Author: Sailing Adrift

We anchored on the south side of the harbor. Anchor holds great in about 30 ft of water. Offers great wind protection from the west, northwest and north, mild protection from the south, and none from the east. Found the accurate to be annoying rolly rather than can't sleep rolly. Having just entered Mexico and arrived by way of Ensenada, the town feels like jumping into the deep end rather than playing in the kiddy pool. Very rough with a couple of little markets and restaurants. We shopped for groceries but didn't eat at the restaurants. As a working village, it looks like they may have made an attempt at tourism years ago, the beaches have improvements and a no longer open bathroom facility and snack shack. Mostly you'll find fisherman but the only person we met that spoke any English was the port captain. We checked in with him based on recommendations and he stamped our Ensenada port document and asked us to inform him by radio when we left. He gave us permission to anchor in the middle of the harbor, which we did not take him up on, but would probably have eliminated the annoying rolliness that we experienced. The fisherman allowed us to tie up our dinghy to their dock, but we did ask as we were coming in, and they directed us to tie up on the beach side next to another panga. Wish we could have found a place to purchase some of their sea salt from the south. I feel like we would have appreciated this village months rather than days into our cruising Mexico experience. My Spanish is far from fluent and there's not much in the way of cell coverage, so make sure you download your languages before you arrive.

We really enjoyed our time in Bahia Ascension! Shari, who owns the Bufadora (blowhole) Hotel, was super nice and very very helpful with getting water, provisioning, recommendations and even invite us along to see a local baseball game! Leri, a local who has a sailboat in the bay, greeted us as we were coming in and gave us help in anchoring. He will deliver water to your boat, and is happy to help with all things that you may need. Two big red commendations that I haven't found on any other source: According to the locals, anchor as close to the Western cliffs as you feel comfortable, it provides the most wind protection when it's blowing strongly from the northwest which seemed to happen every afternoon until sundown, and leaves less bay to build up a chop between you and land. Most online resources have you anchoring in front of the beach close to downtown (which is why we anchored there in about 25 ft with good sand holding) This one is definitely a must, because it is very hard to go ashore with any kind of wave action bending around the point without pooping your dingy trying to time the waves: there is a very well protected dingy landing beach just inside the point under a big concrete wall painted white. You'll notice it as one of the two areas that the local pangas moor their fleets. If you go towards the fleet of pangas at the point of the bay and look for the beach amongst the rocks, you can land in almost all conditions very comfortably. The only thing to keep in mind is you want to come in to the beach as straight as possible as there's some sneaky rocks to the north that will hide in high tide. Walk up the access road and hang a right to head to town, and don't be surprised if someone offers you a ride in. This puts you a fair distance outside of the main area town, but at least you and your gear will be relatively dry! And there's even a spot to wash your hands and feet at the top of the beach.

We snuggled up the small mountains on the west to hide from the 20-30kt continuous winds coming from the north and northwest. While the chop was very tolerable, the wind didn't diminish at all during our entire 4 day stay. We never got to leave the boat and the other boats at anchor waiting to head north didn't either, leaving as soon as the weather allowed. There was a tantalizing tiny beach just across from where we anchored at 24 46.2612 N 112 15.5677 W that looks great given better conditions. Overall quite surprised by the lack of wind protection given the bays reputation.