Ocean Echo 1: June 2011

Dear Friends

I am presently cruising lower part of Baha peninsula in Sea of Cortez - Gulf of California. Area between La Paz and Loreto has a lot of beautiful anchorages and coastline. Rugged desert mountains reach 1800 M - 5400 feet near Puerto Escondido and Loreto. In lot of ways this area resembles Grand Canyon or Red Sea in Egypt. Cruising around here is quite enjoyable, because the sea conditions are fairly mild. Winds seem to die over night and there is no large swell to deal with. How ever, there will be some serious wind and weather conditions to deal with later in the summer. First hurricane already swept southern Eastern Pacific near Acapulco and some of these cyclonic formations are expected up here as well during late summer. Sea temperature is not high enough yet to support hurricane activity in Sea of Cortez.
La Paz area had a lot of coral heads along the shore lines, but not much of coral anymore sailing North. Some coral fish are still around and sea water is fairly clear with 10 M - 30 Feet visibility. My favorite place in this area would be Los Gatos with red rock formations and red sand at the beach. Puerto Escondido is good hide out for bad weather or hurricane, but it is now controlled by authorities and expensive to stay. I am presently anchored at Loreto. They have done very good job developing this small town in last few years.
My next leg will be towards Bahia Conception and Santa Rosalia, which will be last town with grocery store and other services. Final destination will be Bahia de Los Angeles - North part of Sea of Cortez, where several boats will be waiting out hurricane season.
Sea of Cortez is definitely nice place to visit and desert shoreline is quite colorful. Daily temperatures are climbing to 40 C - 102 F and will go higher. It is a good experience for my future traveling and I am learning something every day.

Maintaining this blog could by complicated time to time, because Internet signal/connection for uploading pictures, will not be as good/fast as it is in large cities/communities. Please, excuse my poor writing skills and grammar. Google translate does good job converting text to other languages.
I hope, that you will find something interesting in this blog – enjoy.

Jara (JJ) Holcman sv. Ocean Echo 1