Santa Maria Bay

Santa Maria Bay is a well protected anchorage just outside the more famous Magdalena Bay. A small fishing camp lines the estuary, surfers hike to the point at its entrance to catch some waves, and sports fishermen anchor overnight for some rest, but otherwise there isn’t much sign of human activity here. Braving a wavy […]

Turtle Bay

The name “Turtle Bay” holds a sort of mythological quality in our minds from when we were only dreaming about cruising, and reading about the Baja Ha Ha rally down to Cabo San Lucas, which has Turtle Bay listed as one of their main stops. At other times of the year, Bahia Tortugas, as it […]

San Benito Islands

When approaching an unfamiliar anchorage, sailors are advised to arrive in daylight so that they are able to look out for hazards for themselves, rather than relying on charts that may be outdated, inaccurate, or insufficient to convey critical information. In practice, that means dividing the distance you need to travel, by your anticipated boat […]

Ensenada

It was a good sailing start into our first foreign country. We noticed that the wind was getting more consistent the further south we travelled, and we had a comfortable and reasonably fast trip across the border. Approaching the fat black dividing line on our chart, we were were filled with anticipation, and were amused […]

San Diego

We had been in San Diego for almost 3 months, busy with boat work, and hoping to meet other cruisers about to push off for Mexico at the start of the November cruising season. We watched weather forecasts as the last of hurricane season’s storms swept by and made landfall in various parts of the […]

Challenges of living off the grid

A lot of times, watching cruisers talk about their lifestyle, whether it be on Youtube, blogs or Instagram, it is easy to believe that theirs is a happy, perfect life of luxury, full of sunset cocktails, jumping dolphins and warm turquoise water. But to be honest, would you be in the mood to take a […]

Humanitarian work aboard Southern Cross 4

This month, we were delighted to talk to Australian cruisers Merv and Sharon Stevenson aboard Southern Cross 4 about house church humanitarian work that they have done over the course of their lives. We met them in San Diego where they are advocating for homeless people to get off the streets. There are many factors […]

A tour of the Sea Shepherd vessel M/V Farley Mowat

On the San Diego Embarcadero, we had the opportunity to tour the Sea Shepherd vessel M/V Farley Mowat while it was in transit to the northern Sea of Cortez to participate in Operation Milagro 4, a campaign to protect the endemic vaquita from poaching operations. Vaquita are a species of porpoise that as of 2018 […]

A month of boatwork

It is September, and Monsoon has been at anchor in San Diego for the past month and a half, both of us hard at work making upgrades to and maintaining our boat. We haven’t given ourselves the opportunity to sightsee yet, and the daily obligation of boat work is starting to burn us out. So […]

Boat work, week 1

The weather has been swelteringly hot in San Diego. The cockpit cover has been up, the hatches have been open and our fingers have been crossed in hopes of a cooling breeze flowing through Monsoon. We can see the Coronado Islands of Mexico from here, and we know that the time is coming for us […]