Cruise Log #24, Bahía de Los Angeles to Santa Rosalia
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October 15th to November 1st
Turning Back to the South
Updated November 1st.
The route south from Bahía de Los Angeles.
By mid-October, only five boats
remained in the BLA area - SolMate was one of them. Twenty others had already quit the
bay, heading for their winter cruising grounds. Air temperature, water temperature,
hurricanes...weather conditions
that kept us in BLA all summer, had changed, so why were we still hanging around? We
had a few good reasons....
Stubbornly, we were still waiting for whale sharks. They had left
their southern feeding grounds around the first week of October, and we were confident they'd
show up in the bay any day, so we waited and we waited, but alas, we never saw their
homely faces. After all the hype we'd heard about swimming with the monsters, we were sorely
dissappointed that we never got the chance. Jay and Janice on Ceilidh kindly filled the void with
the pictures they took last year.
Last year's whale shark, a 15 footer...that mouth's about 4 feet wide.
The Ceilidh crew fabricated another reason for us to linger in the bay...
the final round of the "Js" (Jay, Janice, Jo and John) versus the "Others" (Stan, MJ,
Linda and Lance) dart tournament, held at the
Ceilidh-ville palapa, aka Duffy's Tavern. In concert with the tournament were
a few more rounds of
tacos at China's and 2-for-1 margaritas at del Sol.
While anchored 6 miles from the village at Ceilidh-ville, our
bus to town was the old Datsun that Jay and Janice inherited with the palapa, not such a
bad 30-minute, dirt-road ride when compared to the alternatives, like walking, or upping
the anchor.
A truckload of cruisers, (l to r) MJ, Jay (Ceilidh), John
(Nakia), Jo and Lance
(Milagro), Stan, and Linda (Nakia).
We finally did up anchor, but on our very last visit to BLA village in the mother ship, we found another reason to linger in BLA. Unfortunately, that reason wasn't as much fun as a dart tournament. Our anchor windlass broke. The hub of the gypsy sheared right off (manufactured by Lighthouse - odd that a piece of equipment constructed for a saltwater environment would fail like that; it's only five years old, with only one year of constant use). Fortunately, Jay and Janice were familiar with most of the village fix-it shops. Stan removed the errant pieces, carried them to a local car-shop welder, who dropped everything he was doing and slapped them back together on the spot, for $20US. Stan reassembled the whole shootin' match that same afternoon.
The broken gypsy pieces.
With the windlass back in business, we didn't have any more excuses for leaving the
hook in the sand, and besides, the weather had turned downright chilly. Night temps had
dropped into the sixties - blankets and sweats, stashed in lockers the past four months,
were put back into service, and felt pretty good. But the real cure for the cooler temps
was to follow the sun. SolMate turned her pointy end south, and along with our buddies on
Nakia, headed out on the first leg, 45 miles to San Francisquito.
Midway in our passage, Nakia made a forlorn radio call, John had lost his fishing pole overboard -
rod, reel, hook, line and sinker. Gale heard the call and was devastated. John was his main
source of yellowtail, dorado and trigger fish. This was a serious loss. He took matters into
his own hands (paws) and
fabricated a replacement, which he presented to John in San Francisquito over autumn comfort food,
chili and cornbread.
John's gift from Gale.
The pole must have been a good one, because the next day, here came John with Gale's favorite food, fish bellies (fish eaters say the bellies are too fatty and rich, but Gale thinks they're just right). There was an old spinning rod sitting in the bottom of the dinghy with John, but Gale's sure it was his pole that snagged his dinner.
