San Juanico (Scorpion Bay)

After a long but fast nightsail we pulled in Bahia San Juanico “scorpion bay” ahead of schedule at 5:00AM. We decided not to pull in and drop anchor until at least the break of dawn. Because this place is a famous surf spot with 6 points of a phenomenon of a wave I was worried about shoals and possible breakers. So we cut it wide and did a couple big circles yelling at the sky. It worked and the sun came up. What a beautiful harbor. The biggest and baddest one yet! The way the waves roll in here is something you can not explain, and photographs barely do any justice. If you travel to baja, this is a must go destination. The town has a large percentage of white people from California. A lot of local surfers. It’s a Company based town, they all share power which is turned off in the afternoon to conserve. They also have a community garden. I would love to find somewhere like this to live but way farther south and with a left point break instead of a right! We went to shore and were recommended to eat/use wifi at El Burro. While we’re sitting there a british woman walks up to us, “are you michael, michael, and claire?” “uhhhh ya?? Do we know you?” and at first I thought ‘sweet dreams’ had sent her because something was wrong with our boat. But it turns out our friends Marc and Colleen had met her in El Salvador last year. Well they were watching our Spot tracker and saw we were almost to Scorpion Bay, where Robin (our new british traveling friend) is housesitting. She sat and chatted with us for a while. Oh by the way if you haven’t figured it out ‘sweet dreams’ is convoying with us at the same pace. We’ve decided to keep it slow and relaxing lately. Enjoy the scenes and culture without beating the hell out of ourselves for 3 days straight on the water. 12/7 we’re still in Scorpion bay. I longboarded 2^nd point and got a few realllly long rides, just under a minute long. And this is a ‘no good swell’ time for them. I also skimmed at 1^st point which was pretty fun backside liners and I think at the tip of the point there could easily be a sider with the correct swell (south swell, sometimes west will do). Like I said these photographs do this place NO justice. When it’s pumping you can easily get a ride from 3^rd or 4^th point all the way to the panga beach past 1^st point. And I’ve heard rumors of a few people riding the entire 6 points. Which would be like 4 miles or something. I of course believe them. We saw Robin out for a walk on the beach and started talking about dinner plans, we invited her to the boat but she lured us in with her beautiful house and free internet. We had just went to the local farmers market that morning and bought a bunch of fresh produce, a whole chicken, and my dad caught over two dozen spanish mackerel. So we went back to shore and delivered some fish to people who had helped us out with some problems we had with our dinghy outboard and headed over to Robin’s house. We had a feast and updated a backed up blog post. 12/8 Sara and John swam over from ‘sweet dreams’ with their scuba gear and started scrubbing the bottom of our boat. Claire and I made apple cinnamon rice cakes for breakfast with last nights leftover brown rice. Then we hopped in with our flippers and helped finish scrubbing. Our new paint job from Easter is holding up great! 12/9 we decided to dinghy over to the shrimp boats and try and haggle for some. We’ve heard of some impressive barters and thought we’d give it a shot. And boy did we… First off the boat was a beautiful scene. Full wooden deck with piles of different size shrimp, heads on, heads off, deveined, etc. With plenty of crew and their wicker baskets and small wooden stools sorting and doing their thing. So, we ended up trading… A pack of matches, a used lighter, a used deck of cards, a t-shirt, 2 condoms, and a pair of claire’s pink daisy dukes for a 5 gallon bucket of fresh, still kickin’ head-on! (con cabezas) That night was jon’s birthday (from ‘sweet dreams’) so we packed up and headed to a secluded beach for another camp out. This time we were smart and brought more blankets and I made a separate mini fire next to our tent to keep us warmer. Next morning we took a walk down past the arroyo and found some sweet shells and a pretty impressive surf break. 12/11 we pulled up the anchor at 11:00AM with 95 miles to Bahia Santa Maria ahead of us. ‘Sweet Dreams’ was planning on being right behind us but they radioed saying they were having engine problems and we saw them behind us limping around. Then they radioed saying they had a small electrical fire and decided to hold off on their departure and stay back to sort things out. Also, last night our radar reflector halyard snapped from chaffing and fell with a loud bang as it bounced down all the rigging and slammed the deck. In the morning, I hoisted Claire up to the spreaders in the bosun’s chair. So proud of her! She ran the halyard back through it’s little holes and down so we could re-tie it all back together. We left with light winds on the bow so no sails up for a little while. Got up to a good sail in the afternoon. Dropped the mainsail at 16:00. Left the jib up and kept good speed. In the night you could hear the dolphins clicking and squealing under the boat as they followed with us. 19:30 with 50 miles left to Maria. 23:00 wind switched off the land, good speed, 5-6kts through the night. Warm wind. 7:40 five miles left to go. Beautiful sunrise. Took the jib down so we could head straight into the wind and the bay without being hassled off course.