Anchored in the Mogote

We are anchored in a place known as the Mogote anchorage. The official Mogote is actually a sandy spit of land north of La Paz that forms the north shore of the bay. Our boat location is the black boat shape in the channel right of the spit of land.

A challenge here is that since the bay is large and only open in one end, the water rushes thru the small skinny opening when the tides are changing. During ‘king’ tides the current is pretty strong. Currents move your boat all around your anchor. We wanted to anchor near the town so we anchored in the small skinny channel. We have king tides for a few days.

Challenge two is the wind can be quite strong at times. We have ‘northers’ which are strong winds. We hit over 23 knots yesterday. Winds move your boat all around your anchor.

Challenge three is shallow sandbars. You also have to anchor where your boat won’t hit bottom as it drifts around the anchor. At low tide some of the sandbar are actually above the water. There are lots of shallow sandbars.

Challenge four are the ship channels. You can’t just anchor anywhere. Boats and ships run up and down here all the time and there’s heavy traffic in the ship channel. Anchoring in a marked channel is a very bad idea and will get you noticed by the local authorities and the rest of the boating community.

Last challenge! There are lots of boats around here and you don’t want to drift into any. There are many more boats than average as a good portion of the Baja Haja fleet is in town. The currents and wind and sandbars and lots of boats makes it important to find a spot to anchor somewhere where you will not drift into another boat.

So the big challenge is you have to find a nice safe spot to anchor where you can be safe and secure, and you won’t hit ground or another boat while drifting around your anchor.

Drifting around your anchor? It surely can’t be that bad! Just look at these images from our chart plotter and of boats all over our anchorage. We have been drifting quit a bit the last few days.