Power vessel navigating the entrance to the ensenada de La Paz
The channel to the La Paz harbor can be tricky and every year we lose a boat or two to the sandbars and a skipper that didn’t read his cruising guides
The La Paz channel is now well marked, but can still present challenges to new arrivals, particularly at night
The entrance looking west from a hilltop at CostaBaja
In 2008 there were significant change to the navigational buoys marking the entrance to the Ensenada de La Paz or the La Paz Harbor. Two new markers have been placed to the west southwest of the previous first buoys. In the image above, taken from the buff at CostaBaja Resort and Marina, the new series of dog leg turns to enter the La Paz Harbor is dramatic. The green and red arrows above indicate the channel markers. This change will prove even more challenging at night, as it will be very east to cut the second set of cans short and plot a course across less than 1 foot of water at low tide.
Today, it becomes even more important to navigate well, particularly at the entrance to the channel. The changes were made to accommodate the expansion of the Pemex docking facilities at the very entrance to the harbor, so ships could pull in stern tie to offload. It is very common for there to be an oil containment boom extended from the shore to what use to be the mid channel marker, now usurped by Pemex as a mooring.
CostaBaja has also installed a series of three yellow caution markers along the northern side of the channel just south of the Marina breakwater. These three markers have flashing yellow lights at night and indicate both a swimming caution zone for power boats and jet skies and the beginning of the reef/shallows area.
This information should be updated shortly to the USCG aids to Navigation.
The change to the harbor entrance is intended to route the increasing recreational boat traffic away from the secure zone of the Pemex dock and allow the tankers to ‘stern-in’ to the fuel facilities..
During spring and summer months some sailors are caught, quite literally, by surprise as they are brought to a halt by the breast line of a tanker, tied to the can just yards away from the mid channel marker.
Some folks have had difficulty with the depth of the new channel, right at the first marker, complaining of insufficient depth. I personally sounded the area with a lead line in May of 2008 and did not find a depth less than 16 feet at mean tide.
The entrance to the Ensenada de La Paz has long proved a booby trap for those who know better than to consult a chart or a Mexican cruising guide before entering the harbor. Nearly once a week during the cruising season someone takes the shipwreck approach to La Paz, plotting a straight GPS course for Marina Palmira or what APPEARS to be the entrance to the harbor.
In fact, a direct approach as shown in red, often results in tragic groundings. Just two years ago a Baja HaHa rookie’s boat was destroyed during a norther at night on a bad approach to La Paz.
The entrance to La Paz Harbor was closed to foreign navigation after sunset as recently as 1977 and is not an approach to be taken lightly. With the increase in shore lights the range marker system has become increasingly hard to differentiate. With the new dogleg turn boaters in La Paz will be have to take additional precautions not to skip the second set of markers, particularly in the dark.
For first time visitors, also remember that extreme tides twice a month can generate as much as 5kts of current in places in the bay. Because of geography and winds, La Paz can prove very difficult to arrive into under sail.
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