Once again we attempted to sleep in. But pretty much up with the sun. We lazed around waiting for it to warm up. It was gray and overcast. The view was really good, the sea waves breaking on the rocks at the base of the bluffs extending off to the east from where we are. The tops of the bluffs have that light green that the desert gets when there is enough rain/dew to liven up the plants. Just a little east of us the boat “Merry Lee” is anchored and just a little east of them is “Lost Pearl”. We have been playing tag with these two boats since we got to Punta Santo Thomas.
Directly north of us is the fishing village. That was part of what woke us up this morning. All the fishing boats, actually the lobster boats were running out of this bay to get the traps picked up. It actually sounded like an airport with the jets all taking off.
In any case we eventually got to the point of saying ok, lets go ashore and check out the restaurant. We got the kayak down and rigged, and headed over to talk to Josh on “Merry Lee”. He had said that he was a boat mechanic in San Diego, and I wanted to work on one of our winches that has been squeaking (needing grease?). I figured that if he knew how to do this, he could help with the first one, and then I would have seen it done at least once rather than just a video on YouTube. So, Cozette (his wife) said that she would have him stop by after he woke up from his nap. We then headed into shore.
We got to see how the lobster boats get back into shore and back onto their trailers. These boats are about 20 feet long, and have a 75 horse power outboard. They are open boats with a crew of about 3 or 4. They come back into the bay, and stop at the lobster receivers (baskets under water with floats on the surface) and deposit their catch for the day. Then line up on the beach and go full throttle into the beach. As they near shore, they pull the prop out of the water and kill the engine. One or more of the crew then gets out of the boat and gets the truck and backs the trailer down to the boat. They line the front of the boat up with the center back of the trailer then push the trailer back under the boat. The boat points up at the sky and then flops down on the trailer, they stop the truck, go back and hook up the wire to the front of the boat and crank the boat the rest of the way up onto the trailer. No soft rubber, or carpet lined boards, the trailers are all steel, the boats appear to be steel as well. Pretty. Impressive overall.
So, we got ashore and dropped our trash off in the barrel and hiked off looking for a restaurant. We really didn’t have far to go. When we got to the top of the road from the beach, there was a crew prepping their boat to leave town. Renee’ asked them how their day had gone, and if they had been successful fishing, they said that they were not catching fish, rather lagostinos (lobster) laughing. She then asked about the restaurant, (we had seen references to it on the internet). They told us there were two restaurants (pretty impressive for a place with maybe 20 little houses. But then again, the people out catching lobster have to eat too.
We headed off to the two restaurants, side by side and picked one. There were a half dozen tables that could each seat 4 people. We were approached by the waitress who Renee’ spoke too about what to have for lunch. We decided on lobster taco’s. The waitress left and came back a short while later and said that they only had one lobster, so they would split it and we would each get half of a lobster. We said sure sounds fine. We asked about beer and got a couple of Tecates. When the meal arrived, it was a very tasty arrangement, we each got a half of a grilled lobster, a portion of rice a fresh salad, and a small bowl of retried beans, and three soft flour tortillas. All very good. Renee’ spoke with some of the people there as they asked about where we were from etc. and she speaks Spanish, and I don’t. When we got the bill it was about 460 pesos. Or about $25. This include our three beers. All in all a pretty good deal.
We hiked back to our kayak and then kayaked back to the boat. Renee’ worked on the straps on the side of the kayak, and I took a nap. An hour or so later, Josh came over and helped me with the winches. We talked about what the situation was on the boats.
Josh and his wife Cozette and their dog Bodie are the couple on “Merry Lee” a Columbia 30′ sloop, Jeff and his wife Angie are on the “Lost Pearl” with two dogs (I did not get the names of the dogs), both couples are friends and have been living aboard in San Diego getting ready for this cruise. The “Lost Pearl” is a 45 foot ketch, both boats are older and have needed a bunch of repair to get them ready for this cruise. The two couples are working their way down the coast together providing resources as necessary. Both Josh and Jeff were in the Navy, Josh was on a small boat and worked with a seal team. Jeff was a corpsman.
We invited them all to come over to our boat this evening so that we could discuss the weather for the trip. They have limited internet and weather resources. So, they were all here for an hour of so this evening. We talked about the weather, we talked about lots of little things, and together I think we all decided to sort of stay together for awhile as we head south. We also decided to hang out here one more day.
While we took pictures at the restaurant and of the silhouette of their two boats against the almost full moon, I am not even going to try and up load them here tonight.
So fun to read this. I’m Josh’s Mum 😋
You are welcome to read it all and enjoy, you have a good kid!