Leaving Mag Bay 1.28.08

We've had a great couple days in Mag Bay. We re-anchored per Gregorio, the port captain's recommendation and are currently awaiting his arrival with some fuel for us and then we're outta here, on our way to Cabo.

On Saturday, Gregorio panga'd ourselves, Bob, Louise, & Scuppers (their dog), Scott & Cindy from Beach house, the Catamaran, and Artie & Marv from Odyssey, a 44 Peterson, over to Puerto San Carlos, the town nearby. We arrived around 9am and walked the city, purchased groceries, & then came back around 2pm. The city was very nice, they have a HUGE fully constructed whale carcass just near the plaza in town and they are getting ready for the whale festival that starts next week. Supposedly the whales
come into this bay as well to birth and they are preparing for lots of tourists. On the beach, very near to where we are anchored is a camp that looks to be a central terminal for ferrying the sightseers back and forth. We are in a bit of a time crunch as Chad needs to get back home so we will not be staying for the festival. The folks on Beach house will & Odyssey is still contemplating it. While in town we stopped at a hotel/restaurant called Hotel Alcatraz. The name may seem scary but inside
was a beautiful patio where we sat & enjoyed the afternoon. I spoke to the gal at reception who was also helping us with our order and she allowed me to view one of the rooms in the hotel. Very cute - a bed, table, & bathroom and $65/day. I was amazed as I watched housekeeping with the laundry - they washed the sheets, then hung them to dry out on the roof of one of the buildings. We found an Internet connection there and in about 40 minutes, I was able to upload all 75 photos of our whale watching
experience and the video. I hope they came out OK! Oh, and the 75 photos were only the exceptional ones! Between myself, Chad, & Bob we took about 300 that day…hahaha. We spoke to some Americans that came into the internet café as well that were staying at a hotel and went out whale watching earlier. They said they had seen a couple and were so excited - until I showed them our pictures & video! They were also amazed. We were walking around town looking for the panaderia (bakery) when we happened
upon the port captain's house. Louise & I hung out there hoping we didn't have to lug all of the groceries we were carrying and as luck would have it….we were able to load the groceries into the panga and he drove us to the beach, where the others were waiting. We invited Bob & Louise over for dinner and had a great salad, chicken, & potato dinner. We had planned to play games but ended up viewing the whale photos & video and chatting! They were taken back to their boat and we called it a night!

Sunday Chad headed over to EZ Lady to assist them with some chores and Michael and I jumped in the dinghy. There is an estuary just to the left of where we are anchored and we had been told that it was a nice jungle cruise. The estuary was very nice - we saw several birds and the mangroves were beautiful. We met another couple along the way, John & Linda on a 47' Nordhavn (a beautiful powerboat that came in the day before) called Seabird. They are from Santa Barbara and just purchased the boat
2 ½ weeks ago! This is their shakedown cruise and then they're heading up to Alaska and then over to the East Coast and to the Caribbean. I told Linda I was very jealous as I watched her on her elliptical exercise machine on deck! She invited us over but we weren't able to get over there. They'll be in Cabo, in fact they're leaving here about 2-3 hours before us so I hope to catch up with them there. I'd love to take a look at the boat. After our jungle cruise we came back to the boat as we
had forgotten our shoes & my camera battery had died and restocked and headed back to the beach where we walked across the peninsula to the Bahia Santa Maria side. The folks from Beach house joined us on the trek. It was a 20 minute or so walk across sand dunes littered with tons of shells. My mom would have had a backache from bending over so much to see them! There is fabled to be sand dollars the size of frisbee's and the beach is nicknamed 'Frisbee Beach'. We didn't find any that size, but
did find some about 6" and picked up about 6 of them, along with some other beautiful shells. There were so many clam shells - large ones about 8-10" or so and other shells that I wanted to pick up! The colors in the shells were magnificent - even in an overcast sky! I resorted to taking photos as the boat just wouldn't hold all I wanted to take back. There were also tons of whale bones & dolphin head carcasses which were also amazingly beautiful. The only downside to the beach was there was
a ton of trash on the beach, almost as much trash as shells. And there was an algae in the water in one section that turned it a weird burgundy color and stunk to high heaven. We hiked back to the dinghy and came back to the boat. Scott from Beach house came over to our boat and gave us a tutorial on Get Fax, the weatherfax system of Winlink 2000 (which is what I'm using to send these blogs and how we get e-mail over the SSB) as I've had difficulty getting the weatherfaxes and have been requesting
them over e-mail, which takes up a ton of our allotted time for e-mails. Anyways - he was exceptional at instructing us how to use it. He was instrumental in setting up a PMBO station at California Yacht Club so he knows a lot about the entire system and showed me many items I did not know. In turn, I showed him how to edit his videos as he has taken a ton of video also and hasn't put any on the website yet. Check out his website - www.svbeachhouse.com.

We had a nice dinner and another movie!

This morning we're waiting for Gregorio to bring us some fuel and as soon as we're finished, we're heading to Cabo. It should be about a 23 hour trip and we hope to get out of here before noon.

That is what's been happening with us! I hope everyone is well out there. More to follow…
Rene