We are at this moment, even as I type, powering happily through the calmest seas albeit under a cloudy sky, towards Isla San Francisco.. This morning after breakfast and a little beach paddle, we revved up our dinghies and headed towards the Sea Lions… on Los Islotos… there were indeed many sea lions , large and small, on the rocks. The islands themselves are spectacular, although somewhat redolent with quano. whew. We jumped into the water after tying the dinghies to a mooring ball, and proceeded to swim towards shore. I was mesmerized by the fish under me, and was busily go – proing everything I could…and listening to the yelling of the seals… and then the yelling of our crew as they were being hailed by the park ranger and being told in no uncertain terms that we weren’t to approach the seals nor go climb the rocks.
Climbing the rocks was the furthest thing from my mind ( aforementioned guano) and I wasn’t so much approaching the seals as following the fish. However, being the good little environmentalist I am, I conceded to the boundaries and hung around the dinghies. Meanwhile said park ranger didn’t let us out of their sight, as I guess once you’ve offended you are sure to reoffend. After a few minutes, I guess one of the youngsters got curious, or sick of us watching him hopefully, because he slid into the water and came barreling over to give us the once over. Zip zip zip, over and under and around us all, looks of astonishment and amazement on our faces.. and then he was gone. But that was enough – we clambered ( in my case very ungracefully) back into the dinghies and went exploring. The other side of the islets are spectacular, just amazing rock formations! and tons and tons and tons of sea lions! basking, barking and belligerent.
The irony is, everywhere else we know of, including home, these are menaces and much maligned. They crawl onto anchored boats, poop on everything, break the life lines and such… get into fishnets to steal fish and generally make themselves so unpopular that shooting seals and sea lions is not unheard of. But here… oh my goodness!!
anyway it was a lot of fun.
Back at the boats, we dried off, had lunch, and awaited the arrival of Colibri, Christopher and Diana… and when the fleet had been reunited we headed off north. Fish lines have been deployed, and we are enjoying the calm seas, if not the grey skies. I am looking forward to exploring another new bay, although stories of the biting no see ums is making me a bit nervous. But we shall see!!!
several ( well, many) hours later… we are anchored in Francisco….reunited with Colibri and SeaLevel… in the Hook…with a number of other boats floating around us. Our first order of business was to convince Christopher to use his Spanish to barter for lobsters.. Actually, our first order of business was to catch a tuna!!! yay Peter and Penny! just before we headed into our bay we had a small little guy on the line. No way we were letting him go – he was ours. Dinner! and then when we found out about the lobsters it seemed like a match made in heaven!
Then Diana made soup. Taco chicken tortilla soup. And we realized that nirvana had been reached and no more food was needed! We put the lobsters and tuna away for tomorrow and ate salads. It was amazing.. and then she grilled pineapple and made some fabulous sauce with ice cream and we were all in heaven. .
Now we are back at the boat. We are full, we have had a wonderful evening with our friends..the wind has come up and we are kind of bopping around. Hopefully it will calm down and we will have a good sleep, then tomorrow we are planning to go for a hike, take some more pictures, and cook those lobsters etc and then make our decisions about which way we are going….
It has been a wonderful day and although I can hear some party boats around us, hopefully they will all go to bed or leave and we will have a quiet evening..relatively….
Feb 20
today we spent the day hanging out in the bay – the grand plan was a walk up the hill on the south side of the bay for some photo opportunities. (the hook on Isla San Francisco is one of those quintessentially perfect “paradise” bays… blue sky, green water, pink sand..and we are hanging in the middle of it! pinch me!)
Afterwards we had plans for a Late Lunch Early Dinner… with lobster and fresh tuna ( from yesterday) … triple chocolate cake… fabulous salads… etc..
so the walk – well, the other plan was to get all three portaboats in the water so we could do the photo op… three portaboats on a mexican beach??? how cool is that/?? great PR for the company. Eventually we managed to get them all there, and then after the cameras snapped a bunch of pics,(how about from this angle? how about from this angle??) we started the hike up the mountains… little mountains… absolutely amazing, great vistas , the bay is spectacular and to see our boats floating out in that gorgeous green water was breathtaking. We then went down and walked the seashore- interestingly enough again we had lots of dead birds and fish – mostly the little grebes and the puffer fish,)… along the seashore. There were also many many different shells, so beach combing was pretty intense! All in all, a great way to spend the morning. Back into the porta boats, a little bit of cooking ( oh my goodness that chocolate cake!) and then over to Sea Level for the LOBSTER and TUNA barbecue… heaven! who eats this well??? no one I know!!! absolutely spectacular! Unfortunately Cam and Doug missed most of the fun, as they were heads down and bums up in the Master Head fixing some sort of leak issue. Boating.. there is always something! Nothing is ever boring!!!
So Colibri have now upped anchor and left for parts north, hoping to catch up to Duet, another Nordhavn 50 – we were going to go to the next bay tonight but decided that after a day of eating and drinking wine and such, staying put was the best bet and we would leave tomorrow. Unfortunately now as I write this, the wind has picked up ( it has been on and off again all day) and we are swinging and jiving and banging and clanging… but that is OK because most of the boats have left this anchorage and we have lots of space to swing!