After taking on water at the marina dock and disposing of our trash we left the harbor under power. The wind didn’t come up until we cleared the 20 mile long Isla Carmen after a couple of hours motoring.
We powered through a large mixed flock of sea birds made up mostly of pelicans, frigate birds and seagulls. We had seen them in the distance as we made our way north, diving like mad on what must have been a large school of fish. By the time we got to them, the diving and stealing (frigate birds tend to be great thieves) had stopped and all the birds were peacefully floating together on the water, digesting I presume.
Some dolphins showed up to taunt us with their supreme happiness and joy. These were quite a bit larger than any of the other dolphins that we’ve seen in Mexican waters so far. One thing that is interesting to me is that I have never, in my whole life, seen just one dolphin at a time. They have always been in the company of others. Their water based communities, pods being as small at two and as large as hundreds speaks of a interconnectedness that is similar to humans, with out real-estate development, corporations or countries. What they interestingly do have that human societies have developed, is social media, a relatively long distance network of communication between individuals and groups of dolphins. And they’ve had those networks millions of years longer than humans have. I wonder what it must be like to be so interconnected with ones community. Humanities subsequent generations are just starting to figure that out.
The sea remained flat as Mr. W (wind) slept in that morning which in turn gave Mr. Rumbly a work out but not too much. After two hours Mr. W started to stir, rousted himself, climbed out of bed and filled Malo’s sails with gentle fresh air.
All through the first day of our crossing we made our way under brilliantly blue, clear sky as we were propelled by light to moderate breezes out of the north. Then late in the day it lightened a bit and clocked around to the west setting us on the sweetest, gentle beam reach for the rest to the day and into the night.
We had one of those sunrise/moonrises where the moon is coming up in the east just as the sun is setting in the west. The moon is so subtle, sublime and nuanced that it’s hard to capture her full glory while the sun, he’s showing off like a five year old who just got his hands on a big pack of fireworks.
But finally, the sun, like all five year olds, soon tired and went down after one last burst of glory while the moon ascended to the throne of the skies with a graceful, elegant dignity.
It was a difficult night aboard Malo. Bev wasn’t feeling well and when she isn’t feeling well, I don’t end up feeling well also. Such is the closeness and heightened connectivity that crews experience on a sailboat. Never-the-less, on a boat as in the theater, the show must go on. Watches were stood, sails were set, lowered, set again and trimmed. It was a night of light and variable winds. Never the less we did manage a couple of notable first. We did our first night time set, gybe and take down of our big gennicker and then I did my first ever solo gennicker set. It was thrilling to be sailing with all the power of that big sail under a brilliantly beautiful moon lit sky.
After that long trying night the sun showed up, again gloriously bright and beautiful but also a bit more subtle and subdued too. Perhaps he’s learning something from the moon.
She seemed to approve as she made her stately way toward the horizon, she did show a beautifully subdued hint of pink on her way out. Oh my…
The sunrise revealed land off the starboard bow and to port too. The port side was the Baja which we’d been able to see since we left Puerto Escondido but now we could see the mainland side for the first time in the Sea. The Sea is narrow enough at this point (about 80 miles wide) to see both sides at once.
We sailed a bit but mostly motored the rest of the day until we made our destination, Bahía Algondones just north of San Carlos. We dropped anchor in the lee of a small islet in 27’ of water, delighted to have our 148 nm passage behind us. It wasn’t an easy passage, we haven’t had many of those but it was a safe one, which (touch wood) all of our passages so far have been and for that I am deeply grateful.
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