San Diego, Ensenada, Bahia Santa Maria

December 21, 2024 – January 22, 2025

After celebrating Christmas with our family in Minnesota, we headed back to Tasi in San Diego. We finished getting her prepared and spent time with our friends in San Diego, anticipating that we wouldn’t be back for a while this time. We rang in 2025 at the casino themed party at Silver Gate Yacht Club. Then, with our list of boat projects complete, we were ready to head south.

Our first stop was Ensenada, MX where we checked-in to the country. We left around 2am in order to arrive in daylight. The moon was almost full so it was a beautiful but cold ride. This time in Ensenada, we stayed at Cruiseport Marina. It is a wonderful marina that is walking distance to town. The staff is friendly and extremely helpful, they don’t charge any additional fee to assist in the check-in process, and there is a strong cruiser community. We met up with Curtis and Julie from SV Manna who we had traveled northbound with last spring and enjoyed local restaurants and the best lattes in Mexico. On Wednesday evenings there is a cruiser’s happy hour at the Bar Andaluz where the margarita was allegedly created. It was great to hang out with like minded cruisers once again.

After refueling Tasi with the help of a fellow cruiser, we checked out of Ensenada and headed south. This time of year wind storms, known as “Nortes”, develop in the Sea of Cortez and can spill across Baja causing turbulent seas on the Pacific side. We had to choose a weather window that would avoid these. We chose a great time to go and had a fast downwind sail to Bahia Santa Maria. We covered approximately 520 nautical miles in 3 days, 14 hours. It was a great trip with strong winds, dolphins, and amazing stars and planets, but we were certainly happy to arrive in Bahia Santa Maria. We are the only boat in the huge bay and are enjoying some down-time while we wait for our next weather window to head to Los Cabos.