It is calm and sunny.
This morning, we pulled up anchor at 6:30 am and all but one sailboat had already left ahead of us. As we motored out of the bay the sun was coming up highlighting the mountains and putting Isla San Francisco in the distance into a shadowy haze. It was a warm and hazy morning as we motored up the San Jose Channel passing a whale that was just lazing about on the surface of the sea. As there was no wind we continued motoring north to Punta San Marcial. Off to our starboard after clearing the Island of San Jose were the islands of San Diego and Santa Cruz. As we motored up the coast we could not help but compare the scenery to that on Lake Mead. We could have been heading to Middle point on Lake Mead; instead we were in over 800 feet of salt water heading to Agua Verde.
About 32 miles up the coast from San Evaristo is the anchorage of Puerto Los Gatos with its red rock formations, just like Lake Mead. As we passed this point, we saw at least three other boats enjoying the calm weather. We decided not to do a detour and by 1:30 pm we were approaching the San Marcial Reef. We had set the GPS way-points to guide us through a small channel between the main reef area off to our starboard and the San Marcial headland with its own reef off to our port. Anita was on duty reef spotting but the waypoints were good as we saw no shallow spots.
Once we cleared the reef, we set our final course for the ‘Solitary Rock’ which marks the entrance to the bay of Agua Verde and was plainly visible in the distance. As usual, this rock stood out quite clearly as it is quite white from the Guano. By 3:10 pm we were safely anchored in the Bay. There is a small cove off the main bay which can hold three or four boats however by the time we arrived it was already full. Once outside of this cove, the depth drops quickly to over 50 feet so we choose to anchor in the main part of the bay in about 18 feet with a sand bottom.
Agua Verde, like San Evaristo is very pretty with the mountains as a close backdrop but it is larger bay. There are a couple of fishing camps and a fine sand beach. During the late afternoon, a Shrimp boat arrived however there was no shrimp on board so we were a little disappointed at not having a nice fresh shrimp dinner.
As we were exposed to some of the small swells entering the bay we did rock about quite a bit as we had not put a stern anchor down to hold us into the wind. We eventually found a solution to this by using the dingy oar to paddle the stern of Hilbre around so we could put down a heavy mushroom anchor. This managed to hold us in a more comfortable position until the seas calmed down later in the evening. During this maneuver we stirred up the water with the oar making it obvious that we had a good phosphorescence display. Everything in the water lit up wonderfully including the fish swimming under the boat. We also watched the phosphorescence light up anchor as it sank to