Category: BCS Mexico

Enroute Isla Partida to Isla Estanque, Baja

Enroute Punta Chivato to Santa Rosalia, Baja

Enroute Cala Mujeres, Bahia San Francisquito to San Carlos, Mainland Mexico

Winter is the slow season in Baja for fishing. Dorado are scarce, we haven’t seen one.

There were rumors of Wahoo back near La Paz. We had a visit from a marlin, but nobody’s fishing for them, mine I caught on the outside. All the charts call for yellowtail, but in Barriles the word was you had to fish deep with mackrel bait, like 200 feet. We heard that again at Punta Chivato, though here the suggestion was to jig with “iron” if you didn’t have bait. We trolled a lot on the way up from La Paz, but the only thing we caught were a couple small either bonita or skipjack, I can’t really say; I know the difference, yet. We don’t keep bonita, after one in Southern CA turned out to be a little… iron rich, shall we say.

Always, birds diving in a frenzy, means big fish have pushed up the bait. We caught two Jack Crevalle in Caleta Partida chasing the birds by casting with a spoon. We were hoping for yellowtail — cuz they’re yummy.

Finally, at Isla Estanque as we were heading out, bound for Bahia de Los Angeles, we got into a bird frenzy that kept going long enough to make a few passes. We picked up a yellowtail on a trolled “Wahoo Bomb” each time we went through. Diana who was at the helm, cheerily pointed out that at three fish we already had plenty to eat… so we were done right? Hard for me to admit, but the birds had calmed down anyway, so it really was time.

Diana made sushi for dinner… inside out rolls, with cucumber, carrot and pasilla chili. Each roll a little better than the last.

That really put us on the hunt for yellowtail. After riding out the cold front/norther (gusts to 39 knots) at Puerto Don Juan, we anchored at the picturesque Esta Ton on the west side of Isla Angel de la Guardia. The promised SW wind had not really materialized in the morning when we left, so we planned to hunt for fish with the fish finder sonar until we got a breeze while trying out the downrigger to troll as deep as we could.

Nothing on the troll, but we found a nice point with at least 2 knots of current swirling passed like a river and marked a waypoint with lots of “targets” from 200 feet to 150 down. It took some maneuvering to get Allora on the right drift, but the first time we really thought we had it right, I dropped and somewhere down there in the briny deep, it felt like it hit and then stuck on the bottom. I pulled hard and it didn’t move. It was a brand new lure (just purchased in Bahia de Los Angeles), and I couldn’t imagine how we’d get it unstuck in this heavy ocean current. Then the fish pulled hard. It fought for a while, putting a nice bend in the pole and then seemed almost to give up. I worried that I lost it, reeling madly until it turned away again and there was no doubt I hadn’t. Still, coming from the depths you never know what you’re in for. Anyway, this was a much bigger yellowtail than the three at Estanque. Again, Diana pointed out that we had a long way to sail, and the wind was coming up and we had plenty for dinner.

Since I have two of those jigs, I’m planning to bend the barb down on one, so I can keep fishing next time. We had one night of sushi and a lunch and dinner of filets from that yummy yellowtail. It’s the perfect fish for a converted trout fisherman, pretty colors and long shape, very trout-like mouth, with no teeth, and not scaly either. Though I did find out the hard way that they have one very sharp barb on their dorsal fin.

Pelicans remind me of the Maribou storks of Africa, only a little more attractive. They do hang with the seagulls a lot, so you have to think of them more as scavengers than fishers. Makes sense to have a big bucket if you’re going to be a garbage man. Seagulls are like the magpies that used to bug us with their racket in Montana, only a lot louder. There must be some reason evolutionary they need to squawk so much. Diana is convinced that they are laughing at us. Anytime we move, they break out in a chorus of gaffaws. It could be that they’re just that emotionally high strung, or like people, that they just have too much to say. Scavengers get a bad name. Not really fair. They have to be alert all the time. They cannot afford to miss a trick.

Purpose doesn’t imply meaning. We must all, ruthlessly, advance our DNA. That’s the DNA talking. Altruism is self-interest of a species, even when you extend it to the environment. We can live in a world without whales (though who would want to), but ultimately not in a world that is busy ridding itself of a treasure trove of beautiful animals.

Puerto Refugio March 11-13, 2016

The sun just rose at the tip of the point that marks one side of the channel to the west bay. We can see it because the breeze which was utterly calm last night has swung around WSW so that we are over our anchor. The range of the spring tide when we dropped the hook was -.9M to 2.5M high, so 3.4 meters. The fishermen who slept on the beach, the gravel beach, got busy at first light (as fishermen do), and already they have left for Bahia de Los Angeles – the small town which only just got electricity a couple years ago, forty miles or so along the arid, uninhabited shore to the south of us.

Yesterday they set up in the cove that is our home these past three or four days at the entrance to a small lagoon, and with long air hoses and a compressor they dove for scallops. They worked hard, all day. It was relatively and they were, as always, completely covered – sweatshirts with hoods, down to white fishing boots. One of the crew of five sported brightly colored plaid pants. The divers here have an arduous and dangerous occupation. Here they were working very shallow, but at Salsipuedes they were diving over 20 meters deep. For hours. Its hard to imagine how they don’t kill themselves. It’s also hard to imagine that there are any rescue teams ready to evacuate them to decompression chambers hundreds of miles away on the mainland, if (when) they do get in trouble.

Diana spoke to them in her virtually nonexistent Spanish (still better than mine), and we waited for them to come buy to sell us some scallops. ‘Ajillo’  (chopped garlic) is what they kept saying, though ‘vieiras’ is the official word, we looked up later. Eventually, we realized that they weren’t taking breaks in their scallop diving, so Diana kayaked over to the beach at sunset when they finally called it a day, prepared to negotiate a good deal for ‘vieiras’ direct from the source (or at least only one step removed, since we have a diving hookah and will get them ourselves once we learn the technique of knifing them off the rocks and figuring out where to look). They had a fire going and were making their dinner when she arrived. She was able to get an idea from them what the market price would be (kinda what she guessed) but they wouldn’t sell them to her. Nope. They insisted on giving them to her free, a huge bag of them (at least 50 giant scallops). So much for her negotiating skills. And, when she somehow managed to communicate that her husband (she probably tried the Italian word “merito” or “espouse”) liked chili peppers, like the ones they were frying with their fish for dinner, they gave her a ‘to go’ plate of fried fish and peppers. At the grey whale camp in San Ignacio they would have called it sea bass. She managed to make them take a few pesos and she had already given them a bag of rice crackers. She came back to the boat with the yummy fish and peppers (which went nicely with the end of my beer) and then decided that the generosity was decidedly too one-sided. She cut up a loaf of banana  bread she’d baked that afternoon and brought it over to the boys, like a nice Mexican mama, hoping that something different from what they must eat every day, would be a treat. This time she got a picture. They lined up for their portrait when she pulled out the iphone.

Who knows what the rest of our journey will hold, but right now we aren’t far at all (as the crow or jet flies) from the big, sophisticated cities of California and the US where no one would ever consider giving away a five pound bag of beautiful scallops they’d just worked like coal miners to get. Especially not to some apparently wealthy foreigners in a brand new yacht anchored in their spot who was asking to buy them. They had a different idea altogether from their not so distant neighbors on the other side of Donald Trump’s would-be spectacular Great Wall. They have fished here, no doubt for generations. Living as hard and simple a life as you would expect to find. They keep a small shrine on top of the rock, painted, gaudy, fire-engine red, and used some of the left over paint to write their names on the dark rocks. They seemed pretty content in this place where even I can go catch a few one-taco cabrilla on demand. Fried with a some spicy peppers and a little sip of Tequilla. Not too shabby.                                        

Waking up on the boat, at anchor, you never know what side the sunrise will arrive from. Until you go up on deck your whole world can be oriented an entirely different direction. Closer to these rocks, further from that shore, sun at the bow or stern. The beach long and wet, or completely gone with the tide. No sense building Stonehenge on a boat. It’s a pleasant thing to be surprised each morning, to take a moment, coffee in hand and visually adjust to the temporary new reality of your setting. Sailing is about constant change.

Sunrise at Isla el Pescador (Isla Rocallosa)

Last night a light flickered on and off at one of the beach palapas. Otherwise it was still enough that the Milky Way was reflected in the water. Stars and planets shimmered on both spheres. This morning with the sunrise a small group of dolphins (the bigger kind, Bottlenose), porpoised quietly around the boat.

Yesterday we made a grocery run to Bahia de Los Angeles. Anchor, get Namo in the water, lug the groceries (including milk, drinks and beer) back. There are several places to hunt vegetables in this ramshackle little town. Saturday is the best foraging, Wednesday not so much. The biggest and closest sets off a road with broken edges and dusty shoulders up from the main boat launch. There, we were serenaded by a very drunk man sitting beside the checkout counter, snatches of what must be famous Mexican ballads. At least in his mind. It was two in the afternoon, so we had to admire his fortitude, if not necessarily his pitch. With a nod from the woman checking us out using a pocket calculator, we were granted a ride. Bags in the back of the old pickup along side sundry items including used kids paint containers and the battered remains of a pinàta.

Up anchor and a brisk sail out of the bay, to find the oddest wind and uncomfortable chop in Canal de Ballenas. The instruments at the top of the mast dutifully reported 12 knots aft of the beam, but on deck it was maybe 4 and dead aft. Add a little rolling in the chop and the genoa had no idea what to do with herself. We rolled it up and wind promptly jumped to 17 knots and actually felt like it. We were just contemplating unfurling when the certified cetacean addict on board belted out an emphatic “Thar she blows!” pointing between us and the “dangerous submerged rocks” along shore to starboard, by Punta Don Juan. A good Captain knows his crew, and doesn’t have to be told what they expect. Hard to starboard, damn the rocks. A whale! For anyone following our track closely, these odd detours rarely mean we are lost, generally they are motivated by whales, dolphins or birds diving over fish (and we power off course with yellowtail, sushi on our minds). This particular whale, a small humpback (we think), was doing some mighty tail slapping (‘lobtailing’) and it was dramatic. We were able to get pretty close and enjoy the show for a while, before the cetacean-lover who can never get enough, conceded that she also did not want to drop anchor in the dark.

They stayed with us for almost an hour of frolicking.

The midmast view from the elevated fuel dock, looking down at Allora made me want to get more comfortable climbing the mast. She shimmered in the bright lights set against the dubious waters of the strange little harbor at this French mining town, Santa Rosalia. Lyndon, captain of the sailing vessel, Moon (a beautiful 42 foot Hinkley with generous cockpit, tall, tall mast and navy blue hull), a marine biologist, or something like that, mused about the chemicals on the periodic table that neighbor the copper mined here for decades. Arsenic, lead. What else would have settled in the mud inside this industrial looking harbor, carved out of the shoreline with its grey stone breakwater? In a square, the wreck of a mid-size schooner still nestled half sunk and rotting in one corner. We topped off our forward tanks, backed away in the windless water and motored out around the ludicrously outsized yellow buoy that marks the shoaling on the east side of the entrance.

We did not expect a breath of wind for the planned 77 mile trip up to San Francisquito. The forecast showed zero, but within half a mile we had 8 to 15 out of the west, which took us out passed the first point, then died. We could smell smoke from the shore, but couldn’t’ see the fire. We started up the engine and Diana took the first watch, turning the engines off less than an hour later as a nice NW breeze settled in convincingly. We will probably keep saying it, but the bioluminesence was off the charts. Really. The waves slipping off the bow lit with green lines of fire that was bright enough to light up the sails. The hydrogenerator on the stern churned a comet tail in our wake. It was mostly overcast. Diana turned on the red light in the cockpit to record our position, speed, course over ground, and wind conditions. We weren’t moving super fast, ultimately averaging about 4 knots an hour as things slowed down a little on my watch. The best course we could make without tacking sent us straight north up the Sea headed directly for what initially looked like a little island, Isla San Pedro Martir. Diana woke me at three thirty, as usual going later than she should on her watch. She said she would have kept going but was concerned I might be disappointed to miss the night sailing. I promised to wake her at sunrise if it was as spectacular as it promised to be. The sky was now about 5/8 which is how we list cloud cover in the log.

Before she went to sleep she set me up with our, now traditional, mint tea. She had also dug out my favorite chocolate cookies (a little thing at home in our pantry, a much bigger event here tucked into Allora’s tightly packed nooks and crannies) and set me up with a big loaf of sweet bread from the famous French bakery in Santa Rosalia (the one just a few blocks up the one way “up street” from the steel Gustav Eiffel designed church). The bread kept me awake, though it tasted like everything else from the bakery, not particularly French, a little underwhelming like the landmark church, set among the colorful clapboard buildings of the little mining town. A better set of words than reality provided, but charming nonetheless.

When I couldn’t eat anymore of the sweet doughy bread, which reminded me of sneaking raw pie crust as a kid, I clipped my harness in on the starboard padeye to gaze at the bioluminescene (which deserves a better, more magical and easier to spell name). By now the moon was peeking out on our port side, but the green lit waves (as bright as our running lights) on the starboard was mesmerizing.  I couldn’t help be stunned at this tiny glimpse of infinity. If we could sail for miles in the sea, and everywhere the water could be filled with countless millions of these glowing little creatures, how many of them could there be? I looked up at the stars shining in the gaps of the thinning clouds. Okay, right? Now the devout among my friends must forgive me, but really, in a universe as vast as this, that crushes human names for numbers (except in the abstract), how can our puny religious fictions, with all their thou’s and begats, come close to the spiritual gigantic-ness of the real unknown, even the tiny slice of its awesomeness we can see with our earthbound eyes. This is why I’m an atheist, so I set no limitations on my awe.

As the eastern sky paled slowly with dawn, visible to my darkness adjusted eyes almost an hour before I expected it, the wind began to slow down. So far in our experience, when the wind drops below 4 knots, it also starts swinging around the compass and with any swell at all, the boom rocks back and forth, the jib fills and collapses. It’s a frustrating mess. But the Sea of Cortez was mirror flat, barely ruffled by the remaining breeze, and the wind dropped down to three knots, but stayed constant from about 300 degrees. Allora kept moving, slipping along at 2 knots or so. Because we were not on a direct course to San Francisquito as it was (pointing against a NW wind) our computer calculated (and recalcualted constantly) that we would make it there, not the next day but the following, sometime around three in the morning at this veloctiy made good (VMG). Still, I didn’t really feel like starting the engine. Diana was in a deep sleep, and there just didn’t seem to be any compelling reason that we needed to be moving faster. After all, we were, as we always are, already home.

With Allora moving so slowly now, just slipping through the sea, the wavelets off the bow, rippled outward, luminous caligraphy in the slick water. It was also beautifully quiet, no sound from the sails, Allora barely whispered. We’re always floating (the laws of entropy willing!), but now we really floated, like a bird gliding on a light breeze. Sound travels on still water, so the whale I heard blow could have been right by the boat (I could hear that weird phasing whistle of the inhale), or several hundred yards away in the liminal ocean. I stared, but I could not see even a dark shadow. When it blew again, I woke Diana. Whale!

We sat at the bow, listening intently and staring as the sunrise quielty gathered light and Allora glided northward. We never saw the whale, and it must have been several, which blew and splashed along our path until it was light enough to see, and then they slipped away into the subterranean blueness and the wind came up again and ushered us onward.

We arrived at Isla San Pedro Martir, which has another name in the local indian language, and a very special spiritual significance. A rock like a mountain from Montana, dusted white with guano, with dark green trees atop which looked like pines. With deep caves in the massive stone along the shoreline and crazy currents in the deep water known for giant Humboldt squid and the Sperm whales which feed upon them. Diana did her best to drift Allora along the 200 foot contour and I jigged with an iron lure hoping for Yellowtail or Cabrilla. Diana suggested that when we have internet again I watch a video on jigging, since I was basically making it up. We had no luck and finally sailed around the south side of that magnificent island.

San Franscisquito was still almost directly upwind of us, but we realized, Isla Tiburon was straight along our course, so with nothing pressing us but the need to find a good anchorage for the predicted northwest blow, we continued our northward diagonal crossing of the sea. The wind had come up into the gusty teens. Diana wisely proposed setting the solent (the smaller of our two headsails), and we scooted along with a knot of current in our favor at over 8 knots toward Isla Tiburon. We should have had lunch when the wind was 8 knots, but Diana made sandwhiches with bread from the french bakery (think Baja Wonder Bread and you’ll have a good idea of this famous ‘pan’) and we ate them bracing ourselves on the starboard bench. Being on the low side, the settee was perfectly set for a nap, cradling me nicely as the waves and wind built. An hour later it was Diana’s turn to wake me with, ‘Whale!’  Amazing how hard it is, rising from a nap, to negotiate a boat heeled hard over and pounding against a steep chop. The whale Diana had seen, must not have known we were there, because when we surprised it (just off our port side bow), it slammed its tail as it dove and left a massive swirl of churning ocean behind.

We reefed and sailed hard for Tiburon, rejecting the first anchorage and motoring around the rocks to another, better protected one, where we dropped anchor at Ast Ahkeem or Hast Hakim, depending upon which reference you use. The sunset was as stunning as the sunrise, and we slept soundly waiting all night for the predicted north wind that never showed up. Clear skies in the morning and a pefect heavy dew to use to wipe the salt from Allora. Pastries from the french bakery, which have indistiguishable sweet fillings with crust or buns that must be poured like everything else there for the giant vat of dough that gives Santa Rosalia its dubious fame.

Fishing Report, February 27 2016

Isla Salsipuedes. (Leave if You Can)

With coffee just ready we had the morning SSB weather report tuned in, listening to the preamble of sailboats underway checking in, when our neighbor at the anchorage, tucked around the rocky point from us came over with his wife in their fishing skiff. In terms of size and industrial heft this would put any Florida flats boat to shame. Their boat, named (not coincidentally) Salsipuedes, is a Selene trawler. Diana mistook them as local fishermen at first due to their quiver of fishing poles, and in a sense they were. They said they’d been coming to this area for fifteen years. Turns out they are from Great Falls Montana, retired ranchers or farmers. He reminded us a bit of Chum (our former Springhill neighbor), very friendly, good sense of humor, with lots to say. They had Sally, their very polite dog, some kind of brown poodle on board. I snuck in as many fishing questions into the general howdy-do palather as I thought I could get away with. Enough to make an impression. They went ashore so the dog could have a little land break, then showed up a while later and invited me to go fishing with them. Diana stayed because she was in the middle of making some killer zucchini bread (as she does). I got my lesson in how to jig the bottom for golden spotted bass and accompanying species. Exactly the kind of thing I had read about and never really figured out. Not complicated, but with its own subtleties. Brian likes catching, so being able to release fish was an important consideration. He had his iron jigs set up with a single hook, not trebles, up at the top of the lure. His poles were set up with nice small reels (easy to handle) with spectra line. Jigging: drop the line, controlling the free spool with the thumb of your left hand with your right hand ready on the drag to click it on the moment the lure hits bottom and then ready on the reel handle because it seems like the fish hit the lure almost immediately settles. Half a turn on the handle and then jig it along as you drift bouncing off the bottom. So simple, fishing authors take for granted that you’ve known how to do it since you were five. Strikes sometimes feel like the jerk of the heavy jig against the line.

Brian hooked up on his very first drop as I was still trying to figure out how to get my bucktail jig on my spinning outfit to drop, and then how to tell it was on bottom. He reeled in a nice golden, a “three-taco” (3-4 pounds I’d guess). I was still flailing when he caught a one-taco on his next drop. I think he had released four fish before I finally managed by accident to do something right and hook a one-taco golden. Not sure if he registered that I’d actually managed to overcome my ignorance and actually catch something, but he then suggested I use one of his rods. This lure was a little heavier than his, so he warned me to be careful about not lingering on the bottom as I would probably get hung up. Mastering the order of events, from guiding the drop to setting the drag on and getting the jig jigging, took a little but it was a whole different deal than trying to do it with the spin outfit  (in that it actually made sense). I caught another one-taco, as Brian caught a few more and then things slowed down. Throughout he was talking pretty much non-stop, so that if there actually was a moment of silence, it really did feel like something was sort of wrong. Lynn did not say a word, Brian spoke for her. “She” used to love fishing, and was really good at it, had caught a 200 pound Tuna once and then sorta quit, cuz how do you top that? She nodded.

I’m sure it was as obvious to them as it was to us that we each represented two different “Montana” types and an age-old cultural divide. On one side you have those farmer/rancher/miner types who would never ask the question “am I an authentic Montanan?” On the other you have the gentleman farmer, not-a-rancher-or-miner type, outdoors enthusiasts I guess, who populate places like Bozeman and Missoula, who are aware of the question of authenticity in everything. We feel the need to mention our bonafides, twenty-five years in Montana, so that we do not appear to be, what we so definitely self-identify as, namely “newcomers.” We’re newcomers to Baja, of course, too, and sailing, and as was brilliantly obvious, jigging. In some way, we are culturally condemned to always be newcomers. Perhaps we would do better to adopt the label, nomads, which conjures figures like Geronimo more than the college educated city-slickers we are commonly identified with. Montana friends who know our actual history well enough to know better, still think of us as Californians even though for me, that period represents less than 15% of my life. I don’t know what Californians think of us as, but they can definitely tell, that nomads like us don’t belong there either. I guess the reason I’m sensitive to all of this is my own Eastern Washingon/Idaho family who have always represented a cultural alter ego — me worrying that they think I’m some liberal cityslicker and them worrying that I write them off as redneck hicks. The truth of course is some kind of hybrid for all of us, along a spectrum, but newly meeting fellow “Montanans” we naturally look for the things we have in common. Fishing and a passion for remote places seemed to provide the intersection.

They dropped me off, and then offered (with some slightly un-subtle hinting from us) to sell us some gasoline since we’d forgotten to fill up the jerry can before leaving Santa Rosalia. We got a tour of Saslipuedes, a look at the “dark side” of powerboating. Spacious means extra space you have and don’t even have to use.

In the afternoon I went fishing on my own, armed with new information and actual training. The jigs I had bought (based on nothing but my total ignorance and the willingness of tackle shop owners to sell you anything) had treble hooks and were a size too big (#6). I cut the hooks down to one and went out to try my luck. Brian had a fishfinder with a seven inch screen and gps for marking his spots on his fishing skiff. I had a handheld depthfinder, which actually turned out to be very useful at finding a drop off and water that wasn’t too deep or too shallow. The current over the reef south of our anchorage was running like a river. You could actually see it welling up and boiling around the rock pinnacles. I came upon one just under the surface which was downright scary and quickly turned away. It took a little bit to get my Penn reel to spool off nicely on the drop and it was hard to feel the hit on the bottom (at first), but I fished for a couple of hours and managed to catch one two-taco golden and about four one-tacos as well as two Triggerfish. I kept the two-taco and a one-taco I couldn’t release because I had caught him in too deep water and his buoyancy bladder had blown up on the too rapid ascent. I also kept one of the triggerfish to see how it was to eat. They are such odd looking fish (to a trout fisherman), and it boggles me that a fish with a mouth that small would go after a lure that’s five inches long. We are feeling much more comfortable with eating reef fish after Diana asked Brian who’d been fishing here for 15 years about ciguatera and he’d said, “cigua-what?” with that particular, northern drawl of an eastern Montanan.

The first time you throw a rock in the water as a small child, it must blow your mind. Even teenagers still get a thrill if the rocks are big enough. You don’t see a whole lot of old men down at the beach chucking stones into the sea and grinning. Further proof that the enemy of joy might actually be predictability. So much for Christmas.

In the category of truly unpredictable, who knew that throwing out compostable scraps could be anything other than a chore? The bioluminescent soup in Don Juan, with a new moon, was off the charts. We needed something to throw overboard, cuz we knew it would be good, so we hurried excitedly with our compost bucket to the starboard deck. It’s impossible to adequately describe the crazy, LSD-like effect of the the splash which burst outward like blooming flowers of neon fireworks and burning green fire-lit ripples that spread out across the dark harbor. We immediately followed with one of Diana’s stones that she’d gathered for her mosaic work, which she was willing to sacrifice. It was the only other thing we could think of that we could throw overboard. Insane! Even better! We both howled. I’m sure the coyotes looked up a little worried about the competition. Then Diana couldn’t help it and she jumped in to make the wild green fireworks herself (despite the fact that the water is in the low 60’s this time of year and the desert evening temps are pretty cool). Swimming back to the boat was even better with her whole body fluorescent under the surface and the kick of her feet and pull of her hands swirling off in plumes of green sparkles. Gathering a bucket of skipping rocks moved up to the very top of our shore list. We can’t wait for it to get dark!

It may be that it took us until then end of February to have our first real glimpse of the kind of days we expected this to be. Where we did not feel pinned down by a norther, or compelled by a schedule. We sailed where to the wind blew. Upwind actually, but we followed the course Allora was happy to take, without tacking and found a place that had what both of us were looking for. A breakthrough mosaic project, and fishing.

For the first few days we were here a small panga with fishermen visited and fished hard at the points of rocks on either side of the small cove where we anchored. I studied them with binoculars trying to decide what techniques they were using. Two younger guys with hand lines, and the owner of the boat with a spinning rod. The anchored and the handliners went to work. I did not see them catch more than one small fish, and wondered if they were catching bait. But it really looked like the spin fisherman was using a lure and jigging. I saw his rod bend a few times, but the fish seemed to get away. Then they moved to the other point and fished until almost dark. The next morning I went to the point where they were with my 11 weight (because the other rods are still buried under the aft bunk), and my spinning outfit with a white bucktail jig with rubber bait. There was very little breeze so I drifted and cast to the rocks, getting one strike almost right away, but the fish shook the hook in a few minutes. I decided my drag was too light for setting the hook and cranked it down a bit. It didn’t take much longer, maybe twenty minutes and I hooked a fish that pulled with conviction. The spin outfit bent over double as whatever it was ran deep for the rocks. Definitely a lot of fun, but I really wanted to know what it was so I didn’t want to lose it. I finally got the fish to the surface, some kind of grouper I thought, about four pounds. I tried killing it with a dash of tequila on the gills (heard talk of this working), but that only seemed to invigorate him and he made a mad dash from my hands back into the water. I resorted to more caveman-like tactics to subdue him. The fishermen were moving from their morning spot over to where I was fishing, so I decided to motor over and intercept them. I wasn’t sure how they’d feel about my fishing in their spot, or if they might be unhappy that I’d taken a nice fish. They were smiling as I pulled up and apologized for not speaking Spanish, so I hauled the fish up where they could see it. They seemed impressed and smiled. I asked, “Come se dice?” which was intelligible enough for them to inform me that it was a Cabrilla. The owner of the boat then lifted his own, the same size or a little bigger, which he’d also caught at the point. He asked to see what I was using and showed me his lure, too. I then did my best with sign language to confirm that it was okay to eat the Cabrilla. Not only okay, but very good was the answer. Bueno? I asked. Buena, they corrected. And it was, maybe one of the best filets of fish I’ve ever had. Super yummy.

My next trip out I decided to stick to fly fishing to see what might happen. I tied on the smallest Deceiver I had in the fly box and cast it out as far as I could, stripping it back the way I would on a river for trout, maybe a little faster. The fly would arrive with a bunch of interested fish, darting at it but not really hitting it. I tried a little faster, or maybe not, maybe I was just lucky but I hooked one. It fought hard, harder than any trout, but was seriously outmatched by the 11 wt. I let the line go slack, and the fish got off, though I’d gotten a pretty good look at it. A few minutes later I landed one, and had a heck of a time getting the hook out, destroying the fly in the process. I bent the barb down on the next fly, but didn’t get any more strikes after that. I looked the fish up when I got back to the boat and decided it was a Triggerfish, which my mother says is one of her favorites. The Mexican fishermen weren’t around to ask if it was okay to eat and since it’s a reef fish, we’ll wait until we can get a confirmation. We don’t want a case of ciguatera.

Finally, I went out to the point of rocks. I’d tried it once before but was really intimidated by the current and waves. I tried anchoring but couldn’t even reach bottom with Namo’s little anchor. This time it was a little calmer. Right away I brought in a school of long slender fish that were very aggressive with the fly, slashing at it and attacking; one even came out of the water after it, but none of them were getting hooked. I checked my leader and it was a little chewed up. This time I thought I knew what kind of fish it must be, a Sierra Mackerel, which I’d heard about. A few more casts, a few more strikes and then WHAM! This fish bent the rod and ripped line out of my hand. For me the first real fish here on a fly. It was a great battle and a gorgeous fish. It’s mouth was full of teeth so I was really glad to have bent the barb down and to have a pair of pliers, so I could release the fish without touching it.

I fly fished some more without luck, then switched to the spin outfit and caught a small Cabrilla. I had to drag it with me to row Namo away from some rocks and then I let it go. I decided, just for the heck of it to make a few more fly casts as I drifted out along the shelf of this outer rock. I’d made my last cast when suddenly a really big fish showed up behind the fly – at least thirty pounds and given where it was it must have been a yellowtail tuna. I stripped the fly faster but it wasn’t fast enough… but exciting because it was so unexpected. I tried a little more, including with the spin rod, but no luck. Diana would have loved sushi for dinner. Maybe next time.

The new plan, was to drive up to Loreto to pick up the Grandmas and then to base out of La Paz and sail when the weather smiled. A late lunch with our Moms, Haley and Wyatt on the old square in Loreto was a great way to end the year. It was, as it has been, surprisingly chilly. The puffy’s have not retired yet. The bonus was a night in a hotel with a room several times bigger than our boat and a shower that seemed to have unlimited hot water. We amortized our guilty pleasure against our usual super spartan showers on board and the cold showers we’ve been finding at Baja marinas.

The 4+ hour drive north to Loreto included a nice taqueria in Constitution, which was super cheap even when you add the 200 peso bribe paid to the polizia on the way out, for missing a stop, “three stops back.” The smiling cop started at 1000, and Diana’s probably right that I could have gotten off for less than two hundred if I was a better negotiator. When I was motioned to the curb in La Paz for not “a-stopping” again, I got the policeman down to 120. He used his cell phone to find someone who could translate his extortion into English while his armor vested buddy stood by looking imposing but uncomfortable. Neither of them liked it when I raised the money visibly above the window. Both cops made sure to shake my hand and assure me that we were amigos.

The weather smiled so we sailed to Isla Espiritu Santo, to the anchorage at the southern end, Bahia San Gabriel, with a big wide beach and an old pearl farm and rookery of frigate birds. Haley climbed the mast for the first sunset, challenging a fear that seems perfectly reasonable to me (I haven’t been up there yet). Camille did it the next night, whooping and hollering the whole way up (so that’s where Diana gets it) and then Haley did it a second time, determined to get a better shot. She’s been photographing the whole time she’s been with us with projects in mind for her program at ICP. We had some trouble with the windlass picking up the anchor in the morning, and had to figure out how to use the manual adapter to crank the last 25 feet in by hand, but otherwise it was exactly the kind of trip we were hoping for with our mother’s. We used the last bit of wind to haul up our spinnaker to dry it out and were cruising along so nicely it was very hard to turn around, but we were headed exactly the wrong direction. We dried out our code zero next going only marginally closer to a course toward La Paz. The electronic chartplotter predicted an arrival at our destination in about a week and a half at that VMG (velocity made good). It was a pretty view of the island, and seemed like the perfect conditions to spot a whale, but no luck. So we motored and dozed our way back to our slip at Marina Cortez. The next day Haley left from Cabo for San Francisco.

One of the silver linings of Namo’s wandering was that German gave us the info for finding the whale sharks that cruise the shallow end of Bahia La Paz gulping down whatever it is they gulp. Namo bravely carried the five of us out, those at the bow learning the advantages of dinghy driving as compared to being a passenger. Hint: it’s even drier with a few bodies ahead of you to absorb the spray. Swimming with these huge fish (technically neither whales nor sharks) was as inspiring as it sounds. Wyatt and Diana got whacked by a tail more than once. I guess if you are that big and live on food that small, you don’t have time to worry about the strange creatures swimming alongside. The view from the dinghy was thrilling, too, as the giant sharks slipped by underneath us, three times our length.

Our last trip with the Grandmas was to Balandra, a beautiful little anchorage on the channel out of Bahia de la Paz. Officially, Diana’s first captaining of Namo, which went well, except for some extra rowing at the end. The shore party arrived certain they deserved margaritas. We had marlin for dinner and went to sleep as the wind began picking up from the southwest (instead of the forecast NNW). By midnight,  Allora was beginning to hobby horse in the steep chop, and the first our our neighbors peeled off. The anchor looked good, so I reset the anchor alarm and we slept for another hour or so. Then it was time to start tightening things down. I was happy we had Namo up on the davits, but we’d left the outboard on so she was heavy. We went around tying stuff down as two more neighbors in the anchorage headed out. We decided to give it another hour. Diana could no longer sleep, nor Wyatt. I tried in the forward cabin, but got a little seasick for the first time ever. We decided to leave. It took a while to get everything put together, and not much fun as Allora was really hopping now. Diana put in the lee cloth for Camille’s settee so she wouldn’t be tossed out of bed. Another boat left, and one followed us out at 3:30 leaving only one boat still braving the tumultuos little bay. We motored back to La Paz, and the waves diminished a little, though it was still rough, even in the harbor. My stomach and the strong current made for a very messy docking, and I was glad there were few witnesses.

Wyatt’s edit of our whale shark swim:

It’s hard not to think about how much grief a little extra twist on the sail locker might have saved. Details count on a boat. There isn’t much leeway for missing or not quite completing even small jobs like a knot too quickly tied, or a hatch forgotten. Behind all the pretty sunsets and white beaches and the general impression we are certainly guilty of reinforcing ‘living the dream’ as if it were exclusively living a dream, there is the reality that there are a thousand of opportunities for tiny mistakes that can devolve into nightmarish problems when Poseidon gets cranky.

After a day at Isla San Francisco dealing with the hatch fiasco, we settled in to grill some of the cached marlin for dinner. Haley got out her flash to photograph the pelicans using our stern light to fish. Neither she nor I, noticed that the dinghy which I had tied to the stern wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t until after dinner that Wyatt noticed when he went out to put it up for the night. I’m calling her “it” right now, because that’s how we referred to her before her walkabout. The wind had come up from the north right after sunset and apparently that was enough for the knot I tied to pull loose.

It was dark and really blowing now, and it’s hard to describe the feeling of disbelief looking out sternward at the wide open mouth of the anchorage. A couple little mistakes were making us feel hopelessly out of our depth. Could we really have lost our dinghy and outboard? Could that really be happening? Though we knew it must have been loose for an hour at least, we could not imagine just letting it go. We pulled up our anchor and headed off into the night straight downwind. Because problems on a boat come in more than pairs, of course we immediately also started having bizarre issues with our Raymarine compass. We abandoned our quixotic quest when it became clear that even if we could find a ten foot dinghy by moonlight in miles of ocean, conditions would be too rough to recover it.

We motored back to Isla San Francisco and anchored in a new spot. There is no question that we have bit off a lot in our quick transition to intrepid sailors. Old salts we are not. We’ve been asked many times how we sailed Allora over the continental divide when people see her port of call, Bozeman Montana. And it’s an obvious joke that contains a kernel of insight. We are still whatever the opposite of fish out of water would be. Though there was nothing dangerous, or really that original, in losing an expensive dinghy, it was mightily disheartening. Speaking as the would-be-sailor who tied the too-skimpy knot, I felt like the nubiest of nubes.

Losing something certainly is the full proof way of realizing how important it is to you. Getting a new dink in La Paz was going to be outrageously difficult and expensive. We looked at the map, made guesses on how fast the dingy would move in 18 knots of wind. It could be miles away after a night of it — the dictionary definition of hopeless. But Diana was not ready to give up, and I believe her response to the situation says more about our actual readiness for this adventure than the poor knot I tied. In the morning she got on the sat phone and asked Marina La Paz to report the loss to the port captain and also asked if they would announce it on the morning cruisers net. Then she got on the VHF and contacted our neighbors in the anchorage. One of them was already leaving, headed south, possibly the right direction. The next boat, ‘Adagio’ who must have woke up and wondered why we were no longer anchored next to them, but half way across the anchorage, had a few suggestions, most notably that we contact a boat “Willful Simplicity,” people who’d been in the area for years and had a home in San Evaristo. Adagio suggested they might be able to get in touch with the panga fishermen in the area so they could be on the look out. We had already decided that we could not pick up the Grandmas in Loreto without a dinghy and had to go back to La Paz. Still, we had time to head up to San Evaristo if we wanted at least one day of fun, which we felt had been in such short supply for Haley and Wyatt since they’d joined us. It was a beautiful day for sailing and we were tacking out of the island when we heard Willful Simplicity hail Adagio, and realized she was the sailboat we could see just a few miles north of us. Diana got them on the VHF and they told us that they’d already talked to the panga fishermen who all agreed that the dinghy would have washed ashore somewhere between a seasonal fishing village named Portuguese and Punta Coyote. They were “certain” that we’d find our dinghy. We got a GPS fix for the village and then sailed over to the shore just north, so upwind, of Portuguese. With binoculars we followed the coast downwind looking at every rock for our runaway dinghy. For anyone watching our path on the tracker, hopefully this sheds some light on our wandering trail. Besides the surge of hope from Will Simplicity’s optimism, we were also cheered by the beautiful scenery, the rugged Sierra Gigantes looming over the Sea. I’m certain that very few visiting sailors have experienced that coast as intimately as we did.

Unfortunately, the day ended with blurry eyes, without finding the dinghy. We decided to head to the closest anchorage two hours due east on Espiritu Santo, arriving just as it got dark. In the morning, we sailed back with a really nice wind to Punta Coyote and continued the search. Despite the beautiful sailing, the stress of the situation was taking a toll. We had sailed from San Diego with a deadline to get Maddi on a plane, and then immediately headed north with a deadline in Loreto, never mind the complication of holidays. We felt like we really hadn’t had a chance to catch our breath. San Diego had been a mad rush, too, so really we were pushing too hard. Everyone was feeling it. Allora experienced a little less than perfect harmony as she reached across with the wind on her beam.

We sailed along the coast from Punta Coyote south with only a few false alarms that momentarily got our hopes up. Finally, we needed to head for La Paz or try to arrive in the dark, which didn’t seem like a very good idea. We furled the jib, and turned the motor on (so we could make some time up) and turned back east having scoured 40 miles of coast line without any luck. We were a sad lot. Diana went to find her phone to call Marina Cortez to see if we could get a slip and found that she had a text message. It read: “Hello I’m Eileen from Marina Cortez, today port captain called and talked about your dingui please contact us.”

As Wyatt would say… Whuuttt!!!??

Diana called and got a few more details. A dinghy was reported found that “matched our description”… the message had been passed along with errors for translation, so it wasn’t absolutely certain. But how many ‘dinguis’ get found on a given day? We poured all of our sense of relief in the unbelievable possibility that we might get our dinghy back, laughing about whether our long lost little inflatable had finally earned a name. We’d always thought about calling her Namo, which is slang in Rome for “andiamo” (let’s go). I suggested Walkabout Namo, for our wandering, under-appreciated little runaway. Haley came up with the winner: ‘Finding Namo.’

German Obaya, who works at Costa Baja Marina, takes tourists out to see the whale sharks then up to Los Islotes to snorkel with sea lions. He found Namo bobbing around west of the Espiritu Santo (very near the point we sailed across the same morning to continue our search, too busy bickering to make good lookouts). Just by chance he’d wandered much father out than he typically goes, trying to find his clients some humpbacks. He was a little reluctant to approach. Who knows what you might find in a boat drifting on the ocean, but two laws of the sea were invoked. The first is the actual law of salvage, which means if you rescue an abandoned vessel at sea… it’s yours. The other may be less official but it seems more practiced, which is, you have a duty to help if you can. He quoted his Japanese mother’s saying to us (after joking about the salvage laws) “what isn’t yours belongs to someone else.” He called the port captain and towed her home.

Among the many lessons that followed from the obvious, that hatches have to be double checked and knots well tied because the consequences are so serious, was the bigger issue that was creating a lot of stress. It’s something we knew intellectually but perhaps did not fully appreciate in practice. Deadlines and sailing do not mix well, though they are also more unavoidable than you might wish. Dropping and picking people up at airports, doesn’t jive well with avoiding upwind sailing in eight foot seas at a five second period. Even though we had initially several days to get to Loreto, it was upwind, and the winter weather in Baja can be surprising. We would have made it if not for Namo’s walkabout, but it would have kept us busy. Maybe too busy. No time for essential regrouping.

Haley’s video of the magic:

We set the code zero with a light breeze as we pulled out from the marina just in time for the wind to die altogether. Before we conceded the point to the slick and glassy sea and turned on the engine, Wyatt and Diana decided to get cooled off on the swim platform. Just as Wyatt put his leg in to test the water, a humpback whale surfaced not fifty feet on the stern and blew. His first ever whale encounter was straight out of the script for Jaws. What we wouldn’t have given for a hydrophone to listen to them chuckle at their little whale prank, so perfectly timed. It took just a couple heart thumping minutes for everyone to decide it was time to get in the water with masks and snorkels. The two humpbacks stayed with us, playing and dancing and nosing curiously out of the water for almost three hours as we took turns gazing down into the magnificent deep at these amazing creatures.