Coronado & San Juanico

Something I’m getting used to as a cruiser is figuring out how to plan which days we want to be “at anchor” versus which days we want to be sailing. Wind certainly has something to do with those decisions. As we launched on this sailing venture friends kindly gifted us with the Sea of Cortez Cruiser’s Guide. It holds a wealth of information, giving us everything we need to know about every bay, harbor, and town along the way. It includes depths, rocks, and shoals to watch for, anchoring tips, historical facts, and more.

As we sit in one beautiful bay it’s sometimes hard to motivate and leave, especially when the next anchorage is more than a few hours of sailing away. When we left Coronado for San Juanico however, we knew we would want to stay for a few days since Coronado gave us a rolling anchorage for almost 24 hours and San Juanico would be protected from the northern winds that knocked us around so much.

We pulled into San Juanico (shown in photo), dropped anchor, and found ourselves surrounded by stunningly beautiful rock cliffs. It felt like we were on dry ground compared to our last night at Coronado.

The next day we met cruiser friends on the beach and hiked up one of the cliffs to find the famed Apache Tears…black shiny rocks. They are said to be the tears of the Apache Indians who cried for their fallen family members after the US Calvary fought and defeated the Apaches in Arizona in the 1870’s. With the history lesson/allegory shared, Chandler and Henry hurried up the dusty hill to unearth the stones, stuffing them into pockets and exclaiming every few moments. “Look at this one, Mom!”

Along the way we found the “Cruiser shrine”. This is where cruisers leave mementos of their boats, themselves, and their journey’s. We wanted to leave one too and decided on using a blue flip-flop Ann was wearing as she hiked the hillside to find the Apache Tears. Chandler wrote one of her Sea poems on it, we all signed our names and added our boat name to it and then planned to place it alongside the other interesting pieces of cruiser memorabilia but never got back to the tree to place it there this trip. We’ll have to do that on the way back to Loreto in July when we stop in this favorite anchorage again.