La Paz Entrance Buoy Update

We heard over the morning net today from Tom of Baja Insider that the entrance buoys to La Paz might have moved around a bit after last week's high tides and the norther that blew through. We were curious so we took the dinghy, GPS and handheld depth sounder to check things out. Nothing too dramatic, just FYI.

La Paz Entrance Buoys
A direct line between the first red buoy (unmarked) and red buoy #2 takes you very close to the bar. The shallowest we saw was 5.8 feet at zero tide. My advice would be to steer clear of the red buoys and favor the first green buoy (unmarked) and green buoy #1. (These are the buoys in front of the Bercovich Boat Yard and Costa Baja Marina.) The unmarked red buoy and red buoy #1 have always been close to the bar so I don't know if they have moved or not. Red buoy #6 has actually broken away and is now sitting on the sand bar between red buoy #8 and red buoy #10. Looking down the channel you can see a long stretch with no red buoy (where #6 should be). Red buoy #6 is currently at 24 11.7N, 110 18.339W, but the next high tide might change that. Needless to say, don't steer towards red buoy #6. Red buoy #10 seems to have gotten a fresh coat of paint, however no one has bothered to repaint "#10" on the buoy - it's faint under the new coat of paint. Finally, red buoy #12 looks to be stretched to the end of its tether at high tide and is a little lower in the water than the rest, but seems to be in a good spot, although probably a new spot judging by its tether.