After a good sleep, I was up for the sunrise and in the kayak shortly thereafter for the beach. High on the to do list was hike to the top of the nearby hill. It was steeper and rockier than I remember but the view was just a spectacular as ever. I wasn’t in a rush and relaxed on the top for a long time. Checking out different vantage points and adding to the rock cairn at the summit. With the need to get some work done I reluctantly started my descent down the steeper but direct ridgeline. No drama, other than a few short sections of retracing my steps to find a better way down or around features. The final total was just over 5km, a healthy start to the day!
After breakfast, it was time to get the port holding tank back in operation. There is a whole blog post on that, so I won’t go into details here. An afternoon nap and the day quickly slipped away. I overstuffed myself with a pesto chicken pasta and a salad. But after the hike and boat work I felt I deserved it.
The next morning I had a bigger hiking planned – I would cut across the island to the Bahia San Gabriel anchorage on the other side. Back in 2017 I visited the former pearl farm and figured it was time for another look see. It is basically a walk through a wash to get there and other than a few interesting views it was a low key 5km. The most interesting parts was the estuary on the other side that ran deep into the island and surrounded the water with lush green vegetation. The beach was small and uninteresting so I headed for the pearl farm, only to be disappointed that the actual clam beds were on the other side and I couldn’t see them. Never to be one to take the easy way, I decided to hike up the side of the hill and work my way to the summit that I climbed yesterday. This added some distance and since it was a new route it was more interesting. I did question myself a few times as I was tired and the added elevation gain wasn’t helping. I powered through though. Another enjoyable view and another descent the same way as yesterday. Reaching the beach, I found that I more than doubled yesterday’s distance, coming in at 10.9km.
The wind had picked up to 20 knots by late morning and the noise was a bit annoying but fine. More boat projects and another nap filled out most of the afternoon along with another filling dinner of pork chops, baked potato, and green beans (there was terrible for some reason).
The wind arrived with a vengeance early the in the morning, I had already planned to skip a hike since yesterday’s took a lot out of me and my knee was bugging me a bit. It was all good because I had a lot of business work to get done and spent all morning on my computer before switching to boat work – replacing the tube in the dinghy wheel. Jack and I had replaced it back in November and it failed last month. I’m pretty sure the Shrader valve corroded, so this time I filled it with 3M 4200 to ensure that can’t happen again. Around 5pm I took the dinghy to shore to get away from the wind and to enjoy the final hour-ish of daylight. It was really nice to have a small beautiful beach to myself and the chance to relax. As darkness arrived, I sped back to Strikhedonia for some leftovers and to finish Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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