Saturday, 24 March 2012

This morning we turned in our car rental and headed for the anchorage in “Honeymoon Cove” on the island of Danzante. This cove is just across the Channel from Puerto Escondido and only four miles away. Unfortunately, it is quite popular and one or two boats had taken up strategic positions in the coves to deny other boats the ability to find space to anchor. This seems to be a real issue with some live aboard cruisers who “Hog” some of the best anchoring spots, sometimes for many days or even weeks.
Because of this, we continued on to Puerto Ballandra, a cove on the island of Carmen, about two hours north of Honeymoon cove. Only one boat was anchored in the cove and as it is a fairly large cove, there was plenty of space for a number of boats. As we sailed north passing Loreto, we were able to use our cell phone to talk to John & Juliet. The weather was nice, the seas calm and the wind light, but what wind there was, was on our nose as usual.
Puerto Ballandra is very nice and well protected from all but South and Southwest winds when it becomes an uncomfortable lee shore. It has high hills all around. Our friends Allan and Ann-Marie arrived on their boat in the afternoon so we had a chicken BBQ on our boat. They left Sunday morning but as the weather and bay were so nice, we decided to stay a couple of days and relax before heading north to San Juanico. Monday is supposed to be breezy white-capping conditions from the NNW which would again put the wind on our nose and mean bashing into it with the engine on. We had been hoping for the Southerlies to kick in so we could sail; but it looks like this is not going to happen for some time.
We had some strong phosphorescence last night and some dolphins came into the bay stirring up the phosphorescence. As they swam near the boat, they were large glowing objects in the water; it was quite a sight.