Bahia Rincon - BCS, Mexico

Bahia Rincon isn't visited by many cruising boats, yet it is a surprisingly nice spot and a welcome escape from southerly weather when wishing to transit the San Jose Channel.

There are two anchorages on the south side, one nestled inside the cliffs, or further in at the foot of the arroyo.

We've only used this as an overnight stop when transiting the channel, and haven't explored ashore, but there is reasonable snorkeling around the rocky outcrops. There is a fishing village called Los Burros further up, and the pilotage notes state that you can also anchor there although we haven't tried.

Charts are poor for this area, so do take extra care in the area. We didn't find any rocks offshore but that's not to say there aren't any.

We've been anchored in flat calm here, and then hit with 30kn gusts back in the channel, so protection is generally excellent, and its a great option if you want to wait out southerly weather before entering the channel, or if winds pick up from the south in the channel in the night rendering Mangle Solo untenable.

We anchor off the arroyo which is easy to spot when coming from the channel or the north. We give the shore a wide berth, there are some outlying rocks visible close to shore which make for good snorkeling.

We anchor in about 30-40ft (Deep by baja standards) over sand. It seems to shoal quite quickly, and its rockier closer to shore.

You can also anchor in the obvious lobe just to the east of this, again its rocky out till around 100M from the shore, which prohibits snugging up close to the cliffs. We snorkeled around the bay here and didn't notice any rocks offshore that would be a problem for navigation, but care should definitely be taken as we haven't found any surveys of this bay on any of our charts.

We've only found mention of this bay on Charlies charts, and its relatively brief, but there are some other comments on Active Captain too.