Crossing back to Isla San Lorenzo, April 13th 2004.


I cooked myself a good breakfast (egg tortillas with bacon) but still had time to get ready to launch by 7:30am. We headed straight across towards Isla San Lorenzo, the scary crossing. A breeze blew from the north for a while and set us a little to the left. The forecast was for mild to non-existent tides most of the day but we still ran into a tide race going north. Dave saw roger enter this current and suddenly start bobbing north. Then I entered it and Dave saw me follow Roger. Finally Dave entered the current and caught up with me to tell me what he saw. Although the current was going north the waves in the rip were going west. We were able to get an occasional shove from them in the right direction so we rode them but they soon calmed down. Even afterwards we were set north for a long time. We probably should not have resisted this because as we got close to Lorenzo a southern current came up and set us to the left and we had to work hard or get swept past the island.

As we approached the island a Mexican Navy cutter came by and dropped off a zodiac to exchange supplies and personnel with the guys camped out on the spit. Was this the changing of the guard? The new guys were not as interested in us and merely waved. They didn't ask us to come close and try to talk to them.

We rock gardened our way around the southern end of Lorenzo and made it to our old campsite on the west side by lunch time. We stopped and set up camp there for the night. Dave had complained about the bo-bo flies at this campsite the last time, but I had not been particularly bothered by them then. This time, however, the bo-bo flies were miserable! Hundreds of them would swarm over our faces and hands every time we stopped moving for a second. Roger went south to explore the pieces of a wrecked boat we saw on the way by. Dave walked north to see the lagoon and cardone cactus forest. I found a small bit of shade at the edge of the arroyo. I suffered the flies quietly and worked on my journal.

We had landed around lunch time and probably could have paddled across to the main Baja Peninsula before dark. For fear of the tides we settled down to a miserable hot afternoon shooing bo-bo flies instead. In hindsight a tide rip would have been refreshing by comparison. That evening we contacted the rest of the group by VHS radio and arranged to meet them at a place called "Dolphin Beach" a few kilometers north of Caja Muleres.


All text and images Copyright © 2004 by Mike Higgins / contact