Hanging Loose in Loreto

Chartening and the notion of going “off the beaten path” may sound self-contradictory. Charter companies tend to put bases where demand is high and they can turn a profit, so if you’re lucky enough to find an outfit and a destination that gets away from the typical—say yes. To be clear, “off the beaten path” doesn’t mean unfriendly or uncomfortable, and certainly not boring. In fact, you may even find yourself discovering your “tribe” when chartering farther afield in a place where it feels more like actual cruising. To do this, though, you need to go where the cruisers go—which is how we found ourselves connecting with West Coast Multihulls (WCM: westcoastmultihulls.com) in Loreto, Mexico, on the Baja Sur peninsula about halfway down the Sea of Cortez. Here, you know you’ve found the real deal when conversations start with, “Th is is our 20th year cruising the Sea.” After nudging your way into this kind of crowd, you’ll never feel like a tourist again.

We flew directly into Loreto, rented a car and made our way down to Marina Puerto Escondido, a large and modern facility about 15 miles south of town. The cruising boats docked there ran the gamut from 30-year-old Ericson 38s to a Nordhavn 72 that looked so new it seemed, the Fountaine-Pajot Saba 50 that was ours for the week. Normally, Balam doesn’t go out bareboat. But we got lucky and had the run of the six cabin/six head, fully outfitted boat that turned heads wherever we went.