Isla Espiritu Santo

We left La Paz on a beautiful, clear morning, which so far has been typical here in the Sea.   The light in this place is unusually striking in it’s clarity, a clarity that seems to heighten reality and takes it to a place of either unreality or some kind of super reality.

We rode a light westerly breeze down the long La Paz channel, out into the sea were the wind clocked around to the north and became stronger, causing us to first tack away from our destination before we could tack again and make our approach which strikes me as a good metaphor for our greater journey to this place.     



On this bright morning we were headed to Isla Espiritu Santo (Island of the Holy Sprit) which is only 22 nm from civilization, 22 miles and a countless millennium away.  The early Spanish explorers must have been feeling quite close to god themselves when they first discovered and named this place, perhaps inspired by it’s startling, super-reality and quiet magnificence.  

Isla Espiritu Santo off in the distance

We traveled throughout the day under an extraordinary sky that brought to mind some of Georga Okief’s landscape paintings.  There are several beautiful bays at Espiritu Santo. we chose Puerto Ballena (Whale Port) because of it’s beauty and the excellent protection that it offers from El Norte, one of which was in our immediate forecast.  




We anchored in a sandy bottom, next to some remarkable cliffs, in 23’ of water under the watchful gaze of the rock faces just off of Malo’s bow and just ahead of our friends on Cool Change, Galapagos and Gray Goose.  

After covering our sails and tidying the boats, six of us jumped into the water and snorkeled around the rocky edge of the cliffs.  

Later, after another tasty and wholesome meal prepared by Bev, we watched the sun set from Malo’s cockpit.  Sitting there at the quiet end of the day, it dawned on me that none of us, not a single one of us in this remarkable bay, got here casually or by accident.  Bev and I had spent years dreaming of this, over a year of preparation and then sailed over three thousand miles to get here and now we were finally getting a taste of the magnificence of this place.  The crews on 
the other boats had similar arduous backstories. 



On the second day at Espiritu Santo Bev and I SUPed over to the island and then hiked the arroyo that is formed by the two ridges that form the bay.  We made sure to take plenty of water so that we wouldn’t end up like this guy: 

It also had a beautiful little beach just big enough for  a stroll.



There was an El Norte forecast for tomorrow that was suppose to last for three days, which if we didn’t move out would have us harbor bound for the next three or four days.  After snorkeling, SUPing and hiking we were ready to move on.  We were also ready to go sailing again. The first day of the Norte was forecast to favor our course to our next destination, Isla San Francisco, a beautiful island north east of Puerto Ballena.  All the other boats with the exception of one decided to say at Ballena and ride out the Norte.  We were feeling for a challenge.  We are were starting to feel the close of the season (the beginning of the next hurricane season) coming closer and closer and we still had lots of spots that we wanted to visit.  



The desert, sea and sky…an elemental cocktail that highness my sprit while calming my soul.  “I’ll have another please.”