Ready, set, hike! Before the sunrise we watched Pura Vida motor off to the north and we headed in to the beach. It was good to see that is was much cleaner than in the spring when we hauled forty pounds of trash to Bahia LA. Much cleaner does not mean clean, so we packed up another tub of garbage to haul to Santa Rosalia this time.
After reaching the end of the beach we split up and I made for a hill climb loop. That hadn’t been my initial plan but it morphed into a rocking climb with some interesting challenging spots where I was quite thankful for the excellent grip from the volcanic rocks. I looped through arroyo after arroyo finding many little desert flowers. I reached a point where I could see a possible line to get back down to a plateau that would lead to the beach. A couple nervous moments when it looked like a ten foot drop off, but in both cases there were foot holds to sneak down. At the bottom of the steeps I was treated to one last flower and a humming bird. With the easier part remaining the pace increased and soon it was breakfast time!
Next up fishing. We had our Rapalas tuned up and we were ready. Right away I caught a very nice trigger fish. Then another. Life is looking good. But we really wanted some cabrillas. Around the point and I snag something big. Reeling hard to keep it from the rocks all of a sudden it was off. Blerg. Reeling in a found that my favorite lure broken in half. Duh. Backup rigged we hit the point again and hook not one but two fish, yes at the same time. However, I only landed one. It wasn’t what we wanted so over the side it went.
A couple minutes later I was reeling on another, this looked to be a juvenile yellowtail. While wrestling it Jack was holding a buckle and the fish was not done fighting whipping the hook into Jack’s finger. No bueno. It was a solid hook, first order was cutting the line, then cutting the fish from the lure, then hustling back to the boat for surgery. Okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration but I did have to cut off the barb and pull the hook out the second hole and through the first hole. Ugh. Should have known better when working with a hook. Thankfully it wasn’t worse – hook was clean, wound was washed, alcohol, anti-septic, coated with antibiotic, and wrapped up. Jack’s first question, “How soon can I go snorkeling?” Let’s take it day by day.
I have been working on making some changes to the electronics the last few days and with that completed I wanted to calibrate the autopilot compass. This involved driving slowly while turning on a circle – again and again and again. Admittedly the first time I hit buttons before ready for the next step but in the end we got it all dialed in. Whew, check that one off the list.
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