20 January 2010. Isla San Francisco -- or Francisquito, as the locals call it -- is a striking island! The geology is just incredible and the rock walls come alive at the edges of daylight. "The Hook" is the main anchorage -- you can see a few boats at anchor in the satellite image. It provides good holding for all but west winds...but a quick sail around the island to the east side takes care of that.
The big storms that slammed the Pacific Northwest were predicted to continue their move south and hit Baja shortly after we left the marina. We determined that Isla San Francisco would be the best anchorage in the Sea and it proved out. We set anchor in the main anchorage and set to wait out the storm with just three other boats.
The anchorage was relatively comfortable given the strong NW winds. After two days, the system passed southward resulting in SW winds and building seas. By 1430, the SW winds had picked up to 20+ kts and seas were over 3' -- we "decided" to pick up anchor and move to the east side. Rounding the hook was a bit stiff, we had to head straight in to the seas to avoid getting pushed over. Once around the hook, we were able to gradually change our point of sail and head around to the east anchorage. Once we made our way to the east side, the seas subsided and all we had to deal with was the wind (which was enough). We had to set anchor twice, as our first attempt left us dragging. There was only one other boat at anchor -- at first -- so we had our choice of anchor spots in the relatively small anchorage. After an hour, two of the three boats at other anchorage followed our example and moved to the east. It was pretty cozy as all had to anchor in pretty close to the other.
Come the next day, the winds backed down and we moved back to "The Hook" as the next system was due. We set anchor in light SW winds and all was relatively calm until the following day when NW winds reached 30+ kts. We scoped out to 160' of chain to make sure we held tight and waited out the storm.
After seven days at Isla San Francisco, the weather cleared and we headed out to another anchorage -- this time along the Baja coast. We left very impressed with this island and were certain that we had found the best place in all of the Californias to weather out these storms. Baja was definitely better than the Pacific Northwest...and our little Francisquito was the best of all -- i.e., of course, if you happened to be in a boat waiting out the weather. (I added that last bit for all of you reading this thinking that the best place would have been in a house...and what were we thinking being out in all of that!)
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