This one is from Ann —

Did I tell you how much I love our kayaks? Today we launched them again and paddled over to one of the sea caves that I had been admiring. The one under the Booby Perch rock. And the kayak fit through perfectly! Very cool.

Into the sea cave...

...and out the other side. Later in the day, we snorkled through. It was a little scary at first since it was dark, but once we got used to the darkness, it was very cool.

The water here is pretty clear (We are still at Isla Isabela) so as we paddled around we were able to see fish swimming below us. And coming out of the sea cave we could look up at the boobies perched at the edge of the cliff. I think they liked us better from this angle.

After a glorious kayak around we came back to Charisma. Bob had gotten aboard when I noticed an unusual pattern in the water nearby. Bob grabbed the binoculars and identified a school of fish feeding. So I paddled over and investigated! The water was bubbling with activity. I took the waterproof camera, stuck my hand in the water, hit the shutter and got pictures of a school of 15-18″ Crevalle Jack (like a small yellow fin tuna) which we will post later. I was able to follow them around a little longer and be part of the fun.

Ann got this by just sticking her hand in the water with the waterproof camera from her kayak

We got our snorkel gear and headed back out in the dinghy. We used a small anchor Bob brought for the dinghy and Jacque Cousteau-like we flipped backwards out of the dinghy and into the water. Okay, truth be told, Bob did, I just slipped over the edge of the dinghy and into the water.

It was beautiful snorkeling! Most impressive was the school of about 400 Pacific Lookdown fish. At first Bob points to them, like, “Look at that school of fish!”. And they just kept coming! Like I said, probably 400 of these 6-8″ thin silver fish schooling along right next to us. Amazing! Of course there were many other beautiful fish to see among these rocky shores. But then I looked up and we were back near the sea cave! “Swim through it!” I tell Bob. So he does. I followed him thinking, this is scary! It was very deep and pretty dark but beautiful. Blue phosphorescent fish were swimming below us, and there was, of course, a light at the end of the tunnel. So fun!

Back on Charisma a little later, we were treated to a whale show about 60 yards off of our stern. Do things like this really happen? Crazy. Two whales were diving and showing their flukes for 20 minutes while we’re anchored a mere 60 yards away!

We finished our day with “hammock time” while we enjoyed the songs of the hundreds of birds circling over our heads -including the rare Red-billed Tropicbird that will not let me photograph it!

P.S. To Missy: Tonight we’re cooking the last of the fish we caught yesterday and using the cookbook you got us for Christmas. Since the fish is close to snapper, we’re using the recipe for snapper on a bed of sliced potatoes, green beans, julienned carrots and tomatoes with olive oil, and a dash of balsamic vinegar all wrapped in foil and baked. It’s in the oven right now and the aroma is heavenly!

No, not some kind of Mexican jail (as we are still within sight of the penal colony’s lights at night), but the fish I caught for dinner. Actually two dinners, at least.

He measured 23 inches and made dinner for two nights. Delicious!

I tried fishing from Charisma and was hoping to catch some more of those bass we caught back near La Paz, but no action. So I decided it was well past time on this voyage where I tried some trolling from the dinghy.

Looks a little silly, but resulted in dinner...

I took a few passes through the cove and one out around the corner trying a couple different lures. No joy. On the end of the last pass, with my last lure (an old beat up Rappella with tooth marks from a barracuda I caught in the Caribbean), the pole bent double and the line started running off the reel. I immediately stopped the dinghy and tightened the drag. Solid pull, couldn’t budge whatever it was. I thought I was hooked on a rock and was thinking about how to fix that when this “thing” started pulling the dinghy through the water toward the rocks. Uh, oh. (Should I add at this point, that there was a panga with some of the fishermen aboard anchored about 30 yards away and relaxing with a smoke before going back to their shacks. They were duly entertained by the silly gringo yatista being towed around the cove by a giant fish).

So…I have some kind of monster from the deep towing me to sure oblivion on the rocks. What to do? Fortunately the engine was still on, so I gingerly put it in reverse (I’m holding the pole with my left hand and both legs and working the engine with my right hand). Some movement. More reverse. Even more movement. I couldn’t reel him in, but I could tow him! So, rocks averted, I started to tow Moby Fish out to deeper water. Backwards. The Mexican fishermen were thrilled with the afternoon entertainment. Once out in the deeper part of the cove, my Barred Pargo was tired and submitted. I didn’t know what I had until he came out of the depths. Once to the surface, I saw what a beautiful fish I had caught and knew it was some kind of rockfish (which are good eating-the whole purpose of this exercise). So, I bonked him with my trusty fish bonker and pulled him on board to the sound of gentle, polite clapping and smiles from my amigos in the panga. The gringo uses some silly techniques, but he gets his dinner.

So, back to Charisma to proudly show off tonight’s dinner and time to make some fillets. They looked just like snapper, except lighter in color and cooked white. Delicious. We have enough for two or three nights. Thank you Mr. Barred Pargo. Pictures to come.

The fish book describes him thusly; “To 2 ½ feel and 30 pounds. A deep-bodied snapper found skulking in caves and around rocks. Edibility: Excellent.” We measured the one I caught. It was 23 inches.

Blue footed, yellow footed and brown footed (they are fairly rare we’re told) Boobies nest on this island along with frigates. The other animal inhabitants are iguanas. There are so many you have to watch where you step or you might step on one.

...watch where you step....

Ann and friend

Since the island is protected (it was given the status of Parque Nacional and World Heritage Site in 2003) the animals here flourish without fear. It’s been named the Galapagos of Mexico. You can walk right up to a nesting bird or sunning iguana and they just look at you; “eh, another tourist”. Even at that there are very few tourists as the island lies more than 15 miles off of a coast without a large city to “breed” tourists. So mostly just “yatistas” visit and occasionally a more organized nature trip.

After arriving here early in the morning, we were anxious to get ashore and had the dinghy pumped up and in the water by 0900. We motored to the only beach area in the only protected (from wind and wave) cove on the island to go ashore. There is a small fishing camp here where a few Mexican fishermen make their living fishing the water around the island. There were very friendly as we landed between their pangas, but none spoke enough English, so we moved past the beach up onto the island proper to see the birds.

The only inhabitants of the island live in this fish camp

“See” them doesn’t really do this experience justice. You are more “one” with them. The Frigates, which are huge-six foot wingspans-nest just barely above your head in the small wind swept trees. As we walked among them, you could reach out and touch their nests (we didn’t of course). Numerous nests had young fuzzy baby Frigates not yet old enough to fly. Some of the birds were also nesting on the ground, so between the Frigates and the iguanas, we chose our path very carefully. We’re talking hundreds of Frigates all around you in areas the size of a small house. There were literally dozens in every tree, many with babies. And the noise! Almost deafening. Sqawking and clacking their bills, this is where the word; “cacophony” must have come from. And we won’t even attempt to describe the smell. Along every few trees one of the males would display his colors whereby he would “blow up” his throat, ballooning to a brilliant red against the mostly black body. When we had a moment to look down, we would see several iguanas every couple yards ranging from little lizard size up to two feet long. Attired in flip flops, I took early inventory and carefully counted my toes before we moved on.

Frigate madness

Frigate hatchling

Male Frigate

So, Frigates live mostly in trees. OK, then where were the Boobies? The answer turns out to be symbiotic in that they live on the rocks. So, carefully tracing our steps back to the beach so we wouldn’t disturb or step on all the wildlife, we headed to the other end of the beach where hundreds of Boobies were nesting on the rocks overlooking our cove (multiply these quantities of many hundreds, maybe thousands per acre by the volume of an island a mile wide and several miles long, which is the length of the island, and you get a feel for how many birds nest here).

Ann of the boobies...

Boobies we came to see and Boobies we got. They are even more unafraid than the Frigates. You can walk right up to a nesting Booby and they will just sit there. Many were sitting on eggs and were keeping their hatchlings warm. Unconcerned and showing no fear, they would stand up and show us either eggs or a small fuzzy hatchling, still just with little stumps where they would eventually grow wings, then sit back down.

Boobie hatchling

Yes, my feet are blue...

Since they were nested so densely and in order not to unduly alarm any of them, I stayed at the base of the rocky point so Ann could explore to the top. We saw blue feet, yellow feet and red feet of the three types of Boobies.

...More blue feet...

We arrived at 0730. Coming in we could tell this place was going to be “wild”. Thousands of seabirds were soaring the winds above the island and in the last 5 miles coming in at around sunrise, we must have seen half a dozen whales breaching and otherwise jumping around. Ann swore she saw one do a back flip. I told her she was nuts until I saw the same thing later in the day from our anchorage.

As we approached the island, I woke up in the middle of the night and heard Ann talking up on deck. At first, in my sleepy haze and not knowing exactly where I was, I just assumed she was on the phone. Then with full consciousness coming on I remembered we were about 50 miles off the coast of Mexico and thought; “Has all this sailing sent her over the edge?” Climbing out of the bunk at around 0230, I slipped out of the quarterberth and up the companion way ladder, hearing a lilting voice; “Where are you? Come on out. Come back and play some more”. What the heck? The answer become clear in a couple seconds when I heard a splash and ‘whoof’. Dolphins playing by the stern. The dolphin whisperer was back.

Ann is the only person I have ever seen who can in fact, talk to the dolphins. During the day, when she laughs with joy at them, they jump out of the water in response. Now at night her lilting voice got them to spin around Charisma and talk back. They were chattering at her. Her voice must have a frequency that they like.

(From Ann) Actually they frightened me at first. I am on early morning watch and keep hearing puffs and smelling fish. I look around and because the moon as set already I see nothing. I even stand up on the deck and look, sure that something is about to get me – like a pod of killer whales! Then I realize that we are just off of the penal colony island where I read about an escape just as we got to La Paz. Now I’m really concerned. I think to myself, if it were dolphins I would see their phosphorescent trail in the water, right? And suddenly there it was! There were lots of trails as the dolphins played around the stern! My friends were back. (I tried to keep it quiet but found that both keeping my voice down and keeping on course became a problem. Oops!) BACK TO BOB…

This leg was about 90 miles and turned out to take us 21 hours. Of that time, we motored one and a half hours out of Mazatlan and ran under very shortened sail coming into Isabel, slowing from 6 knots to 3 knots for about 4 hours, in order to delay our arrival until after sunrise. All in all, this was a nice passage with fairly light winds most of the way. For the most part we were seeing 8 knot winds, but they went from 17 gusting to 25 for a couple hours just after sunset, to about 2 knots for a couple of hours on Ann’s watch around 0100. We didn’t see any other boats closer than 7 miles and those were probably fishing boats nearer the coast than we were. Overall a nice sail.