Mag Bay 1.25.08

Hooray - we've arrived in Mag Bay! Bahia Magdalena (pronounced Mahg-dah-LAY-nah) is affectionately known as Mag Bay. It's about 245 miles SE of Turtle Bay and 160 miles NW of Cabo. Mag Bay is a huge enclosed body of water almost as large as California's San Francisco Bay. We left yesterday around 2pm and arrived here this morning around 6:30am. We anchored in the dark, although there was a beautiful full moon lighting our way. Our motorsail down was uneventful, except for the huge amount of
pterodactyl birds that kept wanting to join us on our cruise! These birds were HUGE - had an almost 5 foot wingspan and wanted to land on our masts and catch a ride. Sounds cool, though they could have done lots of damage to the instruments that are on our mastheads, so we spent the evening shooing them off, not an easy thing to do as they were very insistent! Fortunately, we kept them off of the instruments so as not to foul anything up, but unfortunately, ended up with tons of bird poop all
over the decks, sails, & canvas. We saw a cruise ship and a couple of sailboats on the trip, and possibly a whale, but all in all, it was an overcast, light wind evening. We arrived and took showers & went to sleep, then about two hours later, the port captain, Gregorio, came a knocking wanting to see our papers. Unfortunately in Ensenada, we neglected to get a copy of our stamped Crew List and spent several minutes explaining we would get a copy faxed or e-mailed to us asap. He joined us for
a cup of coffee and then headed out to check in the other boats that were in the anchorage. We originally anchored off of Puerto Magdalena and was told by Gregorio that we should move to Man of War Cove, which we did.

Currently we're sitting at anchor with about 5 other boats. EZ Lady joined us and there were about 4 boats already here that we have been communicating with on the radio - Beach house, a catamaran, & Odyssey. They both stayed & went whale watching per our recommendation and have wonderful stories as well. Michael and Chad are taking naps and I'm working on reloading my MP3 player, writing this slog, and have been monkeying with some shells I found at the last anchorage that I'd love to turn into
jewelry of some sort, but keep breaking them trying to drill holes in them. So I guess I'm giving up on that project. I'm trying to keep quiet to let the boys sleep, although not an easy task for me! We've arranged a panga for tomorrow to take us into San Carlos, to do some grocery shopping and look around town. There are a couple other boats in the anchorage that will be joining us and we're looking forward to getting of the boat and exploring. Today is a rest and relax day. I haven't found
an internet connection yet…but as soon as I can I'll get videos to you!

Have a wonderful weekend…I'll write more later..
Rene