We’ve been living onboard for four and a half months, but it’s only just in this past week that I feel we are finally in full cruising mode.  We broke away from the lure of the city and we have beeen blissfully enjoying sailing through the world’s largest aquarium – just the two of us, the rays and the whales.

The southwest anchorage on Isla San Francisco is popular for good reason. A short hike up the hill awards you with the money shot: you in the foreground and your boat anchored in the beautiful bay below. The water is so clear that you can see your hook on the seabed, and the sand is white and warm.

Another eight hours of sailing/motoring brought us further north to Los Gatos, famous for its red rocks. I was brought out of my sun and beauty induced haze when I realized I was steering HYDROQUEST straight for the long submerged reef that extends up from the southern shore. A quick 90 degree turn took us out of that danger zone and we anchored with four other boats. A local fisherman, Manuel, approached us selling fresh langosta – so fresh that he hadn’t even caught them yet.  We watched as he dove on the reef to catch us a beauty. Dinner Menu: Mexican rice and fresh garlic chili butter lobster.

Bahia Candeleros is so nice that we’ve stuck around for three nights already! Part of the lure is the free wifi that the new hotel on shore offers but the other part is a fun group of cruisers who we’ve been hanging out with.

Tonight’s Menu:  Fresh clam linguini.  We dove for chocolate clams yesterday morning right here in the bay. Will found and dug up 18 and I captured zero. Learning how to free dive is on the to-do list… harder than it looks!  My contribution will be cleaning and cooking them.

I could live like this for a looong time. Definitely enjoying it while we can.

On a side note, these are the things that have broken so far:

• The aft head. No problem, we can use the forward one.
• Water pump. No problem, after spending about an hour trying to diagnose the issue we realized it was just plain dead. Replaced with spare pump on board.
• Underwater camera has had little too much water. I’m very sad about this… it could mean no more pictures! We have it in the ‘Bheestie’ bag to dry out – fingers crossed that it works!

Whales in Bahia La Paz

Sunset

Isla San Francisco’s south-west anchorage

High cliffs

Fun hike

The money shot

Fishing boat near Nopolo

Nearing Los Gatos

Red Rocks at Los Gatos

Manuel diving for dinner

Live langosta

De-tailing

Another sailboat at anchor in Los Gatos

Sunset Los Gatos

Morning coffee

Incredible landscape

Basking sea lion

Water made from the sea. It takes sweet and much better than the marina water

Candeleros Chico – room for one boat only

Approaching Punta Candeleros

Hotel in Bahia Candeleros

Happy feet

View from our spot in Los Candeleros

My very own pinnacle rock – lots of fish

Will holds up his first clam