Ensenada to Isla Cedros

Passage: Ensenada to Isla Cedros
Travel time: 72 hours
Engine time: 13.4 hour
Average speed: 3.62 knots
Approximate distance traveled: 350 nautical miles

It was an amazing passage with a beautiful moon/planet rise and set every night and wonderful winds all but one night. We learned that reflection of stars on the water = no wind... After this long night, the next afternoon as we were enjoying the warm sunshine still waiting for the wind, we had reached a decision point- do we head to shore just after Sacramento Reef and look for some surf off Punta San Carlos, or do we continue on? As we weren't going to make it to the anchorage before sunset and the swell was little to none we decided to push on. This was a great decision as the winds filled in for another beautiful (although foggy) night of sailing. The next morning dawned with Isla Cedros a speck on the horizon. Winds and sea were following perfectly for us to try our double heads'l set up. This means we had the Genoa (100%) poled out on on the starboard and the drifter (150%) out on the port. We flew at around 5 knots toward Isla Cedros and set anchor in the northeastern anchorage at around 2pm.

Since then, we headed a bit down the coast and anchored off an arroyo up which we had a planned morning hike. But unfortunately, the forecast offshore NE winds that didn't affect us 50 miles off shore, still kicked up quite a swell that bashed us around all night and so the next morning we made our way back up coast to the safer northeast anchorage, set a bow-n-stern anchor into the swell and caught up on sleep while rolling at anchor in the sun.

With a low moving through and no winds, we've proceeded to spend 3 nights here enjoying watching pinniped and fish swimming in the clear waters and listening to the constant cacophony of the numerous seal colonies along the shore, the most boisterous being the elephant seals. Yesterday we bartered with local fishermen exchanging chocolate for lobsters and then hiked up to the lighthouse and visited the close fishing village on the north end currently containing 9 colorful fishermen. Although cooking the lobsters was traumatic for Shawn, today, fat and happy and full of lobster (yes, Grizzly too), we plan to start moving down the coast. Over the next few days we'll slowly work our way to Turtle Bay, approximately 50 nautical miles southeast on mainland. Now you all know as much as we do.