North 21 degrees, 30 minutes; West 105 degrees, 14 minutes, or about 3 miles South of San Blas San Blas, according to our guidebook was “discovered” by Hollywood when John Huston filmed “Night of the Iguana” here with Richard Burton. We anchored here about 1600 and are relaxing after a 9 hour downwind sail from Isla Isabel.

We were anchor up at 0645 this morning and slipped out of our little cove to a typically beautiful Mexican sunrise. The sail here was delightful. Once again, we saw at least a dozen whales, many of whom were breaching and otherwise practicing their acrobatics. Less than ¼ mile from our anchorage, as we were leaving, one came over to say “goodbye” by doing barrel rolls, each time waving his flukes in the air as if to wish us bon voyage.

I was struck during our quiet downwind journey by how nice it is to be fairly “off the grid”. The sunshine is powering our solar panels, which in turn provide electricity for navigation equipment, lights refrigerator and particularly the watermaker, which turns seawater into drinkable fresh water at the rate of 6 or 7 gallons/hour. On top of that, as we were sailing, our fishing lines provided yet another dinner. Around 1400 as we were approaching the coast, we got a “hit” on the handline. We were using a cedar plug and a Sierra Mackeral (also known as Cerro Mackeral) conveniently made himself available for our dinner. Ironically I was just thinking about how I was going to cook some of the chicken we have in the freezer when the clothespin on the line snapped signaling a fish on. We haven’t caught one of these since Geoff and I did last year up near La Paz. They are considered a delicacy in Mexico. They don’t keep well, so you won’t find them in any local stores but they are one of the most delicious of the pelagic fish (in my opinion). Ann’s getting a salad ready right now and I’m about to heat up the cast iron pan to gently fry the fish in a little olive oil and a squeeze of lime to go with the last of our green beans that we bought in Mazatlan.

Tomorrow we check out San Blas….

P.S. We’re going to be back in the Bay Area starting March 4th for a week to get our taxes done before leaving on the “big jump” to the South Pacific.