Working Boats

I have a thing about workboats. Whenever we're near the ocean, I like to prowl the local harbor with a camera. Workboats are one of my favorite photographic subjects, whether they’re pangas hauled out on a beach or trawlers tied to a dock. As a kid, I learned to paddle a canoe and row a dinghy on the Delaware River in northern New Jersey. When I was a teenager, our family vacationed on Lake Ontario where my father and I fished out of an aluminum skiff with a small outboard motor, which he taught me to operate and let me run it into town by myself. As a marine scientist, I worked on commercial fishing boats and research ships from dories and seine skiffs to coastal and offshore oceanographic vessels. While we lived in southern California, I co-owned a 24-ft Skipjack with two diving buddies; we took it to the Channel Islands most weekends from May to October to hunt white seabass and yellowtail. Now I’m relegated to a sit-on-top kayak that I carry on the roof of the truck. Maybe, when we’re settled, there will be a bigger boat in my future.

Cruising yacht in Point Hudson Marina, Port Townsend, Washington

Across the Sea of Cortés on Ferries

About a week before our six-month Mexican tourist visas expired, we drove up the east side of the Baja peninsula from Loreto to Santa Rosalía to catch the ferry to Guaymas on the mainland. We left late in the morning when the sun was high and the air was warm. It was Semana Santa (Easter Week) and we had been warned that the roads would be crowded with travelers. Mario, our neighbor just back from Mulege, told us that the beaches along the Sea of Cortés were packed with campers.

Playa El Requeson on Bahiá Concepcíon

Sea of Cortez

We left northern Colorado early on September 28; it seemed fitting that the temperature was below freezing and there was ice on the truck. We arrived in Topolobampo, Mexico the afternoon of September 30 to catch the ferry across the Sea of Cortez to La Paz on the Baja peninsula. We were early, so I walked around the commercial fishing docks. Most of the boats were rigged with paired-trawls for shrimping.

Commercial fishing docks in Topolobampo

The ferry (California Star) sailed around midnight and arrived in La Paz about 7 AM on October 1. It took an hour to get the truck off the boat (we were almost the last vehicle loaded and the last to get off) and two hours to get through federal customs (even though we left from mainland Mexico). I drove the truck through a large "gamma ray" scanner and it was inspected cursorily by two young officers searching for contraband. 

California Star (from: Baja Ferries)

We arrived in Los Barriles ("The Barrels") on the East Cape in early afternoon. In all, it took us 3.5 days, 1,580 driving miles consuming 85 gallons of gas and a 7-hour ferry ride.

Arriving in Los Barriles