INTREPID II did indeed leave Marina Palmira on Saturday, February 27th, with fond farewells to the many friends we'd made on Docks 4, 3, 2, 5 and to the very friendly and professional staff. We do hope there are many chances this season and in the future to cross paths with all of these special people and we will do our best to stay in contact with Winlink and emails.
That morning Kelly heard Geary on Sonrisa Net mention an earthquake in Chile; then we heard there could be followup tsunami warnings. The best place to be for tsunamis is out at sea, away from the dock, so we kept on with our last minute preparations and left at 10:30 am in sunshine and light winds. A half hour later, we heard the La Paz Port Captain speaking very emphatically to the marinas and anyone listening. We thought we understood it was an update on the tsunami warnings and we managed to reach our marina staff to clarify. The reply was "yes, he'd just closed the port, but did we want to return?" No thanks, we'll keep moving toward Caleta Partida. By noon we had not noticed any effects within the sea, but stayed away from land to be sure.
Our trip to Caleta Partida was a motoring one; pleasant with some long swells, sunshine and sea lions at play. SV Snow Goose, with our friend Frank aboard, welcomed us to the north side of the anchorage and we delivered his small grocery order - what are cruising friends for! We anchored at 15:00 hours (24 31.897 N; 110 22.956 W) in clear turquoise water not far from the fishermens' camp, hoping it would give us much better protection from the nightly corumuels. We had a pleasant dinner and viewed an excellent sunset and the winds were only SW 18 - 19 that night, not as bad as they could have been.
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| North side of Caleta Partida |
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| INTREPID II at anchor - Caleta Partida |
Sunday morning the chop and swell lasted into mid day, then eased off and we dinghied to the north beach. It is a small one, very shallow and it felt good to stretch our feet until we disturbed hundreds of small, cockroach-like bugs who scurried en masse from under rocks and seaweed away from us. Not sure what they were, but it dampened our enthusiasm to walk much further, even if they were moving away from us. In all there were 11 boats at anchor. That night a magnificent full moon lit up the anchorage and we had only light wind and no chop and a more restful night.
We made plans to buddy boat to Isla San Francisco with Snow Goose, and spoke with our friends on Keetya I who were anchored over in El Cardonal, who were also headed that way. Perhaps we'd finally share an anchorage.
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| Sketch of the western side Sea of Cortez San Evaristo is directly across from Isla San Jose Isla San Francisco is the dot below |
