June 26th – Ramada Cove – Jim’s Blog #54

We’ve spent four nights in this cozy little anchorage, joined after the first day by Ed and Cornelia of ‘A Cappella,’ Jim and Susan of ‘Windward Bound,’ Sam and Susie (with their 6-year-old grandson, Hunter) on ‘Catch the Wind,’ and Chuck and Joan of ‘Tender Spirit.’ On the morning of the 22nd we took a hike up a road to the south that terminated at the top of a hill with what appeared to be a series of lots for potential homes. At the present time three homes have been built, that have a fantastic view of San Juanico Bay and the Sea of Cortez, but these are far from the luxury homes they appear to be from a distance. They have the look of homes on the bad side of a small town. We understand it is 9 miles by dirt road to the nearest highway, and there are no stores whatsoever. It appears that someone had a grand idea to build scenic homes without considering the infrastructure needed to support those who might live there.

As we reached the top of the hill we could look out over San Juanico Bay, where we noticed ‘Catch the Wind’ anchored alone in the nearest cove. We heard on the morning net that they had been alone in San Juanico Bay for a couple of days and had been dealing with a strong southeast wind every afternoon that made it uncomfortable. We had taken our handheld VHF radio with us to the top of the hill and we used the line of sight capability to contact Sam and invite him over to our cove to avoid the strong winds. Sam, Susie, and Hunter were only too glad to move to the better cove and actually have some company. That afternoon we had them over to play Mexican Train Dominoes on our boat with coke and popcorn. We had a very enjoyable game and were impressed with Hunter’s ability to play the game. He is probably one of the most engaging 6-year-old boys we have ever met, and very mentally sharp.

The next day I decided it was time to go spear fishing again, but I had strict instructions from Sheilagh not to bring home another “triggerfish,” with its very tough skin. I was out for about an hour and finally got close enough to, and speared, what turned out to be a “spadefish.” Alas, the spadefish had the same tough skin. After hacking at it for awhile, Sheilagh got very little “meat” off one side, and we decided to give it a traditional, at-sea burial over the side. Both the triggerfish and the spadefish are relatively thin fish with height (viewed in profile) about equal to its length. Now I have instructions from Sheilagh to spear only fish that are quite a bit longer than their diameter and big enough to provide sufficient “meat” to be worth the cleaning and carving effort. I have noticed that the larger the fish, the older and wiser they are, and the longer the fish, the faster and more elusive they are. It’s going to be a real challenge to get close enough and be quick enough to catch wise and fast fish; so the fish population is probably safe at the present time.

That evening we had a dinghy raft up with the occupants of the five boats mentioned in the first paragraph, where we shared appetizers and brought our own drinks. We met in the dinghies because there’s no convenient place on shore to meet, and there were too many participants to fit on any one boat. We just linked all the dinghies together at the bow (with an anchor holding one of the dinghies to the bottom) and passed around the food, along with some magazines and paperback novels. We got to know one another a bit better, and shared our unique experiences to date. ‘Tender Spirit’ was heading north the next day, and ‘Catch the Wind’ was heading south to put their grandson on a plane in Cabo San Lucas to head home.

That night we were on deck with none of our lights on, when Sheilagh pointed out that there appeared to be ghosts gliding through the water next to our boat. It turns out that several schools of fish were gliding around our boat, and their phosphorescence caused them to look like x-ray images in the water. I expected all the fish to be swimming smoothly together, but at least half of them would suddenly split off and dart in a different direction at odd times. It looked to me as if the motion of the fish was similar to the motion of molecules in a boiling pot of water, although I can’t remember ever having seen a molecule in that situation. Then we noticed a flash of light in the east, and noted that lightning was showing up every so often – probably on the mainland side of the Sea of Cortez. We could use the rain they are getting there, but we’d prefer to avoid the lightning.

We stayed a couple of days in this little cove, with two additional boats, ‘Juniata’ with Dave and Marsha, and ‘Pacific Voyager’ with Barry and Pat, along with ‘A Cappella’ and ‘Windward Bound.’ This naturally required another raft up on the evening before we all decided to head north. In this case, the three boats who had participated in the last raft up decided to bring something a little more filling than chips and dip. On this occasion, in addition to the chips and dip from the two new boats, we had spicy chicken wings (our contribution), arrachera strips en brochette (from ‘Windward Bound’), and empanadas (from A Cappella). On this occasion the conversation became so involved that our “anchored” set of dinghies had drifted quite a ways away from the beach and out toward the mouth of the cove before Sheilagh noted the problem. This was Sheilagh’s and my first exposure to a dragging anchor, and the only way you know is to observe the motion of the boat against the shore. We disengaged before being blown out to sea, and each couple returned to its boat to prepare for the early departure on the next day.

I got out my hookah breathing apparatus earlier in the day to take a look at the bottom and clean it a bit. I noticed that there was seaweed caught around our kelp cutter, which shouldn’t have been there. The kelp cutter is a ring of small blades attached to the propeller shaft in front of the propeller that spins with the shaft and cuts anything that could tangle in the prop. In this case the blade was spinning freely and doing no good as a seaweed cutter. I got an underwater flashlight handed down to me from Sheilagh (who serves as my support crew on the boat) and went back down to see what kind of attachment there was supposed to be between the blade and the prop shaft. After determining that the screwdriver I needed was a regular flat-bladed type, got one from Sheilagh and went back to tighten the screw. As I pressed down on the screw head it completely dissolved into fine granules of powder – apparently the boatyard had failed to use a stainless steel screw.

We tried a couple of replacement screws, but finding the correct length, width, and pitch of a screw without any knowledge of what was there before, and doing this under water with a very sharp blade next to the screw hole, using divers’ gloves, a flashlight, a screwdriver, and not enough hands was next to impossible. So, until we pull the boat out of the water, we have to assume that our $600 kelp cutter will be useless to us for awhile. I finished up cleaning the boat bottom and checking the zincs to make sure they didn’t need replacement, and we were good to go for another couple of weeks.

Tomorrow we take off for Conception Bay, which is about a 10-hour trip up the coast. The other four boats in this anchorage will be heading up with us and all of us plan to leave at 6AM. This should give us just barely enough light to get going, and it will help us miss the late afternoon strong winds that have been building up every day. Hopefully we will have moderate winds and a flat sea to make the trip an enjoyable one. More later . . .