Honestly, I don't know where to start today. As for travels, we left San Blas at about 5:30 this morning and headed north toward Isla Isabela, the Galapagos of Mexico. We had light winds all day so it was a day of motor-sailing but the seas were calmly rolling with a long 1-2' swell ever so gently whisped with a 5-8 knot breeze. Very relaxing. All told it was about 42 miles which took us about 8 hours. About mid day Marne spotted a large humpback whale breaching just 100' yards off of the starboard bow. We watched carefully for several minutes but we never saw it again. Dang. Shortly after the whale sighting we hooked up with a small to mid sized Jack, landed him but threw him back. Then about an hour later we got a nice hit on the handline and had another Jack on but he released himself before we got him to the boat.
When we got to Isabela we anchored off of the east side of the island on a small spit of sand between two other sailboats. We decided to just go tandem on the paddleboard to get ashore in order to do some exploring. The paddle ashore was a little sketch with two but we made it without taking a swim and then started picking our way up the hill through the thickets amongst thousands of frigates, boobies, both yellow and blue footed, gulls and iguanas. Honestly, it was amazing. We walked up to the main crater lagoon in the middle of the island which looked really cool but kind of dirty. The blue footed boobies are SO cool with their light turquoise, easter egg blue colored feet. We also saw several yellow footed boobies along the volcanic cliffs. Iguanas from small juvenilles to 3' long adults seemed to just appear on trees and rocks almost everywhere we looked. Small, orange billed gulls were protecting their newly hatched chicks and Marne was not very pumped on the mother's very aggressive dive bombing over our heads trying to scare us away from their white and brown spotted little fluffy chicks. Catherine, Marne said that Jim would be in heaven here!
After the island exploration we took the dinghy in to the temporary fishing village and asked a couple fisherman about some lobster. A very polite young man named Edgar had two small lobster that he sold to us for 50 pesos, about $3.00, and then told us where to go to find more. Dave...I know where to go to get lobster on Isabela now! Marne and I put on some snorkeling gear and found a couple lobster within the first 10 minutes. At night...it would be a hey day! The snorkeling was seriously world class with huge coral heads and a maze of cracks and crevaces that you could swim through in between all of the volcanic rock and coral that was teeming with every fish imaginable.
To top the day off we lit up the grill and tossed on our marinated steak and 4 lobsters that was complimented by an excellent zucchini and tomato, garlic saute made by Marne. I hate to brag but life is GOOD! Today did NOT suck! We just finished our delicious dinner and after a little boat prep we will leave for Mazatlan around 8pm tonight. The trip is about 93 miles and should take us about 18 hours so we should arrive around noon-ish tomorrow. We have a calm weather window for today and tomorrow and then it is supposed to get a bit blustery for 2-3 days which we will sit out in Mazatlan then look for a good weather window for our crossing to Cabo. One last note...having Marne here is SO FRICKIN AWESOME! We are having such a great time and I love having someone to share all of this with and someone who just jumps right in and goes for it, no matter what we are doing. I'm a happy sailboat captain! Ciao for now.
Bret and Marne
SV Liahona
Syd - Your mom said she loves you TONS and can't wait for you to come and visit. Hug from me.
Dave - Night diving here would produce some serious results as I found two lobster in like 10 minutes in the middle of the day. The hot spot is right in front of where we were anchored after we moved to the small sand spot, between there and the beach. We were only about 100 yards away my friend.
Aven - Thank you so much for the email! Love hearing from you! Love you mucho and will soak up some rays for you. ha
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