Leaving Santa Rosalia started at 3:30AM with light wind from the South. We wanted to cover about 80nm to cross the Sea of Cortez to the mainland town of San Carlos. Our friends on SV Salt Whistle, Rob and Dawn are there and we would like to see this area. Reason enough to go! We also had some rough ideas about a land trip that we could stage from San Carlos. San Carlos is a suburb Guaymas in the Mexican state of Sonora. Our goal was to make our crossing in one day.
We left Santa Rosalia harbor in the dark and immediately had to stop to stow our dinghy on the forward deck for the crossing. Standing on the swim step hoisting the dinghy engine to stow and then using the halyard to lift the dinghy onto the foredeck in the dark with wave action felt risky. At one point, we were both standing on the swim step with the engine idling and realized what a catastrophe it would be should a wave knock us both off. Fortunately, that didn’t happen!
After a (happily) uneventful crossing we found our way into the San Carlos anchorage. We’d arranged for a short stay at the marina and had a slip next to SV Salt Whistle. As we proceeded slowly toward our slip – Bump and we came to a stop. Aground! We’d come in at low tide and didn’t quite have enough water. A bad sign for staying there with a rocky bottom that the boat would bounce on daily. We decided to anchor in the harbor. Unfortunately, we’d have no opportunity to wash the dust and crud from months of traveling off of Island Summers.
San Carlos is a beautiful harbor below red cliffs that catch the morning sun and glow. We explored the town and had a fun time hanging out but there was still nowhere to put Island Summers for a week or so to take a land trip. Finally, a chance enounter and a whatsApp number connected us with the touristica marina in Guaymas where we secured a slip.
With a place to put our boat we could plan our trip But, first we wanted to do a little sailing unfortunately the light wind we were expecting for a 4 hour trip built from 0 – 25kt and rough seas within minutes and we were back in the San Carlos harbor. The next day we tried again and chose a small anchorage with a small beach near Guaymas called Catalina Cove. The most recent reviews on the navigation app only mentioned theft of someone’s dingy. Great! We anchored anyway and were a little nervous but had no problems.
The next day we motored slowly to the main harbor at Guaymas. There was light wind and it caught our bow as we were backing into our slip. I mashed the bow thruster button and held it down. Bad move! As I was trying to bring the bow around I overheated my thruster motor. After we docked we smelled the very distinctive smell of burned electrical equipment and when I opened the anchor locker which is above the thruster, smoke rolled out. Bad news! The thruster electronic controls were all blinking and beeping with error codes and the burning smell was a clear indication of a problem. A day later as were preparing to leave for our land trip, I decided to disconnect the electronics to make the horrid beeping (when the ignition was on) go away. I disconnected then re-connected the system and like magic the status lights turned green and the error codes disappeared. OH MY GOSH! The thruster worked too. Neptune smiled on me that day.
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