Punta Entrada to Punta Baja, August 16th 2011

I got up at 4:00 AM but dallied around and didn't launch until 7:00. I cut diagonally across to the mainland, a long crossing never-the-less. Part way across my GPS died. My chart case leaked just a little and my charts were waterproof. But the battery door on the GPS sucked in that little bit of water and corroded the battery contacts off. My watch says BAT LOW as well, I'm not doing well with electronics on the start of this trip. I have a backup GPS but could not dig it out until after I landed in the evening. I could see cars and trucks up on Highway One so I knew where I was approximately. The bummer about loosing the GPS is that I use its track log to geo-locate all my photos. I will loose the location of all the rest of the pictures taken this day.

A pod of a dozen little grey dolphins followed me for quite a while. Perhaps my big yellow fish was scaring smaller fish into the path of the dolphins. Along the shore I came to what I thought was Campo Viejo, a slot in the cliff that Constantin, Sid and I chose NOT to land in with large waves back in 2001. But next door was a large interesting building on a point. There were Mexican tourists sitting around and tide pooling below this building. Around the point there was water flowing over the bluff from the building. Is there a river here? Or is the resort's sewer system outflowing here? I did not taste it to find out.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw what I though was an optical illusion. There was a square patch in the cliff that didn't look right. I had seen several small caves on this coastline today, but they had been too shallow to consider going in. My illusion turned out to be real! There was a huge square hole in the cliff with a sandy beach inside. Inside was a huge chamber with a big round sinkhole in the ceiling! Conditions had kept me away from shore, but I was able to paddle right in this cave. Three harbor seals inside were very unhappy to see me blocking the exit. This is more harbor seals than I normally see in a week in Baja!

With the map I was able to guestimate that I still had 12 miles to go and I was tired. I wish I could have scheduled this long day later when I would be in better shape. But it was still early in the afternoon. I promised myself that I would not start looking for a camp-able beach until 6:00 PM. Then it turned out that I rounded Punta Baja before that time and completed the whole day as planned. Punta Baja was a lot easier to round than the last time. The swell was mild and I didn't have to go an extra couple of miles to get around breaking waves in the shallow part of the point under water. I paddled into the protected bight here and landed in front of the same arroyo that I camped at with Sid and Constantin. The beach was much larger and sandier. I camped in the arroyo instead of up on the bluff. No worries about flash floods in August.