Bahia Los Frailes

~ March 23 - 24, 2019 ~

Los Frailes is a comonly visited anchorage where boats can hide from strong northelies coming out of the sea of cortex before they head across to mainland Mexico destinations like Mazatland and Puerto Vallarta. For vessels heading north to La Paz and the Sea of cortez it is one of only two places to wait for favouralbe conditions.

We left Cabo San Lucas in the early morining, we had 45 miles to cover and didn't think this would be to hard. We knew the wind was likely to pick up in the afternoon.

The first 25 miles was an easy motor, but the the wind started to build. Then next 20 miles seemed to take forever. The swell built quickly and the wave direction was uncomfortable at one point we thought about heading back to the other Cabo and trying again later. The last 10 miles were bad, the wind was on the nose and the seas were steep and close together.

Finally we were able to turn into the bay. There were 2 other boats anchored there when we arrrived, but we found a spot in 20 ft of water at the north end of the bay. The wind was still pretty strong but we had good wave protection.

The following day we went ashore to explore. There is a beautiful white sand beach with a few little resorts on the southern end. Some of which look abandoned.

It seems to be a popular spot for campers as they can park right on the beach, and the northern end there is a lagoon cut off from the water by sand dunes.

We went for a snorkel in the afternoon under the hills on the north end. The bottom changed from sand into boulders and there were quite a lot of tropical fish swimming about. The end of the point marks the start of the Cabo Pulmo Reef. A World Heritage reef that covers nearly 71 square km. It extends north along the coastline of Baja Peninsula.

The wind was still pretty strong and the phone coverage wasn't good enough for Ashley to work so we decided to head north, unfortunately for me a bee had found it's way onto a towel in the cockpit.

We got the stinger out quickly, but I was hoping that my childhood allergy where the stung area blew up like a ballon would happen. We took the appropriate first aid precatuions and i was prescribed rest.

We enjoyed our time here and would love to visit the reef but we had to push further north. due to the northerly wind we decided to an early morning departure was required to jump up the coast to the Bay of the Dead