Mosaic Family Voyage: A Day in the Life: Mulegé Grocery Run

Since my last column, published in the July issue of Vancouver Family Magazine, we’ve traveled over 250 miles north from La Paz to Bahía Concepción. We’re taking part in a long-established Sea of Cortez cruiser’s migration. In the spring and summer months, cruising boats move northward to get out of the hurricane zone. The further north into the Sea of Cortez you travel, the less likely you’ll need to contend with a hurricane which could destroy your home.

After several weeks’ travel, we found ourselves anchored with about a dozen other cruising boats in a bay called Santo Domingo in Bahía Concepción, almost halfway up the inside of the Baja Peninsula, and low on groceries. To get to town to get those groceries, we would need to pick up anchor and head six miles across the bay to anchor at the mouth of a river. Once anchored there, we would need to get in our dinghy and take it two and a half miles up the river to explore town and shop.

On this morning, we were one of six cruising boats going into town together to run our errands. We all left our protected overnight anchorage between 7 and 8 in the morning, motored or sailed across the bay and anchored again by 9.

We were the last boat to get anchored and we knew that we would be tagging along behind the rest of the group. All the other boats have dinghies with stronger outboard motors which allow them to get up on plane and travel much faster over the water. Our little 3.3 horsepower engine isn’t strong enough to get us up on plane, so we travel everywhere pretty slowly. This normally isn’t an issue; we’re used to being the slow dinghy. But, when you have two and a half miles to travel up a river, this changes the equation a bit. For most of the dinghies, the river trip would take 10-15 minutes. For us, it would take an hour or more.

Read the rest of this article in the full digital issue below.