This is a story about whale sightings that didn’t happen, and then the whale sightings that did. The Universe taketh away with one hand and giveth with the other.  It’s also a cautionary tale for cruisers planning to sail down the west coast of the United States. If you are sailing off our southern coast during the winter, you are smack in the Grey Whale migration route. The further south and the closer to shore you get,  and the closer you are to their calving grounds, the more likely you are to both see and encounter these incredible animals. We were dead excited to see us some whales and live to tell about it.

The beach at Campo Media, one of the best beach walks.

You know those videos on Youtube that show people in pangas viewing baby Grey Whales in their San Ignacio lagoon nursery down here on the Baja peninsula? Those videos have sucked me in. In the Pacific Northwest we are constantly reminded to stay far away from whales (although sometimes I fear the whales have not read the brochure). There are good reasons for this we do follow those rules.  However, in Mexico during calving season you can experience close encounters of the whale kind, initiated by the baby whales and their mamas, under the guidance of licensed guides. WHAT? YOU GET TO ACTUALLY PET BABY WHALES AND SCRATCH THEIR HUGE CHINS??  (If you’re lucky. No guarantee, right?)  I do love me some whales, in spite some recent encounters I’ll tell you about later.  I want to do this baby whale trip so bad.

The Mexican government has done a pretty good job of protecting their whale breeding grounds and at the same time encouraging ecotourism, which helps the local economy. I like to encourage and support those efforts and I also want to see baby whales. I’m sure there are environmentally concerned individuals who take umbrage with that, but in spite of my environmentalist leanings,  I think overall these kinds of activities are good for people and make them more likely to appreciate the animals in our care on the planet. While I wouldn’t go around touching other populations of whales and understand the pressures that whale watching tours put on whale populations, this specific area and population of whales seems to react differently to human interaction than others. This has become a bucket list item for me.

So we planned a stop at the town of Abreojos, across Bahia Ballenas from Laguna San Ignacio, the protected baby whale nursery.  Here’s where guide books will really let you down. We looked in our cruising reference books and according to what we read there, it should have been the work of a moment or two to find a licensed guide to take us into the refuge at Laguna San Ignacio. Word to the wise: Going by the guide book will raise false expectations, even if the book is very recently revised and updated (like 2017).  We encounter this fact over and over.  Sometimes, many times actually, you just can’t go places by boat, even if they are on the water. The infrastructure isn’t there.

Mike discussing options with a panga driver.

One of our guide books specifically mentioned that the anchorage at Campo Medio,  which is across Bahia Ballenas from the lagoon, is the “park and ride” for pangas to take you across to view the whales. That sounds easy, no? Another guide book mentions that a side trip to the lagoon is a ‘must do’. Nowhere do the guidebooks mention that you actually need to go, by land, to the town of San Ignacio, which is about 70 miles from the anchorage in Abreojos, far across the big Bahia Ballenas (Bay of Whales). There are no guides located in Abreojos during the viewing season. They are all at the whale camp in the lagoon. I was able to contact the author of that last guidebook and she explained all that to me.

We spent three days trying to find out how to get out to see those whales. As is usually the case, the locals want to be helpful. We asked the panga fishermen in town and they had no advice except one guy told us to get on Channel 21 and hail the Lagoon Boat. That would be great, if anyone were actually listening on Channel 21. One guy we asked told us we could take our own boat into the lagoon. We know that is not legal. It’s also really risky. Too risky even with our dinghy. Finally we talked to some gringo home owners who live at Campo Medio and were told that the only way to get to the lagoon was to leave our boat there (unattended? Um, no.) and take a bus into the town of San Ignacio. We’d probably have to stay overnight. They had never seen anyone “embark from (their) anchored boat onto (the) park guide’s panga”, and that make sense considering it’s about 18 miles across the bay to the lagoon entrance. These people are locals. They know how to get to see the whales.

After I contacted the author of the second book, we finally gave up. Perhaps when the books were published these things were true, but considering one of them was revised in 2017, I kind of expected it to be fairly current. Maybe we did it wrong and I’m certainly willing to entertain that idea, but we tried pretty hard. I’m putting this out there for any other cruisers who are coming down the coast expecting to be able to charter a panga to go into the San Ignacio Whale Park. I still want to go to the whale park. But I’ll have to go by land like everyone else. If you contact some of the ecotourism places well enough in advance, maybe you can arrange for a panga to come out and get you for a fee. Had we not thought, based on the information we had, that we could secure a panga locally, we would have made advance reservations that way.

Beach walk at Abreojos, Bahia Ballenas

Anyhoo, we gave up and decided to do our own whale watching. We’d seen many, many whales on the down the coast to Bahia Ballenas and we knew they entered the lagoon from the bay. So off we went to do find us some whales to watch. We sailed 12 miles across the bay to a point close to the mouth of the lagoon and anchored for the night with 10 feet of water under the keel. It was dead calm or this would have been untenable as it’s completely exposed in all directions. I had hoped we could splash the dinghy and perhaps land on one of the sandy spits and walk around, but the surf was simply too rough to even consider it. Dead calm. High surf. Got it.

The lagoon entrance is completely surrounded by shoal water and surf. The chart really doesn’t do the dangers justice. There are big waves breaking on shore even on a very calm day. If felt to me like there were breakers everywhere. We stayed well clear. Studying the chart we could see two areas that looked likely to be a ‘whale highway’ into the lagoon. One was behind Point Malcom. It looked like we could anchor there off the point and we were betting that whales would come by there on their way to and from the lagoon. With the shallow water there, we would not be in danger of a whale jumping on our boat, even if they got close to us. (For the Literature majors among our readers, that’s known as ‘foreshadowing’. )

A spy hopper, hopping a safe distance from our boat. Can you see the breaking seas behind this whale? This photo was taken with my 300mm lens. On a moving boat. So it’s a little grainy.

And so it proved. We motor sailed down to Point Malcom, watching whales breaching and spy hopping on the other side of the surf in the protected waters of the lagoon entrance. It was enchanting. We’ve certainly seen our share of whales in our lives up north, but nothing like this show. We anchored off Point Malcolm on a sandy bottom in 16 feet under the keel and sat back to watch. If you go there and decide to anchor, realize it’s a rolly anchorage even in calm weather. It’s the price you pay for the safe front row seat.

After a peaceful, if rolly, night, we pulled anchor at 1100 and began a slow and gentle downwind sail out of the bay. I got out a puzzle and started working on it in the cockpit. Mike got out his fishing gear. He caught two small tuna of different kinds and a magnificent Dorado, as beautiful as if it had been made of pure gold. He threw them all back this time. It was so pleasant, just ghosting along under main and foresail at about 3 knots and not worrying about making time.

And then, the end of a perfect day came in the form of two distracted Grey Whales. We were both in the cockpit and at about 1745, a Grey appeared about 10 feet off the starboard bow and swam under the boat. “Oh my god there’s a whale right there!” shouted Mike. By the time I turned my head it was slipping underneath the boat.  It quickly surfaced just to port and breached all the way out of the water. I swear that whale took wing. We can’t agree on exactly how far this animal was from our port bow, but we both agree it was WAY too close for comfort.

There is no way to adequately express the terror/awe/shock/Come-to-Jesus moment that happens when a creature that large jumps way too close to your boat. So many thoughts happen simultaneously. Unfortunately I had little time to record those because just as we were wondering if we had, indeed, peed our pants, the whale’s friend surfaced on the starboard bow and began a log roll under the boat. We promplyt hit him. Yes, we hit a whale. We’re minding our own business gliding along at about 4 knots and suddenly if feels like we’ve hit the dock a little too hard. I know we wanted to see whales, but COME ON!

In a very lucky break, the breaching whale fell away rather than toward the boat. Otherwise, we would have blubber on our stanchions and whale blood on our bow and I might never actually get over that. I’m pretty sure we didn’t hurt the whale, and I hope he learned his lesson about getting mixed up with boats. Actually, we felt really bad about it, even though we could not have avoided it. These whales didn’t show themselves until they were right up our bilge. Both of us were shaken pretty badly, but of course, me more than Mike. He was like, ‘Cool! We hit a whale!’ and I was more ‘Oh shit! We hit a whale!’. He just doesn’t take these things as hard as I do. I wasn’t sure what to feel worse about: Possibly hurting the animal, or possibly hurting our boat. I can tell you we are both real grateful for our thick fiberglass hull. At the end of the day, no harm done, thanks be to cruising karma, a strong boat, and a blubbery whale body.

Since then seeing whales has been a little less exciting but we’ll get over it.  When we were anchored off San Carlos del Cabo a Humpback whale breached pretty close. Not close enough to be a danger at all, but my first thought was ‘Just stay where you are, buddy. That’s enough of that kind of frivolous and unnecessary jumping’. When we were sailing from San Carlos del Cabo to Los Frailes I saw a Humpback feeding ahead. I changed course 30 degrees, wind be damned. I guess you might say we take even more evasive actions now when we see them, and I am ok with running the engine at night so they can hear us. No harm done except to my sense of excitement to be sharing the ocean with these amazing, but very, very large, creatures. I still hope to someday see both a Blue Whale and a Sperm Whale, but I’d like to keep my distance, thanks. Seeing through our binoculars is fine with me.

Galapagos anchored at Campo Media. Great anchorage.

We are currently in La Paz, having finally made it that far, stocking up, getting fuel and water, and enjoying a few fish tacos. We’ll be here about a week. Then it’s off probably to this side of Isla Espiritu Santo. I’d like to swim with some sea lions. I hear you have to pay to do that, too. We’ll post again when we have good cell service.

Have you ever hit a whale? Has a whale jumped on you? We are ready to hear your stories now.

S/V Galapagos, Out.

After 7 weeks of land travel in Ecuador and back in Tacoma (December through January), we arrived back at our slip in Ensenada ready to rumble. Our plan had been to spend two days getting Galapagos ready to go, but that was, of course, ridiculous. We spent 5 days, one of them doing almost nothing because we were in grief at the loss of our beloved dog, Skippy. The boat was filthy from diesel exhaust from the cruise ships and had to be scrubbed on the outside and lightly cleaned inside. We had National Park permits to buy, a Zarpe to get from the Port Captain, and an alternator to install. While I provisioned at the local Costco and supermarkets, Mike installed his new Balmer 100 amp alternator for the engine.

Approaching the east side of Guadeloupe Island, the volcanic origins of this land are apparent in the many red cone shaped hills.

The 60 amp alternator we had wasn’t really powerful enough to charge the batteries efficiently and after going round and round about choices, Mike decided to just do things the ‘easy’ way and put this 100 amp Balmer model on. It was supposed to be quick and easy: take off the old one and replace it with this shinier, more powerful model. We picked it up at Fisheries Supply in Seattle while we were home and managed to get it over the border with no extra fees.

Nothing ever really goes as planned and so it came to pass that the belt that came with his refit kit was too short. He needed a different belt. So we adventured around Ensenada looking for the right belt. After a number of false starts, we finally found a place that sold alternator belts, called ‘bandas’ in Mexico, and he bought 4. You can’t have too many alternator belts. Many thanks to Linda and Bill Hoge-Pattison, cruisers who ferried us around Ensenada in their truck in search of good beer and bandas. So we left Ensenada with a shiny new alternator, extra belts, our Mexican National Park passes, fishing licenses, and a packed fridge. Onward to Guadeloupe Island.

By the way fellow cruisers. If you are traveling down to the Sea of Cortez you will need a National Park permit in order to anchor and go ashore at any of the protected areas. The Mexican government has just made this easier for you if you have an Android device. You can use this app to get the permit, which costs an earth shattering 350 pesos, about $18.50 US dollars for a year. You’ll get an email confirming your purchase. Then you can print it out if you want a hard copy. Or do what we did: go to an office supply store where they can print it for you in color for 5 pesos. They should have an IOS version at some point. Anyhow… we needed this permit in order to anchor at Guadeloupe, not that anyone cared we were there.

Most people don’t bother to sail to Guadeloupe Island. It’s about 150 or so miles offshore and isn’t really ‘cruiser friendly’. Most cruisers tend to hug the coast.  But it is a perfect run with wind and swell coming from the north and west: a long tack out to the island, and then a long tack back toward the Baja peninsula to either Turtle Bay, or, in our case, Asuncion. And thus it proved. We had an idyllic passage; one for the cruising brochure. And the island is completely stunning, even though we didn’t go ashore.

It’s an unforgiving coastline even in the best of weather.

Going ashore there is by permission only. The Mexican Navy has an outpost on the island and it’s likely we would have received permission to go ashore had we asked. But the wind and seas were fairly big while we were there and going ashore would have meant a rough dinghy landing as well as leaving Galapagos alone. We decided against it. Sometimes disappointing decisions have to be made in the name of safety.

Here’s the Navy facility on the island. We could have called them for permission to land, but decided against it.

If all the passages we make could be like the one to Guadeloupe Island, I’d probably be glad to make passages. Here are some of my notes from my travel journal. Notes in parentheses are explanatory notes.

“ February 4, 2018   1830

Mike is below trying to rest and suddenly our little space ship is heeling and going 6.5 knots. The ride is no longer pleasant and I look at the compass heading. It should be about 200 degrees and instead reads 250. WTF? (My way of saying ‘what the fuck’? I talk like a sailor in my head.) Why isn’t Carly (our windvane) doing her job? I tweak her steering cables this way and that and get her back on course, but she quickly steers us upwind again. I tweak again and still she can’t hold the course. I think that the mizzen sail is blanketing Carly’s little red sail too much and she cannot read the wind. I hear Mike below attending to things we forgot to put away, now shifted or on the floor. He comes above and finds me at the wheel trying to keep us on course as we fly blindly through the night. He suggests letting out the mizzen, which requires him to go onto the aft deck and release the sheet. Honestly this sail is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth but we don’t take it down at night, or at least not unless we have to. He plays games with Carly, getting the same response as I do. He agress that the mizzen sail may be the culprit. We decide to use the autopilot instead of the wind pilot. (The auto pilot uses electricity to steer us, the wind pilot uses the wind to steer.) I suddenly realize we have either forgotten to name our autopilot, or I’ve forgotten its name.

It was fun going 6.5 knots, but in the dark 3-4 knots is good by me. If I’m going to hit something, I’d like to be going slow. We talk about how we both fantasize about getting rid of the mizzen sail altogether since we actually rarely sail with it. The aft deck was so much nicer without it when we were doing repairs to the deck there. We loved it.

2/5/18 0200-0600 shift

No sleep to speak of during my off hours. I lay in Mike’s bunk on the leeward side of the boat but the motion is still too much. By the time I finally decide to move to the midship cabin, it’s too late to get rest. Note to self: just ALWAYS make up the berth in the midship cabin for night passages. Regardless. Just do it. With the earplugs in there is no sound, no light, only motion. I check my clock at 1:22 AM. 25 minutes before the alarm. May as well get up. Make coffee.

I emerge to a moon filled sea. I it were not for the ever-present condensation at night I would be able to see the water from my perch on the downwind side of the cockpit, legs stretched out under a blanket. At least I can see the water.

I would love to have crew on passages like this. People always seem suprised when they find out it’s just the two of us aboard. But why wouldn’t it be? We never think twice about that, really, but mostly because, well, who would we ask? We would have to know the person very well. Most people we know would have to be on a schedule. How would that work? I mean, we left a full 4 days later than we had planned from Ensenada. Andrew (our son) is the only other sailor we know who we’d feel comfortable with right off the mark. But it would really be nice to have another person to share watches with. I just get so dog tired.

There is literally nothing out here. We are doing about 5.3 knots, dead on target. Almost too good to be true; we are still sailing.

These colors, these lines, these forms. Stunning.

3:30 AM and I’ve played enough games of Solitaire. My mind begins to drift to how I’d like to live after this adventuring part is over. (Long rambling narrative about my fantasy house is left out here for your convenience and attention span.)

2/5/2018

Slept hard from 0600-0830. Not enough, but I had to get up to use the head. Winds have lightened a bit and we are making 4 knots at 193 degrees. Swells are a bit larger and the water is mixed smaller swells on the surface, making conditions pretty rough down below. Last night I was sitting beside the autopilot and must have accidentally hit the ‘standby’ button (which pauses the autopilot). So Galapagos was heading upwind again to 260 degrees and the ride was rough, feeling like the wind had picked up suddenly. We were heeling over and going close to 8 knots, crashing into the seas. After spilling wind from the sails and fretting that we had not reduced sail by enough I noticed the compass heading. Oy! It was a much better ride after that got sorted. I should always check the compass heading first when something feels wrong. It’s a lot easier that way. We are 94 miles from our waypoint at the south end of Guadeloupe Island.

1645 pm

I had a nap in the midship cabin. We are still making about 4 knots. We had to slow the boat down after motoring a bit so we wouldn’t arrive at the anchorage during darkness.

I forget how this kind of thing beats up my body. Walking is so hard, getting flung around, especially below. I can wedge into that little cabin berth and not really feel the movement of the boat too much. But as soon as I try to sit up I get flung out of the bed. Also the nights are so long and dark. I’m out of shape and not used to the boat again yet. That makes it harder for me this time out. The swells are big and it seems like they are right on the beam no matter what we do. No wildlife except for 1 diving bird who tried to get Mike’s fishing lure. He reeled it in to keep the bird off it. No fish, which is just as well.

As the sun goes down I notice the deck light on the mast is dangling by its wires. A halyard has been left unsecured at the bitter end and has wrapped around the light, pulling it loose. How did that happen? Well, that’s a project. The wind is dying and the mainsail is flapping. I change the heading a bit in order to catch whatever wind we can. We have 3.3 knots and I don’t want to motor all night. I am glad to have only one sail to manage right now.

Ruh roh.. How’d that happen? The light is dangling by one wire. The fixture seems fine. A quick climb up the mast while at anchor retrieved the bulb and prevented it a shattering fall to the deck.

Feb 6, 2018 0700ish

I see hazy land close by through the port of my bunk. I have overslept because my battery on my phone died and Mike took pity on a tired sailor and let me sleep. We are at Guadeloupe Island. We are here!  Stark volcanic cones rise close to the water, reddish hills against the unrelieved greys of the rest of the land. The water is almost glassy on this side of the island. We motored slowly through part of the night to arrive at daylight and give ourselves a break from the unrelenting swells.

As we travel  down the lee of this island Mike and I both can hear what sounds like music, or people maybe. Likely it is unseen seals, but it does give rise to stories about sea people or islands that sing. Sounds echo off the cliffs and it sounds sometimes like children playing or calling to one another. There are seals but I cannot see what kind. There are calls that are different than what I’ve heard before. They blend into the rocks so well that the sounds seem to come from nowhere and the whole place has a spooky feel.

By 9:00 AM we are anchored in Caleta Mepomene. Indifferent to our needs for rest, as we came around the corner of Morro Sur the wind hit our flat protected water with big gusts. Anchoring conditions are not ideal but Mike needs sleep and I hear the calls of seals on the beach. This is elephant seal habitat and I see large grey beings blending in on the rocks. I hear the grunt of an elephant seal.  We drop anchor in 26 feet of prussian blue water and let out 150 feet of chain, plus another 25 feet for the snubber. The anchor sets immediately, firmly, on a flat bottom. We are well out of the thundering surf and hope the wind will die down as predicted.

I want to go sleep but I am too excited about being here. I stay in the cockpit and watch wildlife and incredible scenery. I think there are fur seals on the beach (in addition to the elephant seals), and two large porpoises laze their way through the anchorage surfacing slowly right behind the boat. They are not dolphins. They move slowly, like the harbor porpoises in our home waters. There are only two of them, and they stick together. I wish I had a cetacean field guide. Put that on the list for when we get home. The seals call to each other in this high, eerie voice that sounds like the wailing of lost souls.

Now the sun has gone down and it’s pitch black out here. Nothing but the stars, the sound of the earth breathing its wind, and the sounds of seals calling to each other in their wailing song. If it were warmer, I’d sleep on the deck just to hear them calling through the night.”

Hello cutie!

Finishing this up at anchor just outside San Jose Del Cabo. We’ve reached the end of the peninsula! A milestone to be sure.

Listen to the spooky sounds of the seals calling to each other on the beach at Caleta Mepomene on Guadeloupe island. Turn your volume all the way up. Sound is best about halfway through.

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Can you see his little ears sticking out?

S/V Galapagos, out.