From Nov. 17 - We are in a place called San Quintin, about 110 miles south of Ensenada. We left Ensenada at noon on Thursday and sailed all night and arrived here about 1300 hours on Friday. We are all resting from the night sail. We stand 2 hour watches all night and 3 hour watches during the daylight hours. It takes a bit out of you when your sleep is interrupted all night. We actually sailed all night last night, no motoring, it was great, bright stars and a new moon to light the water, just at dawn a porpoise surfaced very close to the boat and scared me. I just saw the fin and then heard the blow, at first I thought it was a whale but then I saw it and it wasn't nearly big enough. About 1000 hours we saw whales blowing about 1/2 mile from the boat, just to emphasize our differences, I exclaimed "Wowee" and at the same time Barry said "Shit". We put the spinnaker up twice during the passage, at the beginning for about 20 minutes and then the wind picked up and Barry chickened out and took it down and then for about and hour this morning, we took it down because an island was in the way and we wanted to go upwind of it instead of downwind, where we could have flown the spinnaker for longer, but it is getting a workout.
This anchorage is very interesting, there are volcano cones on shore, pointy hills sticking up out of nowhere. The land around the bay is very flat and covered in large sand dunes, there are people playing and swimming in the water. There is quite a surf on the beach so Barry said he won't go ashore, so I will have to row ashore myself if I want to wander up and down the beach. Mungo is anchored about 200 meters away, they dumped their dinghy in the surf in California and their motor has not been the same since. Steven tried to get someone to look at it in San Diego and all the mechanics told him to just chuck it and buy a new one!!! He is hoping there are more enterprising fellows south of the border.
We are at 30 degrees 30 minutes south here so pretty soon we will be south of 30. That is quite a way from north of 60!! We have made an ambitious sail plan in order to get to Zihuatanejo for Christmas, it involves lots of long sails with rest periods in between. We will stay here tonight and tomorrow and then on Sunday we will tackle another overnight sail 130 miles to a place called Cedros Island. Then it will be a short sail to Turtle Bay, one of the major stops down the Baja. Hope all is well, send us a line at ve8bl@winlink.org
Oh, I almost forgot, we caught our first Mexican fish, actually the first FISH that we have caught on Cat's-Paw IV. Barry put out a line with a squibber on it, it is a tuna lure and this lovely looking fish bit it. Barry just attached the line to the winch with a bungy, no rod or reel, so that there was some give to the line and I saw the line jerking so started to pull it in, Barry didn't believe that there was a fish on it, but I saw this mouth gasping for breath. He swallowed the lure pretty good. We think it was a bluefish tuna, weighing about 5 pounds. Once we got it on board we had a heck of a time killing it Barry bonked it about 5 or 6 times and there was blood spattering all over the boat. I had heard that if you put a little alcohol in the gills it stuns them, I had bought some brandy to make Christmas cakes with so poured some of that on it, Barry was appalled. We had lovely tasting fillets for supper, marinated in brandy!! We are going over to have dinner on Mungo
tonight and will take the rest of it with us to share. So far that was a pretty expensive fish, we were charged $215 USD for our Mexican fishing licenses, I am not sure who caught it me, Barry the boat or the dinghy, but if they are all that easy to catch we will be eating plenty. Hasta manana!!
This anchorage is very interesting, there are volcano cones on shore, pointy hills sticking up out of nowhere. The land around the bay is very flat and covered in large sand dunes, there are people playing and swimming in the water. There is quite a surf on the beach so Barry said he won't go ashore, so I will have to row ashore myself if I want to wander up and down the beach. Mungo is anchored about 200 meters away, they dumped their dinghy in the surf in California and their motor has not been the same since. Steven tried to get someone to look at it in San Diego and all the mechanics told him to just chuck it and buy a new one!!! He is hoping there are more enterprising fellows south of the border.
We are at 30 degrees 30 minutes south here so pretty soon we will be south of 30. That is quite a way from north of 60!! We have made an ambitious sail plan in order to get to Zihuatanejo for Christmas, it involves lots of long sails with rest periods in between. We will stay here tonight and tomorrow and then on Sunday we will tackle another overnight sail 130 miles to a place called Cedros Island. Then it will be a short sail to Turtle Bay, one of the major stops down the Baja. Hope all is well, send us a line at ve8bl@winlink.org
Oh, I almost forgot, we caught our first Mexican fish, actually the first FISH that we have caught on Cat's-Paw IV. Barry put out a line with a squibber on it, it is a tuna lure and this lovely looking fish bit it. Barry just attached the line to the winch with a bungy, no rod or reel, so that there was some give to the line and I saw the line jerking so started to pull it in, Barry didn't believe that there was a fish on it, but I saw this mouth gasping for breath. He swallowed the lure pretty good. We think it was a bluefish tuna, weighing about 5 pounds. Once we got it on board we had a heck of a time killing it Barry bonked it about 5 or 6 times and there was blood spattering all over the boat. I had heard that if you put a little alcohol in the gills it stuns them, I had bought some brandy to make Christmas cakes with so poured some of that on it, Barry was appalled. We had lovely tasting fillets for supper, marinated in brandy!! We are going over to have dinner on Mungo
tonight and will take the rest of it with us to share. So far that was a pretty expensive fish, we were charged $215 USD for our Mexican fishing licenses, I am not sure who caught it me, Barry the boat or the dinghy, but if they are all that easy to catch we will be eating plenty. Hasta manana!!
