San Felipe - Baja California, Mexico

San Felipe is a cute little tourist town at the north west end of the Sea of Cortez. There is a Fonatur marina in the darsena located a couple of miles south of the town center, here you will find wooden docks with a handful of slips, with power and dock water available. The navy occupy a number of the slips here, and if its full or you don't want to pay the very reasonable dock fees, you can anchor in the darsena, however pay careful attention to the depths here as there are a number of shoal areas.

Down town there is a large grocery store which stocks everything you will need to provision for the Sea of Cortez, plus a number of smaller independent grocery stores that stock some gringo favorites. There is no dedicated marine chandlery here, but there are a number of ferreterias which stock various odds and ends you might need.

San Felipe gets a lot of tourist traffic at weekends, and as such there are plenty of up-market eateries serving excellent sea food, steak, burgers, etc. The malecon is busy at night with bars, street food, and random entertainment.

A taxi from the marina to downtown will run you 150-200 pesos. You can also walk, it's better at low tide, as you can walk right along the beach, but you can mostly walk through back roads and side streets if you don't fancy walking right down the highway.

Many weekends the town will host some kind of event from four wheelers to classic cars and the odd music festival, so its worth checking what's going on when you arrive.

There is a strong navy presence here, typically a frigate anchored offshore, and the rescate service moored in the town. They are here primarily to patrol for narco trafficking and to protect the Vaquita and other species from illegal fishing. They are a very professional service, and extended us every courtesy when we were in San Felipe.

Tidal ranges here are in the 15-20ft range, which means serious care is required if you don't want to be high and dry whilst you wait on the next flood.

Entrance to the darsena is dredged, there is a transit between two towers above the port captains office, however these are not to be confused with the two red and white radio/cell towers to the north. The actual transit marks are usually obscured by fishing vessels in port, so you are best just taking a bearing from the entrance. We saw plenty of depth in and around the marina entrance, but I wouldn't count on it.

Once you enter the darsena, you will see the shrimp boats dead ahead moored to the pier, the Fonatur marina is to port (South) of that along the wall, however there is a shoal patch (-1ft at low water) just in front of it, so it is best to head almost abeam of the fonatur docks before making your turn. We saw 8ft mlws on the end tie.

The anchorage is to starboard (North) when you enter the darsena, there is a wreck visible which you must avoid. Do not block the entrance.

When we were there just after hurricane Kay, the docks were not in great shape, but the cleats were solid. Power and water required a very long extension, but worked great.

We had a couple of chubascos when we were there, which came directly from the north, causing 40kn winds to push us hard onto the dock. Make sure you are well fended here, and that your fenders can't pop out.