Fishin' Omission

Fishin' Omission
Turtle Bay, Baja California South, Mexico
October 31, 2009

In my last entry, I made an omission that must be corrected. The great white hunters have struck again. The "finish" line for this leg was about thirty miles north of Turtle Bay (on US maps as Bartolome Bay or Bahia San Bartolome). We jibed after the finish, but the angle wasn't that conducive to getting to Turtle Bay and so we turned on the engine and pointed at our destination.
During the night, an unlucky squid had jumped out of the water to avoid a predator and landed on the deck of CAPAZ. Bryce decided this was a great opportunity for fashioning a real squid lure. The hand lines went into the water. When, we got within about 5 miles of the entrance, we got a fish on and pulled in a 25ish pound yellowfin tuna. Brad is getting very good at the cleaning and filleting end of things. As the killing and cleaning was happening, I spotted a marlin jumping off in the distance which freaked Brad out as we had thrown one of lines back in the water for cleaning purposes. It didn't catch a marlin, but rather a skip jack tuna which we turned loose. The dolphins that were out harassing the marlin swam over to check us out and played on the bow wake even rubbing their bellies on the bow which happened to moving at about 6 knots. We turned into Turtle Bay and took down the sails and the rest you know about from the preceding entry.

Real Squid Lure

Yesterday was a very busy day. We wanted to get the kids into town, so we did that first thing. They changed some money into pesos and then purchased some chicklets which they asked the clerk for the specific colors in Spanish. At noon, the cruisers starting massing for a traditional Ha-ha Potluck and Beach Party. The Cuffels to whom we had given half out tuna, marinated up what they had left and brought it to be seared on the communal beach fire and shared it as their potluck dish. We decided to move our entire boat closer to where the beach party was happening. Then, we dinghied in and spent a great afternoon, catching up with boats we have met along the way and meeting yet more people from the Pacific Northwest.
Since our boat was now located on the closest side of the fleet to the party, we invited people to make a pit stop on their return to their own boats. As expected, the kid boats stopped by, probably because Brad had brought an entire boatload of kids to boat and their families decided to stop by and retrieve them (after a glass of wine in the cockpit). The Morrisons of Almeda and the boat "Evergreen", the crew of "Jarana", most of the crew of "Albatross", and later, the Dollings of Van BC and the boat "Blackdragon" joined for catching up on trip details.
The Dollings continued on into town, where the residents had decided that their fleet of visitors was a great excuse for moving up their "Dia de los Muertos" celebration up two days. We were just too tired and our move made us a little too far away to make the journey. There was going to be dinghy "trick or treating" here in Turtle Bay, but the town's inclusion of the fleet in their celebration, prompted a decision to postpone that activity until Bahia Santa Maria (or perhaps cancel it altogether as we are not in Kansas anymore).
This morning at 11:00 am, we will set sail for Bahia Santa Maria. The weather forecasts are for a much more seasonal weather pattern than we saw between San Diego and here. We look forward to a great sail, our next stop and beyond.

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