Another fabulous day – even when you are doing nothing you are enjoying yourself! We had a great breakfast, leftover rum cake and banana muffins that Phyllis cooked last night! and cantaloupe .. the fruit here has been fantabulous. After breakfast dishes were done, Lawrence and I decided to go for a little hike…. took the Grady to shore, where SOMEONE told me to get into the water with the anchor after he put the other anchor out… and as I moved to swing into the water with my water shoes and shorts on, ready for a little bit of splashes… Lawrence told me “oh, it will be about four feet”… whaaaat?…. and promptly stepped into the water up to almost my neck.
Oh well.
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It’s hot out and I would dry pretty quickly. However I couldn’t help but take my shirt and shorts off and wring them out just to hasten the process. What the heck… we are in paradise. What’s a little nudity among sailors? ( all the other boats in the anchorage are sailboats)
Suitably dry, with dry socks and runners on, we headed out for a walk. This time we trekked across the salt flats, ( sometimes running into wet sand!!! ) and marvelled at the greenery this year.
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Whereas last year there were dead and desiccated plants, this time we were treated to a much more verdant landscape. Over on the other side of the island, it was windy and cooler. We climbed a bit up t
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he cliff, just to get some good photos of the anchorage and the boats, and then headed down to the beach. On the other side it is rocky, and there is a lot of green tuff ( volcanic rock – most of the rock is red tuff) which makes it really pretty. Different shells, different rocks – and the occasional fan …
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we ran into our sailboat acquaintances, chatting them up for a bit. We also picked up some large plastic bags that were on the beach, and collected garbage as we moved along. It was a great walk, we found lots of interesting shells and dead fish ( of course ) and managed to get a rather large bag of garbage to take home. For those of you who think putting holes in your tin cans and dropping them overboard gets rid of them forever….. it doesn’t. And probably most of the bags we picked up were plastic garbage bags someone filled and threw overboard. I am always thinking of turtles! don’t want them to ingest those bags and die.
Walked back to the Grady and headed back, this time Lawrence pulled the bow of the Grady right into the shore and we were able to just step into it without getting our entire body wet. Sheesh.
When we arrived at the boat, feeling a bit sheepish that we had left our guests alone for so long –
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they greeted us with “ you should have been here! as soon as you left there was a huge fish show! “ Turns out a mahi mahi was chasing a bunch of bait fish around the boat… the mahi was jumping around and it was all very exciting for quite a while. Sheesh again!
The rest of the day was spent planning dinner, organizing lunch ( more leftovers) (hooray!) and then some fishing. Talked Lawrence into taking us out for some fishing, especially after seeing that Mahi out there.. unfortunately we only got one really good strike (adrenaline rush!) and that was it. Got back to the boat in time to see another Mahi chasing bait around our boat.
Obviously there are Mahi here, just not wanting to be caught.
Cleaned up, swam a bit…
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dinner was prepped already, so Phyllis and I prepared the Christmas Morning Wife Saver casserole for tomorrow, as we will be leaving fairly early and have a long day ahead of us. We have to head back to La Paz to get the alternator fixed. Sadness… but we will hopefully be out and about again fairly quickly.
Now we have just watched an Un Cruise ship come in, drop anchor, and light up the entire bay.
There goes the neighbourhood!
Early night, sitting watching the moon rise in spectacular fashion yet again! and before she came up, we finally got a good look at the milky way from the bow. Amazing stars!
with the rise of the moon, and the dishes done, time for bed.
November 16th..
a non rolly night! hooray! Everyone slept well, up early to watch an amazing sunrise…organized to leave and raise anchor – we notice the un-cruise ship crew has put out all the toys so I imagine there’s going to be some fun happening in the bay today!
Because it’s relatively flat we deploy lines and sit back hoping for a mahi ( they were teasing us in the bay by chasing in schools of bait fish and leaping around our boat… time for payback!)
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Tom had just left the back deck to do something and of course that is when the line started screaming out. After lots of fun and excitement we found it was just a big skip jack… so back in the water it went. At least we can say we caught something and it WAS a lot of fun! But now it’s time to eat breakfast and drink coffee, and we will put the lines back later if it stays calmish.
Todays run will probably be about 6 hours… which will put us in the slip in time to wash the boat and take laundry up and hopefully deal with the alternator. And then.. hopefully… after a bit of reprovisioning… back out to sea!