Paradise Lost

We left Mazatlan headed south to Chacala where we found paradise in our last sailing season. It is a double overnight sail to get there (exhausting), so we decided to detour slightly west to Isla Isabella to break up the trip a bit. We had never been to this island/bird sanctuary before and were excited to see someplace new. We had always heard good things about it, but on our first voyage to Mexico 20 or so years ago we heard a distress call on our VHF from a boat whose anchor was stuck in the rocks when the weather to a bad swing and their anchor chain was sawing through their hull as they had no way to cut or release it. (We were too far out to be of any assistance, so I can’t tell you how that story ended.) Anyway, even though we have several options on our boat to release our anchoring tackle, the horror of that event always stuck with us and we have avoided going there. We had some pretty decent sailing.

Sun setting over the ocean while sailing

The east anchorage we have been told had sandy bottom, so we headed there. We arrived as the sun was just coming up and looked for a good spot to tuck in with the other couple of boats anchored there. The light was still low with just enough wind disturbance on the water that Jim could not see the bottom so in good faith he released our anchor and hoped for the best. We had excellent holding, and once we were rested up and hit the water we could clearly see that we had anchored on the top edge of an outcropping of rocks…uh oh…no mind, it was beautiful, the water was warm and the snorkeling was great…we decided that we didn’t even want to know if we were stuck hard in the rocks. As for now we were secure and would deal with any issues when we decided to leave.

While we were there another boat got their anchor chain wrapped around a rock and contacted one of the many panga fishermen who radioed a panga with a hooka set-up for diving to come help them out. That gave us some reassurance that in the event we were not able to pull up our anchor, we could get some assistance in getting it unstuck. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. When we were ready to leave it popped right up as it should.

We asked one of the panga fishermen who came from San Blas if he traveled the 40 or so mile trip from the mainland every day. Turns out, they do 5 day shifts and sleep on their boats! Wow, that’s tough especially that far off-shore where everything is so wet in the mornings. (Inside our boat everything is very damp and outside it is so wet that we wipe it down each morning—I can’t imagine how wet it would be to sleep outside…well I can imagine it, but it doesn’t seem nice at all!).

Not only was the snorkeling good at Isla Isabella, the bird life was spectacular. A breeding spot for lots of varieties including blue-footed boobies (my favorite), frigates and pelicans to name a few. Sadly, the frigates are not always nice to the boobies.

Seagulls

Frigates nesting in the trees on the main island

More frigates

Birds nesting in the rocks

Pelican and a blue-footed boobie

The rare headless blue-footed boobie

The islands off the island.

Cool clouds

Nice moonrise

We enjoyed our time at Isla Isabella, but decided to leave after a few days for two reasons. First of all, I kept getting stung by little tiny strings of jellyfish every time I got into the water which was turning my legs into a welted up, itchy, stingy mess of hives. But secondly (and more importantly), the smell of bird guano was just too much. We were extremely lucky for the first few days. I even commented on how little smell there was for having so many birds around. But there must have been just enough breeze in just the right direction that kept our air in the anchorage fairly fresh. In the late evenings or early mornings when the air was calm, we would get a not so nice smell, but it wasn’t too awful and didn’t last too long. However, on the night before we decided to move on I was awoken from a sound sleep by the smell of guano so strong I literally was gagging. I guess all good things must come to an end. And I don’t know what we were thinking, after all it is a bird sanctuary island and where there are birds, there is bird 💩—and a lot of it.

So we headed off to what was to be our final destination of this far too short season, Chacala. We were excited to be there because it truly was a paradise for us in our last season there. The sail there was the best sailing of this season so far, and we made good time in fairly light winds and seas. Once the winds got too light for our head sails we put up our drifter and continued to sail.

We arrived at our “paradise” just as the moon was rising ahead of us and the sun setting behind us.

It became immediately clear that this was not to be our paradise this time. The swell was so bad in the anchorage that we had a hard time setting our anchor because we were hobby-horsing so drastically that our prop kept bouncing out of the water. The calm and tranquil moon and sun pictures above are quite deceiving aren’t they? Let’s take a look at me trying to get those photos:

Enough to make you seasick huh? We were tired, hungry, and just a little bit grumpy from a long day of sailing. So we just settled in for a rough night, ate some food, and tried to get some rest before moving on the next morning…