San Carlos to Isla Coronados

Port Upper turnbuckle with the rusty and cracking swedging. One of the shrouds that we replaced.

Back in San Carlos we woke up to sun and a list of boat projects and no food on board so we went out for breakfast. Barracuda Bob’s, a restaurant at the marina is popular with gringos and locals. We were there just after King’s Day so they were giving out King’s cake. If you got the baby, you’d have good luck.

The baby in Bill’s cake. The cake was a little dry, so he just fished out the baby and left it to its fate.

We both made multiple trips up the mast to replace the lower and upper shrouds (the wires that hold up the mast on the side of the boat). The new ones we’d cut and had swedged in Portland fit.

In the afternoons we grocery shopped, bought shrimp from a guy in the supermarket parking lot. Bill checked on the outboard at Luis’s shop and was told it had a blown head gasket. Since we hadn’t left any money with him before we headed north, he hadn’t ordered any replacement parts. He said it would take two weeks for the part to come from Georgia. We didn’t have two weeks to wait for possibly the correct gasket, so we paid him for his time and resigned ourselves to oar power. Luis did give Bill a list of possible replacement numbers for the gasket so maybe we could find one somewhere down the Sea.

Our other big project was realigning the engine to the propeller shaft. Day one was frustratingly unsuccessful, with both of us pretzled in small uncomfortable spaces trying to precisely align the thing by adjusting the engine mounts. The next day we called our boat expert friend Tom and he talked us through how to do it. Half a day later we were done! We finished up our remaining small projects and set sail across the Sea of Cortez for La Ramada, a small cove north of San Juanico on the Baja side.

We discovered a migration of ladybugs when we were assembling the dinghy at La Ramada. The rocks at La Ramada are dramatic and Bill had fun photographing them. Bottom right is Gypsy at anchor, La Ramada.

After two nights at La Ramada, we moved down to San Juanico as the northers were going to kick in. While we were there we got in some beach walks in and Bill caught a nice shortfin seabass (corvina) while Nina rowed.

San Juanico also has dramatic rocks, some of which we picked up and brought back to Gypsy. Bill standing by one of the new Turtle Reserve signs at San Juanico/San Basilio. Bill’s tasty corvina.
Sunrise leaving Bahía San Basilio (San Juanico).
Punta Mangles was our next stop as it is another spot with good norther protection. They were still blowing. There are a couple of abandoned buildings on shore so we wandered through them. It was supposedly going to be a resort of some kind. Cinderblock pieces were everywhere. The exposed blocks on the houses had gone lacy from the wind and salt. The building on the left had the remains of a nice courtyard area with a lovely view of the bay.
Top: the path to the volcano. It starts out level and then starts to climb and get very rocky. Middle: coming off the volcano path and on to the path along the spit. Bottom: the panga landing; some shells and beach glass Nina found, and the dinghy ashore on the south side of Isla Coronados.

Next stop, the south side of Isla Coronados, an extinct volcano. We rowed ashore and had a nice hike halfway up the volcano and along the shore. We were there for a couple of days and before we headed on to Puerto Ballandra on Isla Carmen.

3 thoughts on “San Carlos to Isla Coronados”

  2. Greetings from Joy & Jerry,
    Thanks for sharing your cruising adventures. We enjoy your photos and narrative. We are in La Cruz for a week. Going to San Sebastian del Oeste tomorrow.
    Happy Valentines,
    J&J

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  3. Still livin the dream we see. Glad you are out there and safely enjoying such interesting areas. Great photos as usual. Pam and Carl

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