Topolobampo or Bust!

Whew! We left Guaymas a few days ago with SV Blue Dolphin, new crew on board,  Nils & Caroline from Germany and SV Peregrine.  It's pretty tough coordinating leaving a harbor you have been in for any length of time.  Just when you think you are ready one of the buddy boats develops a mission critical item that needs to be fixed.  All that aside we finally made a break for it!  We met up with Blue Dolphin just outside of the Bahia Catalina anchorage and just kept heading South.  The weather was splendid and we were able to sail most of the day and well into the night.  Doug is over his cold and I finally got it just as we were leaving.  Leo seems to be fighting it off with honey in his tea.  I think washing everything down with Clorox helps too.

During the daylight hours we saw a Marlin jump out of the water at least 5 times, I guess he was hunting.  It was amazing.  He was well over 6 feet.  We also saw Rays jumping and a huge pod of Dolphin.  The only other boat traffic we saw was 8 fishing boats in a line, it was during daylight so we were able to avoid them easily.  We had our fishing lines out but did not catch anything. We took 4 hour watches during the night and the evening was pretty uneventful.  There was almost a full moon which was nice as we could see all around.

Day two was a little more exciting.  First thing in the morning the fishing lines went out.  Leo went up on deck and announced "Fish ON!".  I had to laugh because I had given him very detailed instructions on how we land a fish on the sailboat and he just went into "AUTO" and started emptying the cockpit of all the contents down the hatch.  Doug and I were at the bottom of the stairs trying to get up on deck with all the stuff getting tossed down.  I started laughing and coughing so hard!  We had two lines out.  A hand line and a fishing pole.  Leo was pulling in the hand line and Doug had the gaff, I had the towel and vodka.  I looked over at my fishing pole just as the last of the line payed out, zzzzzzing! Darn!  Missed another fish and lost another lure.  We were so focused on the hand line I didn't hear the fishing pole hit.  Leo landed a really nice Mahi Mahi.

Day two and there was no wind at all.  We stayed in sight of our buddy boats and motored South.  SV Blue Dolphin developed a taste for alternator belts and went through a few during the day.  SV Peregrine's alternator turned out to be discharging their battery so he had to put the generator on.  With no wind and critical issue we decided to enter Topolobampo even though it would be dark.

As a rule we do not enter into anchorages at night but we needed to pull in for repairs so as night approached we all came in close together and set off as a caravan into the Bahia Topolobampo.  This is the first anchorage available before entering the harbor.  Looked like a piece of cake on the chart.

If you are wondering what this is like just step into your closet and close the door.  We purchased, at great expense, charts of Mexico that are turning out to be very unreliable.  As we were coming into the channel the lights on the buoys were all wrong and the depth of the water was decreasing at a alarming rate.  At some point we decided we just needed to follow the lights and forget about our plotted course.  This is like taking the "Indiana Jones" leap of faith, if you remember that movie.  So Rojo, la derecha, volviendo!  This seemed to work until Peregrine, in the rear, commented on the fact that the Baja Ferry  was behind him and closing fast.

So we really hugged the channel just outside the red buoy giving the fast moving ferry LOTS of room to pass. As anyone who frequents the SF Bay knows these rather large vessels create a pretty good wake.  A really good wake in shallow water actually creates "Breakers" so you can see the shallow water.  Leo watching on Starboard did his best in at least 3 different languages to tell Doug to steer PORT, Left, gire a la izquierda, tourner à gauche! he even tried saying waves, breakers all to no avail.  I was ready to grab the wheel myself but it didn't matter Doug figured it out, bump, bump along the bottom.  We went aground right before the red buoy.  There was absolutely no room for error.  In Doug's defense there was a lot going on.  The radio was squawking with chatter, the dodger windows were completely fogged up, both Leo and I were talking and the buoy wasn't even a true red buoy.


Since we have a lot of experience with being in shallow water we were able to use that same wave action that got us aground to get us off.  We continued up the channel, very slowly and headed into Bahia Topolobampo, now at the back of the caravan.  When buddy boating if you are in the lead position and you make a bad call you have to go to the end of the line, even if you do have the forward looking scanner.  We watched as Blue Dolphin and Peregrine circled around in the bay looking for a deep enough spot to drop the anchor.  At one point Blue Dolphin came up so close to the sand spit that they could have stepped off the boat.  After a few passes we decided on a good spot and dropped the anchor for the night. 


I couldn't quite fit this part about the big blue footed boobie in my story above so I'll do a postscript.  Like I said above it was dark.  The moon was bright but covered by cloud cover so visibility was poor.  At some point I just happened to look up and looming in the dark saw a huge boobie bird trying to land on the top of our mast.  Leo and I jumped up and started yelling at it, banging on the mast, slinging a halyard at it and shining a beam from the flashlight.  We finally deterred it after several attempted landings.