July 16 - 25, 2008 – Santa Rosalia and Isla San Marcos

Wednesday – Friday July 16 - 18, 2008
Santa Rosalia – lay days spent lounging around in the heat and sweltering humidity. Having the sun shade … any little bit of shade really helps cool things down. Julie sewed new covers for the cockpit cushions. We were going to leave two days ago but Julie got a migraine so we’ve just hung around the marina moving about slowly and quietly.

Saturday - July 19, 2008
1100 – Depart Santa Rosalia for Isla San Marcos and Sweet Pea Cove. Fuel up ($83) 31.25 gallons – engine hours 349, La Paz engine hours 272 (349-272) = 77 hours; 31.25 gallons / 77 hours gallons = .4 gals/hour … hooray, hooray, hooray!!! Thirty minutes outside the breakwater Julie’s migraine returns and so do we.

Sunday – July 20, 2008
Depart Santa Rosalia for Isla San Marcos 9.9 miles south. Julie much better now; she
decided to throw out her fishing line, didn’t even get the line unraveled and she had hooked a small to medium dorado (mahi-mahi). After we got her (Julie, not the fish) settled down, we brought the fish in, cleaned it, threw it in the freezer and we’ll have dorado tonight for dinner.
Anchor at Isla San Marcos, Calita Lupita. Water clear and cool. We we’re going to go snorkeling, but Sharon on JAKE got stung on the ear by a jelly-fish, so I cleaned the bottom of the boat instead. Julie stayed on the boat!

Monday – July 21, 2008
Up anchor and back to Santa Rosalia for final provisioning before heading north. To local resturant for a taco and torta lunch; napped in the afternoon and to Terco’s (the chicken place) for dinner.
2100 – Julie went to talk to some fisherman on the dock about her lures. It was a family of three (Rick the dad, and Thad and Jessica his son and daughter-in-law); they had been in the Baja for the past month and-a-half fishing on Thad’s power-cruiser (they had trailered down from California). They had a fairly successful trip and had caught all they wanted except they had not gone squidding. They gave Julie a huge piece of Dorado (they had caught) and asked her if she wanted to go squidding; the only problem was they couldn’t launch their boat (the ramp was blocked by some overturned panga’s … go figure). She said sure, and came running to ask me if I wanted to go - This is squid season. Santa Rosalia is the squid capital of the world and squid smell fishy, times ten! The pangas, hundreds of them, run out at dusk high, light and fast and return at varying hours in the early morning low, slow and heavy. Every evening from top to bottom, the eastern horizon twinkles with a long row of white lights that stretches for miles (pangas squidding). The harbor is small and shared by all; the two small marinas, the hundreds of panga’s and the squid processing area. The smell of squid is pungent and a tinge of squid odor is always present; were it not for the prevailing southerly’s it might truly be uncomfortable. Squid, in addition to being stinky, are foul, messy, carnivorous and cannibalistic creatures. In visualizing myself neck deep in beaks, tentacles, an odd assortment of squid bits and ink all while rolling on a swell, in a small boat, in muggy heat, in the dark - I said “no.” A bit later I thought to check on Julie and see if I had contact information of these strangers (whom I had yet to meet) and make sure things were on the up-and-up. Julie was on our boat milling about and didn’t seem in a big hurry to get going. I saw the two guys and the girl waiting with their poles and talking to a panga driver. Julie said she was all ready to go, it didn’t look like it to me but what do I know. As I left the boat and headed back up to the cooler (the only air conditioned room in the marina), Julie asked me if I could help her take down the sun-shade. I asked “why?” “Well, won’t it be in the way when we are squidding” she asked? I murmur to myself “how is the sun-shade going to be in the way while your squidding?” After several more meaningless and confused interchanges, it became clear to me that Julie was going to take ITCHEN out squidding! “BY YOURSELF” I exclaimed! “Yes” she said! “OVER MY DEAD BODY,” I pronounced! “Well, I thought that’s why you might want to come” she said knowingly. “Ya think” I retorted. By this time our three would be squidders were stealthily ambling up the dock, anxious to be absent for the family quarrel. I had now been pressed into service (whoa be the man that gets between Julie and her fishing) and I had to run along and catch our wanna-be squidders. We grabbed their gargantuan cooler, poles and back we came to the ITCHEN, took down the shade and cast off.
Julie had just bought a squid jig that afternoon and was now beside herself with the imminent, if unexpected, chance to try it out. A squid jig looks like a torture device from the Tower of London; it’s spherical with three sets of floating crowns fitting over a 12’ inch shaft. Each crown is luminescent and has 8-10 stainless steel, razor sharp one-inch long prongs that jut out at 60-degree angles. The jig lure is lowered into the water (squid live below the 1000 foot level during the day and then come to the surface or very near the surface to feed at night) and jigged, or bobbed to entice the squid to latch on. They wrap they’re tentacles and arms around the jig and are unable to free themselves. We had just watched an Internet video on them that afternoon and learned that squid have two tentacles and 8 arms. They snatch (two one-hundredths of a second) their prey with their two tentacles (which are longer than the arms) and then bring it into the eight arms and pull it into the beak; dinner at chez-squid. Squid live about two years and currently there is a huge influx of Jones squid ranging from Central America to Alaska where they are decimating the herring and sardine populations. The video showed hundreds of them swimming backwards and forwards with equal agility and attacking anything including each other. There was a crew from animal planet here filming the squid feeding frenzy that happens here, seasonally. The dive crew was wearing chain-mail armor over their wet suits. Upon return one of the divers, who had a great deal of experience in diving with all sorts of sea life said, “this was really scary.” Go to the Internet and look squid up, they’re really quite fascinating and watch for the squid feature on Animal Planet in a couple of months. Our squid were Humboldt Squid and draw top dollar for the edibility.
We took ITCHEN out 2.6 miles from the marina. The water was getting steadily deeper when a pattern of wildly fluctuating depths commenced. We were not as far out as the panga’s, but thought we’d try the squid lures here. Thad bent on a squid lure to his super-heavy-duty-deluxe-ocean-going-fishing-pole and it wasn’t ten seconds and he had a hit. He wrestled with the squid for about five minutes and brought up a small (for that evening) 24” squid; turning all sorts of different colors. The squid shot off a couple of geysers of water (their propulsion system) as Thad brought him next to the boat, Rick gaffed him and they flipped it into the cooler and slammed the lid. A minute later Thad opened the cooler, cut the tentacles away from his lure and we were back squidding again. This is how it went for the next 45 minutes. As soon as we dropped the jig in the squid would attack it and whoever had the pole would spend considerable time and effort to bring the squid in (usually with two or three of his buddies feeding on him). Squid are ferocious fighters and very strong. Rick brought in a 50 pound squid (the largest of the evening) with some doing, but we all caught at least one. We were making quite a fracas and several panga’s took notice of us. One panga came pretty close and it was really something to watch them work. The panga is a 20 to 25 foot, deep sided, open boat powered by a large (85-100 hp) outboard; manned by a crew of two (or more) dressed in bib waterproof coveralls. They have a bright light on the panga (which attracts the squid) and they had four lines going into the water, two on each side, 3/8 – ½ inch thick (nothing fancy). The crew alternated from one side of the boat to the other and as quick as they set the jig, a squid would hit. Hand over hand they hauled up the line (squid squirting water everywhere), flipped the squid in the boat, lopped off its head (including tentacles) and tail, threw the body in the bottom of the boat and the head and tail over the side along with a clean jig. With one step the fisherman turned to the other side of the boat to work that line and repeat the exact same procedure. They were like machines, opposing swings of the pendulum, back and forth the two-crew moved in perfect unison, always only one crew to a side, keeping the boat in balance; haul, cut, cut, toss, toss … toss, pivot). They had as many squid in four minutes as we had in 45 minutes. Our catch for the night totaled 150lbs and after gutting and filleting we probably had 60 lbs of meat. We did not keep the tentacles, which we should have as it was good meat. After doing some reading, I found that the only part of the squid that is not edible is the beak. We had enough squid for the entire dock and boats in the anchorage, as well.

Tuesday - July 22, 2008
Julie up early to hand out squid. Motored to Isla San Marcos and anchored in Calita Lupita. Stopped by BEYOND REASON and WINDWARD BOUND to hand off some squid. In addition gave squid to SUNBOW, JUNIATA, HIPNAUTICAL, JICARANDA, MY TYROLA and JAKE. Prepared for a predicted Chubasco (a strong wind from across the sea here in Mexico) secured everything, removed the sun-shade and set up anchor to release if needed. No Chubasco.

Wednesday - July 23, 2008
Moved around the corner to Sweet Pea Cove. Anchor finally set correctly. I had been having trouble setting it recently and I had lost some confidence in it. We backed down on it pretty aggressively and it caught right away and dug in. While snorkeling to check on it I noticed a huge manta ray about 20 feet to my left … what a rush!

Thursday – July 24, 2008
Sweet Pea cove – lay day. Overcast with some blustery wind, no rain, no fetch, but it kept things cool. Over to BEYOND REASON for cocktails in early evening – back to ITCHEN just before the new day with way too much tequila and rum on board. Julie fell in the water trying to get on the boat and we both fell into bed with our heads and stomachs swirling. I’ve been that drunk before, but I was really young and really stupid!

Friday – July 25, 2008
Up anchor for Santa Rosalia. Motored over to JACARANDA (39’ Allied Seabreeze) for a fishing guidebook. Washed down the boat; hauled the dinghy, cleaned the bottom and put it up on deck for the trip north. Topped off with fuel and water and had dinner of pizza and ice cream with JAKE and SUNBOW (50’ Chris Wright Catamaran). We’ve been at sea, or living on a boat, for one year, today. We’ve made five trips back to the States; bought and sold another car; gone through two sets of bicycles; and replaced nearly everything on the boat. If we had followed our original plan and nothing had gone wrong, we would probably be in America Samoa or there abouts and much better off financially. But this is OK; we’re doing the Sea of Cortez and changed our thinking from going west, to going east. Those that we’ve talked with who have made the puddle jump (crossing the pacific) sailed for 30 days only to find extraordinarily limited and expensive provisioning. One family spent $100 for a pizza and four cokes. Another spent as much for several pieces of fruit. I would like to sail to New Zealand, but for now we plan to linger in Central and South America this season, maybe visiting the Galapagos Islands; transit the Panama Canal next season; sail the Caribbean and the East Coast; eventually crossing the Atlantic to see Brigid in England.