11/7/2011 -- SJDC - Los Frailes‏

We spent a quiet evening at anchor outside the harbor entrance...I must have been tired because I fell asleep about the time my head hit the pillow...woke up later with reading glasses on and the light shining...

It's about 0800 and we're getting ready to get underway for Los Frailes...it's only about 5 hours away if we can make good six knots...the wind is out of the west as I write this, but it has been slowly veering south...there is another anchorage just on the NW side of Cabo Frailes if the wind continues to veer.  There's a reef up at the cape that we hope to dive on, so the second anchorage would even be preferable, if it's tenable. 


Part 2: 

We're definitely paying our dues to King Neptune...we had 15-20 knots on the nose with 4-6 foot wind waves the whole way...normally we can cruise at 6.5 knots at about 1500 rpm but today we had to push it up to 1800 to maintain 4.5 knots and every so often we'd hit combined waves that would knock our -ick in the -irt and we'd drop to about 2 knots...such is life in the SoC (Sea of Cortez)...

We're anchored about 300 yards from shore in about 30 feet of 80+ degree water in the lee of Cabo Frailes...with a pristine halfmoon beach running about as far as the eye can see...Of in the distance I can see some campers and a small fish camp...there are about half a dozen cruising boats already anchored and I expect more before the day is done...it's nasty out there.

We're probably going to stay here a couple of days and check out the diving and wait for the wind to settle down.  Joe tells me that the normal pattern in the Sea (at least from his experience in San Felipe) is for the wind to blow hard for two-three days and then have a week or so of calm...we're waiting for the calm!

There is reportedly great dive spot on the other side of the Cape, but with the wind blowing this hard, we're going to have to wait for it die down before we venture out in the RIB...