting up forward in the shade of our bulky mast, scribbling and rescribbling notes for a blog post. Curtis is in the cockpit looking at maps on the iPad and gazing around. Cilantro is steering herself (on autopilot) toward Los Candeleros (the candlesticks), a sequence of three tiny islands.

Manta ray off Isla Danzante, BCS. 

HUMPBACK WHALES

“Whale!” shouts Curtis, pointing west toward the Baja mainland. “Spouting and sounding!” Sue puts down her notepad. Curtis drops the boat speed to idle and joins Sue up forward. We scan the spot, nearly 2 miles away, with binoculars. Unbelievably, a humpback whale suddenly breaches—surges half or more of its body straight up out of the sea—and falls back onto the surface. Then another one comes hurtling up, and another, and another. As we sit and watch, alternately mesmerized and shouting, as many as 10 humpback whales hurl themselves skyward repeatedly, singly or two and three at a time, thundering back down with a smack that we can’t hear over the distance and our engine noise but imagine we hear anyway.

This spectacular display lasts less than one minute but feels like thirty. As we continue watching, Curtis gets his camera out and the whales begin flipper slapping, extending their exceedingly long flippers straight up out of the water and slapping them down like giant paddles. From the length of the flippers (which can be up to a third of their body length) we can discern two or more larger whales plus several smaller ones, maybe mothers with their year-old calves.

Humpback whale flipper slapping.

Humpback whale flipper slapping.

Later we are lucky again: another humpback (or two?) breaches. This time we are much closer and get videos and stills of the action.

Humpback whale breaching.

Humpback whale breaching - sequence of 7 photos.

Humpback whale breaching, photo 2.

Humpback whale breaching, photo 3.

Humpback whale breaching, photo 4.

Humpback whale breaching, photo 5.

Humpback whale breaching, photo 6.

Humpback whale breaching, photo 7.

Curtis videotaping whale action with his superzoom camera.

We celebrate the excitement with some chilled bubbly—a couple of cans of seltzer—and motor northward. The wind is so light that we don’t have to seek out an anchorage with protection from the winter-typical north or northwest winds, so we head for Caleta Candeleros Chico, a tiny north-facing cove with room for a single boat. 

BLUE WHALES

Before we get there, however, we spot more whales, this time out to the east of us in deeper water. Again they are more than 2 miles away, but with calm seas and 10-power binoculars, we are able to see vertical columnar spouts, long grayish backs, and no visible dorsal fins. Hmm. Sperm whales? No, sperm whales have a forward-angling spout. Gray whales? Probably not—they would be smaller and have a series of bumps along the back. We watch for several minutes and finally see one that shows a tiny dorsal fin far from the blowhole. Blue whales!

We saw blue whales on several more days, a few of them close enough that we could see the vertical spouting, mottled gray coloration, and tiny dorsal fin only appearing after the blowhole has submerged. See the 3 sequential photos below. 

Blue whale showing vertical spout.

Blue whale back, with blowhole submerged but no dorsal fin visible yet.

Tiny dorsal fin of blue whale, visible only after the blowhole and much of the back has submerged. 

Blue whales rarely raise their flukes when diving, but...one of them did while Curtis was videotaping.

Blue whale flukes, rarely raised for a deep dive.

SPERM WHALE?

On our return crossing to Sonora in March 2016, we saw a solitary large whale that we thought could be a sperm whale, mostly because its spout was strong strong and at a 45-degree angle. But we didn't see much more of it (and it was going away, of course!). In particular, we couldn't make sense of the bulgy head shape behind the blowhole. Here are our best photos. Let us know if you can identify it!

Sperm whale? Gulf of CA off Sonora coast.

Sperm whale? Gulf of CA off Sonora coast.

Sperm whale? Gulf of CA off Sonora coast.

Sperm whale? Gulf of CA off Sonora coast.

FEBRUARY–MARCH 2018

Surprisingly, on our 2018 trip, we didn't see any blue whales. We saw two leaping mobula rays and one leaping manta ray, and a couple of entertaining humpback whales. This was a much shorter trip, so probably that's the major factor, but it might be that we were just very lucky to see as much as we did in 2016. Differences in weather, sea temperature, and food resources might also have played their parts. 

HUMPBACK WHALES

Two humpback whales put on a great show for us as we motored north from Bahia Candeleros to Honeymoon Cove on Isla Danzante. They started by breaching (shooting out of the sea) sideways, then flipper slapping, and finally lobtailing (raising their tails straight up and then slapping them down). The seas were choppy, the boat was moving up and down, and the whales weren't very close, so Curtis had to work hard to get any zoomed video at all, out of which we selected a few frames of a tail slap. Photographed or not, humpback whales are the most entertaining cetaceans we've seen (although bowriding and leaping dolphins come close).

Humpback whale raising its tail.

Humpback whale tail coming down sideways.

Humpback whale tail splash.

SHORT-FINNED PILOT WHALES

On our crossing of the Gulf to return to Sonora, just at dusk we saw a pod of about 12 whales that we are pretty sure were short-finned pilot whales! They were small (15–20 feet long) and dark-colored, with wide-based hooked dorsal fins and an awkward-looking bulge ahead of their flukes as they submerged between breaths. Too dark and distant for photos, but through binoculars they were exciting.

Short-finned pilot whale [Image courtesy NOAA:
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/short-finned-pilot-whale]