Adiós Puerto Escondido! Hola…¿Dónde?

For ten very fun years out of my life I worked for a sailmaking, sail repair and technical sewing company. It was a real honest-to-goodness sail loft in that we were located upstairs in a huge room with windows all around. It was a great work environment, amazing experience for me, open and sunny, a staff of fun, multicultural and extremely talented people, and lots of REALLY COOL equipment and machinery. Our sail customers were typically very interesting people and for most of my 10 years there I was one of the primary contacts for our sailing customers. I got to know some of them quite well. We were all sad when the business moved to another area, boo hoo! But imagine my surprise this week when I realized that Cinnabar was moored smack dab between two of the Spinnaker Shop’s old customers! On one side we had Shindig, owned by one of the first sail repair customers I met, and on the other side was AirOps, whose owner dinghied over and reminded me that he was one of our customers. What a coincidence!

We had a lovely happy hour aboard the beautiful AirOps and I actually recognized a piece of canvas that I had helped measure some years ago. We spent a fun evening with Merry, Dave and their two adorable miniature schnauzers Mocha and Kiki.

Syl, Merry, Dave and Mocha. Happy Hour courtesy of AirOps.

We were impressed to learn that Dave assembled his Glacier Bay Refrigeration system himself (72 sweat joints!) and that he built his own watermaker. What a guy!

Dave and his watermaker.

The next night we had Shindig over to Cinnabar for dinner. (We wanted AirOps to come, too, but they were entertaining others that night.) Nancy arrived looking like a million bucks. She and Rob came with garlic prawns to grill, a bottle of wine AND a fresh strawberry rhubarb pie from Ettie’s Pie Shop in Loreto. No wonder they get invited to so many parties!

Tom, Nancy and Rob mackin' on the pie.

The pie was amazing and the crust would have been approved by my sister who makes THE BEST pie crust in the world.

It turns out that Rob and Nancy are neighbors of our back home, but we had to come all the way to Mexico to find that out.

Shindig left Puerto Escondido the next day and they were barely out of the marina before they were on the radio planning another get-together with some friends in another anchorage. I think those party animals aboard Shindig chose the right name for their boat.

Tom and I (although it mostly looks like Tom, doesn't it?) have spent the past week doing various boat repairs...

Replacing the genset impeller.

Sniffing for a refrigerant leak.

Cleaning Cinnabar's bottom.

...cleaning, provisioning, making water, still coping with our troublesome refrigeration, and getting things in order for our next couple of weeks at various anchorages as we head toward La Paz, where Cinnabar will rest for the summer.

I doubt if we’ll have Wi-Fi after we leave Puerto Escondido but we’ll try to post an update or two via Single Side Band radio.

A final note, Merry from AirOps told us the dinghy chaps (pontoon covers) that they had made down here lasted about six months and then had to be restitched due to inferior thread. However, I noticed that the Spinnaker Shop covers they have (stitched with Goretex/Tenara) are still going strong. Go Spin Shop!!

So it's Goodbye Puerto Escondido! Last few pics are HERE.

Hello...Where to next?

Well, we're not exactly sure, so stay posted.

Staying in One Place – It’s About the People (Puerto Escondido)

  

Hanging Out in Puerto Escondido - It’s been relatively quiet since our friends Lisa and Joe flew back home to the bay area.  Lisa took some terrific pictures and is sharing them on her Google Album HERE.

Mostly we’ve spent the past couple of weeks, sightseeing, snorkeling, stargazing, doing our One Chore Per Day and watching a plethora of boats sail into, and then out of Puerto Escondido.


Tom and I wonder why many of these boats stay only a night or two before sailing on to further adventures. They probably wonder why that big red boat is content to stay put when there are so many beautiful anchorages within just a few hours sail from here. Maybe we’re lazy? Maybe it’s a philosophical difference in cruising styles? But Tom and I really enjoy getting to know a place, to know the people who work and live there, to learn their names and say “Hi” to them on a daily basis. It took us about a week to get to know Pedro (aka Pedrito), the character (and I do mean character) who runs the store and upstairs Porto Bello restaurant...

Pedrito serenades the ladies.

 

...Ulysses who maintains the grounds, Lenin and Gabriel the servers in the restaurant...




Lenin doing his magic behind the bar. 

 
...Candelario (Candi) the waiter at the hotel up the road, Raquel who works in the marina office, Carlos who is in charge of boat cleaning, Salvador who works for the fishing boats, and all the other people who work here.

Puerto Escondido, like many other parts of Mexico, had planned to have a large community. An entire neighborhood of canals, bridges and plots was zoned out, construction was started, but ultimately abandoned. A boatyard and small marina remain. I wonder if they will ever finish the homes in this terrific location?


Abandoned neighborhood as seen from under canal bridge.

In addition to the locals who work in Puerto Escondido, there are the gringos who live here and belong to Hidden Port Yacht Club. They get on the radio every morning for their local “radio net” where they provide weather updates, advice for local assistance and where they just love to hear which boats are visiting their lovely area.


Connie helps run the local radio net. Her radio handle is "Sun Lover".

We would never get to meet and know these folks if we only stayed here one or two nights.
 

We’ve also enjoyed getting to know our pals on Iolanthe and Telitha a bit better. They are truly wonderful people that we met up in Bahia Concepcion. Through some bad luck for them (Iolanthe: broke a backstay, wrapped a jib sheet around her prop and broke some motor mounts; Telitha: some wire and hose came loose from engine, wrapped around prop shaft and destroyed their engine seal) both boats ended up in Puerto Escondido to effect their repairs.

Tom and Nick (Iolanthe) enjoy a beer.



 

Joe and Kitty from Telitha

Tom read about a hiking trail that goes from our anchorage over the hill to a beach at the next cove called El Chenque, near Juncalito.  It was a pleasant hike but we were distressed to see an excess of litter and trash at the beach. Hence, we christened it El Janky, or Janky Beach.

 

(Recycling seems to be a problem in Mexico, and we have not seen an adequate recycling program since we left Ensenada. We met a guy who is part of an organization, EarthComp, that is trying to start a recycling program in Loreto and the area. So far they are collecting plastic, although they’re not quite sure what to do with it yet. I sure hope they can make a go of it. We also met Salvador from one of the fishing boats who collects cans and takes them to a recycling center somewhere.)



Salvador enthusiastically collects cans. Go Sal!

While wading in the waters of Janky Beach we were absolutely amazed to find a rare, deep-water squid swimming along the shore. We’re not sure, but it appeared that this Vampire Squid was likely in its death throes, possibly by-catch from a fishing net? We’ll never be sure, but it was an absolutely beautiful animal. Unfortunately none of us had cameras, but here is a picture from National Geographic:

National Geographic pic of Vampire Squid. Yes! We really saw this!

 

Another afternoon we dinghied over to one of the coves in our anchorage to see if the snorkeling was any good, and we were surprised to find that even though the visibility wasn’t so great, we managed to see tons of schooling fish such as Mojarras and Mullets, not to mention several types of angel fish, butterfly fish, scallops and oysters, and many schools of tiny baby fish that use this protective cove as their nursery. Tom even dove down and found a couple of lobsters in their hidey holes. We’ve been snorkeling in our bay a couple of times and it’s encouraging to see so much sea life in our anchorage.



Baby fishies swim around our boat every morning.

Lovely Loreto - In addition to entertaining ourselves at beautiful Puerto Escondido we have also enjoyed a couple of day trips into Loreto, a town we fell in love with in March 2012 when we flew down with some friends as part of a Baja Bush Pilots whale watching excursion.

March 2012 with Mary and Lou, flying to Loreto.

In 2012 Loreto was (and still is) recovering from severe hurricane flooding and was repairing and constructing its shore side Malecon. We were delighted to discover that now, 2013, the Malecon is nearly completed and is a beautiful sidewalk along the ocean.

 



The Malecon in 2013, looking great.



Downtown Loreto - This look hasn't made it to the states yet.



Lucha Nick will fight for a deal.

 




Tom rents a bike in Loreto

 

But even though we have truly enjoyed Puerto Escondido it’s feeling like our season is winding down and we have to start thinking about getting down to La Paz and putting Cinnabar away for the summer.

A few days ago we had a going away party for Telitha since they would be leaving the next morning for their return trip to San Carlos on the mainland.

We celebrate with our last bottle of Tres Mujeres wine.

 

Telitha gets ready to leave for her journey back to San Carlos.

 

Then Iolanthe went back into the water...

In the water at last!!

 

...Arthur returned from La Paz with Iolanthe’s new backstay...

King Arthur and Prince Nick

 ...we got the backstay installed and now Nick and Arthur are getting ready for Iolanthe’s sail back down to La Paz and eventually to San Diego.

I'm not Sonja, my name is Sylvia - A funny side story. Nick's dad Arthur was absolutely enamored to hear that my sister Sonja works at Ridge Winery. Apparently Arthur is completely obsessed (OK, maybe not COMPLETELY...) with the famous "The Judgment of Paris" wine competition of 1976, where one of the French judges rated Ridge Winery's red as #1, even above all the French wines (gasp!!). After learning that, every time Arthur sees me, does he say "Hello Sylvia"? Nope, he tenderly takes my hand and murmers, "You're Sonja's sister." Every friggin' time! OK Sis, you have fair warning, I KNOW that Arthur is going to visit you at Ridge winery and you'd better take good care of him!
 

Wrapping it up - Here on Cinnabar we are enjoying our last days in Puerto Escondido, doing some repairs and fixes on the boat, paying bills and catching up on emails, and reconnecting with other cruising pals we have met along the way. We will probably start heading south in a couple of days (but not before the SJ Shark's game Tuesday!), stopping at various anchorages and letting our livers recover as we say our farewells to beautiful Baja.

More photos of Puerto Escondido and Loreto can be found HERE.



We sacrifice precious rum to Mighty Neptune...no more breakdowns, please!



Dinghy Name Has Been Decided! And We Finally Leave Bahia Concepcion

First of all, a huge shout out to the McGuire Family and Casa de Los Suenos for letting us anchor out and use their facilities for an entire month. Wow! If it weren’t for Joe we would likely still be there, but read on for more about that.

Second shout out to our friends Joe and Lisa who not only came to visit us, but brought us some of our favorite supplies so we could restock our stores. Thanks to them Cinnabar is now brimming with my favorite, super strong TJ’s Irish Breakfast Tea, Tom’s favorite Peet’s Coffee, TJ’s granola bars and TJ’s chocolate covered almonds. Yum!! Lisa even brought me a bonus pack of assorted black and green teas. Love her.

We Leave Bahia Concepcion - Joe was quite keen to see more of the Sea of Cortez, so two days after our infamous “Best Day Ever” in Bahia Concepcion, we weighed anchor and motored out of our favorite anchorage bound for Puerto Escondido, just south of Loreto, as our ultimate destination. I wish I could say our departure was uneventful, but we motored over a shoal and Cinnabar stubbed her toe in the sand, so to speak. Joe, Lisa and I leaned WAYYYYYY over the side of the boat while Tom plowed us out.

The chart said we could go there! But the sand said "NO".

The rest of the day was absolutely beautiful with no more mishaps. As we passed Isla San Idelfonso, where Tom and the others had caught all those yellowtail, we saw hundreds of pelicans soaring over and diving into the water. Birds in a feeding frenzy? That’s always a good sign for fish. Naturally Joe and Tom had the hand lines out, and a short time later we hooked a small yellowtail. While the guys discussed whether or not it was too small to keep, I grabbed the bottle of tequila and made a beeline for the fish. A few sprinkles into the gills and our beautiful catch went calmly to sleep forever.

Small but delicious.

Caleta San Juanico , Snorkeling and Fine Dining - By late afternoon we made it into the beautiful San Juanico anchorage. We decided we had just enough time for an afternoon snorkel before our happy hour, so we grabbed our gear, slipped into the water and kicked over to the nearest pinnacle. Yowza! We were amazed at all the sea life! There were schools of all sorts of reef fish swimming around the rocks, a turtle, schooling puffer fish, angel fish, schooling brown chromis, mullets and many, many more. To top it off, high atop the tallest pinnacle was an osprey nest with the two osprey gazing down at us with jaundiced eyes the whole time.

Dinner that night would be my favorite, our beautiful just-caught Hamachi thinly sliced sashimi style, and served as a tiradito a la Muelle Tres, my favorite restaurant in Ensenada. This had our Bahia Concepcion twist of serving it hand roll style, with fresh avocado, sushi rice, and nori.

Tom, Joe and Lisa enjoy a perfectly delicious dinner.

Add some cold beer and chilled white wine and it was pretty much a perfect meal, sigh. (Recipe at end of post.)

Heading to Puerto Escondido - The next morning we completed our trip down to Puerto Escondido. The sea was absolutely alive with all sorts of life, in the air and in the water. It seemed that every few minutes there was something new to see, whether they were hundreds of sea birds, sea lions basking in the water with fins up, or leaping mobula rays. One of the most exciting events was when I saw a weird standing wave off in the distance. What in the heck was that thing? Turns out it was hundreds of Pacific White-Sided dolphins in what looked like an absolute feeding frenzy. We headed their direction and tried to stay out of their way as they leaped in the air and dove toward their prey beneath them. We saw one or two more of these large dolphin boils and they were so close I even managed to get some shots with my little camera.

We sailed alongside Isla Carmen toward Puerto Escondido, enjoying the jaw-dropping view and lunching on freshly made fish tostadas. Thanks to Joe and Tom we got two great meals from our little yellowtail.

Our final excitement before pulling into Puerto Escondido was a couple of whale sightings. What a trip! We motored into the bay, carefully watching the depth of this notoriously shallow entrance, but managed to make it (barely) without stubbing our toe again. We found a mooring, and thanks to Joe and Lisa’s experience from their bare-boat charters we easily grabbed a mooring and secured Cinnabar.

We figured our friend Nick from Iolanthe was still in the area since last we heard he’d gone on the hard to wait for parts to repair his boat. We wondered if Telitha was still around, and as I stood on deck with binoculars, searching the anchorage for our friends, who should come gliding into the bay being towed by another boat, but Telitha!! Holy cow, what happened?? Turns out they’d had transmission problems and ended up being towed practically all the way from Agua Verde (about 22 nm) by the good Samaritans aboard Huck Finn. So, due to bad luck for everyone but us, the unlikely group of Cinnabar, Iolanthe and Telitha would be together once again.

That evening the Cinnabar crew spiffed up and took a taxi (driven by taxista Nestor) into Loreto for a last bit of shopping for Lisa and Joe, and our final dinner together. Loreto was practically deserted, with the only excitement being a claxon of mission bells followed by a parade of people entering the mission for 5:00 mass. We were in Loreto to enjoy the beautifully temperate and perfect evening, and after a starter of Margaritas...

 

...we managed to find a restaurant that served Tom’s favorite Baja Brewing Company microbrew! That, paired with a yummy Chile Relleno and Chocolate Clams Gratinee made for a delightful last dinner.

Almejas Chocolates Gratinee

Adios Lisa and Joe - The next morning, after helping us clean Cinnabar’s deck (Lisa and Joe sure know how to get invited back) our guests packed their bags, we stuffed a cooler full of frozen fish for them to transport home, and we loaded them into Nestor’s taxi, bound for Loreto airport.

Joe, Lisa, Tom and taxista Nestor

Pictures of Weeks #3 and #4 in Bahia Concepcion, and our trip down to Puerto Escondido, can be found HERE.

Since Lisa and Joe departed, we have spent time cleaning the boat, enjoying the beautiful Puerto Escondido anchorage, and trying to entice our cruising pals away from spending all their time doing boat repairs. Actually, that’s not too difficult, but more about that in another post…

Dinghy Name Update – Believe it or not we finally decided on a dinghy name. Yes! After all this time! Thank you again to everyone who submitted all the absolutely brilliant names. Here they are and I hope I remembered every one:
Cinnabarbary Coaster
Cinnabun
Dinghy Dong
Galena Ballena
Minibar
Mini-Cinni
Minipad
Quicksilver
To-the-bar
Vermilion
 
We might not have picked your favorite, but we went with the one that “felt right” to us.  A couple of weeks before they decided to come out, Joe submitted Quicksilver as his entry. Miraculously, we both liked Quicksilver, also mercury, associated with Cinnabar, also a common name in the Santa Clara Valley, and with the likely nickname of “Quickie”. So Quicksilver, aka “Quickie” it is.

Joe and Quicksilver, aka "Quickie"

And the grand prize was…winner got to visit us on Cinnabar! OK, in the interest of full disclosure, let’s just say that anyone who submitted an entry was eligible to visit, as well as anyone who thought about submitting an entry, as well as anyone who thought we were bonkers for even thinking we should name our dinghy. In other words, EVERYONE is invited to visit us! Come on guys, last chance is NOW because in a few weeks we will be in La Paz putting Cinnabar away for the summer.

But if you can’t visit us this time around, you should at least try making our favorite yellowtail dish. Here is our recipe. If you don't have yellowtail you can use any type of sushi grade fish...

RECIPE - YELLOWTAIL/HAMACHI TIRADITO

Ingredients:

• Very fresh yellowtail, thinly sliced into bite-size pieces, chill on platter; (or use any kind of sushi-grade fish if yellowtail is not available
• Soy sauce or Tamari
• Toasted sesame oil
• Toasted sesame seeds
• Minced fresh ginger
• Juice from 1-2 small limes
• Chopped fresh cilantro or basil
• Avocado, 1-2 sliced
• Freshly ground pepper
• Optional: diced jalapeno/Serrano peppers or dribbles of Salsa Martajada

Method:

Spread fish slices out onto large plate overlapped or in a single layer. (I like to chill for 30 minutes if not already refrigerated.) Dribble lightly with soy sauce and sesame oil. Sprinkle with minced fresh ginger and sesame seeds. Add fresh, diced peppers or Salsa Martajada, or serve on the side. Just before serving squeeze some fresh lime over the top and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper and fresh cilantro or basil. Arrange avocado slices on top of or around yellowtail, or serve alongside if making hand rolls.

Serve with chips or tostadas, or use for sushi or hand rolls by serving with white or sushi rice, nori and a ponzu sauce made of soy, lime juice and wasabi.