We provisioned fresh goods and took off from La Paz and back to Espiritu Santo. After a few hours of motor sailing, we arrived in time to see the moon rise in a new bay with boat buddies SV Atalaya and SV Solamar. The following morning, we woke up to SV Atalaya calling us on the radio to see if we wanted to head into shore to hike the arroyo of the bay. Once everyone was onshore, we started the hike walking into the valley, hoping to find some kind of established trail. Unfortunately, the terrain was quite unforgiving and covered in thorny bushes with no identifiable path that we could find. After walking for about an hour or so, we found a vista point that looks over the turquoise bay where the boats were anchored and snapped a group photo. We turned back and returned to the beach pulling out thorns and stickers from our shoes and socks and taking inventory of the bloody scratch marks on our legs.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing on board and snorkeling, although we were starting to feel the drop in water temperature and unable to stay in the water longer than 10 minutes at a time. After sunset, Connor decided to make flan and Abbey showered. After hearing the bilge pump going off, Eitan decided to investigate and opened up the engine compartment located above the floor of the kitchen, opposite the refrigerator. A quick glance showed the sump pump for the shower was not working and the shower water was overflowing into the bilge (bottom of the boat) causing the bilge pump to run, triggering an alarm. While Eitan was crouched on the floor, Connor was pouring the flan molds and a strong roll of the boat caused one of the hot flan molds to tip off the counter and directly onto Eitan’s bare back, causing an outcry of pain and a first-degree burn. Connor was quick to apologize and Eitan iced his back for the rest of the night.
However, the bad luck didn’t stop there. Each night, Eitan locks the dingy to the boat to thwart any potential boat or outboard thieves. Unfortunately, as he went to lock up the dingy, he accidentally dropped his keys in the water. Normally in Espiritu Santo, this wouldn’t be much of a problem because the visibility is so clear you can see to the bottom of the anchorage from the boat. For some reason, this bay was a little murkier and Eitan had to put on full SCUBA gear to recover the keys the following morning. Conveniently, we were also planning to dive the way to the next cove later that morning. After pulling anchor, it was about 30 minutes before we spotted the mooring ball that marked the dive site of another shipwreck. Our original plan was to anchor in the new cove then take the dingy out, but, since we were already running behind schedule due to the key recovery and the current conditions indicated an uncomfortable dingy ride, we decided to try our hand at mooring SV Sierra Wind. Up until this point, we had only anchored the boat or docked it in a slip at a marina. We had zero experience catching a mooring ball and tying off the boat. Eitan briefed us on what needed to happen: we would pre-tie the bowlines into loops using a bowline knot, then direct him to approach the mooring ball, someone would use the gaff hook to grab the ball and pull it up as the others slipped the bowline knots through and back to the cleat on the bow. The plan sounded pretty simple and we needed to work fast with the current ready to drift the boat away from the ball. After approaching the ball, Connor successfully hooked it and tried to bring it high enough for us to loop the bowlines through but the rope for the mooring was too short, and, combined with the current, our gaff hook slipped out of Connor’s hands and sunk to the bottom. The second attempt required Connor to get in the water and loop the lines through from the water surface and this was much easier and a quick success compared to the first try. The shipwreck turned out to be another nice dive and we were able to recover the gaff hook.
Once again, SV Atalaya called us to do another arroyo hike. Feeling hesitant and looking at our scabbed legs from the day before, we decided to bring a towel and drinks to the beach as a backup plan in case we couldn’t find a trailhead again. Upon getting to the beach, Eitan had forgotten his shoes so Abbey and I decided to hang back and explore the area closer to the beach. We did a little scrambling and took some scenic panoramic pictures of the boats anchored out in the bay. The hiking trail was a short, but established trail and the others returned to the beach within 40 minutes. SV Atalaya invited everyone over for sundowner drinks on their catamaran so we headed back to the boats. Unfortunately, the tide was going out and the water was too shallow for the outboard motor so we had to walk the dingy a ways and I stepped on an urchin, leaving a small barb in the bottom of my foot. After walking a hundred feet or so, we put our downwind sailing experience to use and pulled out a towel to use it like a sail, taking advantage of the gusting winds coming from shore until we were deep enough to put the motor in.
After multiple nights of winds and a rolling boat, we moved to another more protected bay between Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida. Once arriving in the bay, we set out to explore and saw that the small space between islands causes a type of wave pool for the water on the eastern side. I stayed on land to explore the empty fish village while the others went back to the boat the grab paddle boards for some paddle surfing. The village was a little creepy with about a dozen structures and fish and whale bones scattered about. Although this bay was much more protected, the winds still rushed through all night, pushing the boats back and forth on the anchor. Whenever we set the anchor, Eitan sets an alarm on his iPad to signal if the boat is getting pushed outside of a certain buffer zone indicating the anchor is dragging. Under certain circumstances, this can be catastrophic and cause you to hit other boats, a reef, or drag into the shore. The anchor alarm had been going off all night and Eitan evaluated the space between us and the other boats and decided to put out more anchor chain to help keep us in place. After talking with the other boats in the morning, the others had to completely pull and reset their anchors having drug much more than us.
It was time, once again, to say a farewell to our boat friends as they decided to use a weather window to cross the Sea of Cortez to mainland Mexico while we kept heading north to Isla San Francisco. After a few hours of motoring, we pulled into an idyllic bay with a few other charter boats already at anchor. Being the farthest north that we have been, the water temperature was quite cold and we decided to head to land for a hike. The bay is bordered by a hill and cliffs on the southern end making for a cool trail where you can see the twin bays. After taking a few scenic shots, we headed down the path back to the beach for sunset drinks.
