The coromuels did finally blow last night but not until quite late. And, even then, they didn't blow as hard as they had the night before at Ensenada Grande, 20 miles closer to La Paz. And, although we did get some rolliness at anchor, it was pretty darn mild. Certainly nothing to keep us from staying here for another day or two. Or, as it turns out, three. Seems that the on-again-off-again norther is on again. Supposed to hit the southern Sea tomorrow and blow through Monday and then lay down altogether on Tuesday. Well, this is as good a place as any to ride a norther out. Even if the wind comes right over the low-lying land north of us, the seas have absolutely no time to build. So, here we'll sit.
Today we dinghied ashore to hike around on the island a bit.
There's a very cool looking trail that leads up from the beach to the top of the hills overlooking the bay. We decided to forego the hassle of the outboard and just row ashore. Lulu rowed over and I rowed back. The trail takes off from the beach and, when you get to the base of the hill, looks like it goes straight up a long ways. Turned out to be a matter or perspective. There's nothing to base scale on so the hill looks like it's much higher than it actually is. However, the ridgeline trail, which really did run right along the hogsback ridge, was pretty dramatic. Once side dropped down to a beautiful turquoise bay while the other side dropped straight down over gnarly rocky cliffs to the Sea of Cortez.
We hiked as much as the terrain would allow, taking in rocky precipices, salt flats and gravelly beaches.
Finally it was time to return to the boat. Lulu swam back and I rowed. Then we each had cockpit showers.There are only 4 boats at anchor right now (4:00 PM), all sailboats. Lulu just finished making me another batch of coleslaw as well as a pasta salad with salmon for dinner tonight.BTW, since I started waiting until 10:00 PM or so to post these blogs as well as send/retrieve e-mail, I found out 2 things. One, when I transmit on the 8 MHz band, the signal doesn't turn my GPS on like it did on the 10 MHz band. And, two, transmitting on the 8 MHz band at that time of night has given me much faster transfer rates than before. I've actually seen rates as high as 3200 bits/second! Caramba!
Addendum: Late this afternoon, I caught our first Siempre Sabado fish. It was a Green Jack (I think), about 14" long or so. There were a bunch of fish hanging around the boat so I decided to wet a line. First I tried my little ultralight spinning rod. Various lures didn't wotk so I tried corn (no good), noodles (couldn't get them to stay on the hook), and then some leftover cooked skipjack from a couple nights ago on another boat. Bingo! Grabbed that meat and started running and then snapped that 4 lb test line like it was, well, 4 lb. test. I switched to our only actual large rod and reel, the one we got from Gary on s/v Megalodon. The bait hadn't been in the water more than 15 second when BLAM! it was hit and the fish was off and running. Gave a pretty good fight but wasn't really a sporting match against that rod and reel. We boated him and cleaned him and cut him up for bait. I now have a container of salted Jack in the fridge to use to catch others tomorrow. Judging from the way they hit the pieces we threw over after cleaning, we shouldn't have too much trouble. One of our fishing books lists the "edibility" of green jack as "fair". Well, we're new enough to this whole fishing thing that I suspect it'll taste really good to us.
It's 10:00 PM and the norther has been blowing for a couple hours. No one around to drag on us and no one around for us to drag on. And, we're not moving according to the GPS, so dragging isn't really an issue. No build-up of seas yet and I don't really expect much since there's not that much room between us and the shore for anything to build up very much.
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