La Ramada, Guidebooks, and Anchoring
Tucked just north of San Juanico is a small-ish nook named La Ramada. We set course for it just after our time in Bahia Concepcion. It’s well protected from the south, west, and east, but open to the north and northeast. We did experience some strong westerlies while there - a typical Baja weather pattern in the summertime, but there was no fetch for waves to build up in.
Eventide at anchor in La Ramada
One of the interesting aspects to writing about anchorages is the challenge in capturing it in all conditions. An anchorage is inherently defined by both the local geography and the weather conditions. You can’t really talk about one without the other. It would be like describing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without mentioning the jelly.
The challenge of describing a place makes guidebook writers job challenging. We’ve largely relied on four books for this trip. Sea of Cortez - A Cruiser's Guidebook - 4th Edition has been our go to starting place. It is well written and has great accompanying charts which are super useful given how poorly this area is charted. It does a great job of catching the spirit of a place as well as how it will be in various conditions. Pacific Mexico - A Cruiser's Guidebook - 2nd Edition is written by the same authors but covers the Pacific coast of mainland Mexico. You will hear these books refered to as the “Shawn and Heather” guides - named for the first names of the two authors.
Charlie’s Charts: Western Coast of Mexico and Baja is more condensed and includes wonderful pen and ink drawings. It covers many places and the drawings give one a quick overview of the location, potential tracks, and hazards along the way.
Mexico Boating Guide is our third often used reference. It contains all sorts of information, including many spots that are somewhere between full-fledged anchorage and open roadstead. For example, it contains far more spots in Bahia Concepcion than any of the other guides. It is written by Captain Pat Rains and we often will say “What does Captain Pat have to say about this place?”
We have all of them out and refer to them repeatedly. They all mention Ramada and all speak favorably of it. One even includes a picture. They vary in their view as to how many boats can fit (some say 8 and others say 3 - to which one of course must ask what size boat). They each give a slightly different flavor of the place and slightly different location to drop the hook. But it is exactly this sort of diversity of perspectives that makes picking a place to go fun. And hard.
We tend to want to sail as much as possible, taking our time, but that often means getting to a new place with only a few hours to get situated. That’s a fine approach when the anchorage is large and well protected, but many of the more interesting places are small and require a bit of figuring out. You have to find a spot, anchor, set the anchor and then check that you will won’t float away (or more likely get blown away) during the night. You have to think about where the waves are coming from. You have to judge if you have enough room with other boats and won’t turn into the shore or a shallow spot at some point.
Imagine if at the end of every day you had to anchor your house. You had to make sure it wouldn’t get broken up while it drifts around a teeny tiny anchor and chain.
What this all points to is the general absurdity that a 220 pound anchor can securely hold our 50,000 pound boat (227x more weight) in a wide variety of conditions. Doing a deep dive in the physics of anchoring is beyond the scope of this blog post, and it is actually quite hard to get it all down cleanly. Anchor weight, size, shape along with the type of bottom (mud, sand, rock) and rode type (chain, rope, a mixture) all play into it.
The size of the anchorage matters because you have to put out rode - chain or rope - based on how deep the water is to get a secure hold. Take Ramada. It’s about 700 feet across. It’s about 25 feet deep. For a secure anchoring, you need something like 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 chain. So this means something close to 100 feet of chain out. Add the boat’s length, 50 feet in our case, and now you are drawing a circle with a diameter of 300 feet where you boat could be. That’s about half of the entire width. The boat can be anywhere in that circle. Now think about the other boats anchoring there - they all have a circle of similar size. And you really don’t want to hit your neighbor in the middle of the night.
Sunset in Ramada
None of this has much to do with Ramada. It was a beautiful spot, with room for 3-4 boats in my estimation. The water was clear and the holding in sand was excellent. Snorkeling was awesome (rays everywhere!) and there was a tree nearby filled with small momentos left by cruisers over the years. The guidebooks were accurate on protection and we stayed safe and secure even as the nighttime westerly neared 20 knots.
Eventide’s addition to the Cruisers’ Shrine