Our first day underway · Feb 22

Under way at last!

It seems like its taken forever, but at last we're off.  We start today at 4am.  It is approximately 50 nautical miles (57+ normal miles) to arrive at our first stop for the trip: Puertecitos.  Puertecitos is a small town south along the coast from San Felipe.  There is not much there except a few houses and a shallow cove.  But that cove is a fine goal as it will provide more shelter than anything else along the coast on the way from San Felipe.

We intend to leave at 4:00am, but when we turn on the running lights not all of them come on. Running lights are safety lights every boat should use when it is dark, a red one for the port side of the boat (left), a green one for starboard (right), a white one for the back of the boat, and another one while one is motoring. 

Although we expect that many Pangas (small mexican fishing skiffs) will not have more than a flashlight, we want to be sure they can see us coming.  So, after some adjustments to the electrical connections, all the lights turn on an we are ready to depart by 4:30am.  Something must have worked its way loose during the jostle of the trailer ride south.

We managed to take some time lapse footage of this first sunrise here:

Hopefully, our pre-dawn departures will be few and far between, it is simply not as safe as moving during daylight.  We do not have radar and Mexican charts can be off by a couple of miles.  But we'd rather leave a familiar anchorage early in the dark than arrive at an unfamiliar one late in the dark.

The winds never pick up and the sea remains glassy calm, perfect for waterskiing but we do not have enough horsepower.  Nothing is biting either.

With flat seas, we arrive at Puertecitos by mid-afternoon, find a spot to anchor and sit back to have a beer,  Soon an old dude in a small fishing boat comes by.  There is a big "species reintroduction ceremony" at the single launch ramp (no dock), so he is busy waiting for it to end so he can take his boat out.  Turns out he's originally from Redding, but has been living here for 45 years. 

Hard to believe he's not sick of the place yet, but I guess the fishing is really good.  He has 6 fish in the bottom of his boat, including a 15lb yellowtail.  He offers us a 3lb Corvina, and we gratefully accept.  We may not have caught it ourselves, but we are happy to cook up some fish tacos for dinner.  Soon the sun starts to set, and we head to bed soon after.  Having been up since 4, we're pretty beat.