Isla
San Martín
~February 12-13, 2019~
So I would say Punta Colonet was a little rolly and I didn't get the best sleep. Paul may disagree, he slept like a log.
There was no wind when we left and we had to motor the whole 35 nm - but it was flat at least. Coming into where we wanted to anchor there was some kelp that the sounder picked up so we jumped from 40’ to 11’! That gave me a scare, but it was all fine. This is one of the few places on the Pacific Coast of Baja that gives some protection from Southerly winds.
So we thought it was a good place to let a small system pass through. It also sounded super cool to explore.
We took the dinghy to shore and climbed along what you would think is a man made breakwater. It is actually naturally formed from boulders of volcanic rock. In the middle of the southern side of the island there's a lagoon with a tiny entrance.
Inside the lagoon is a huge seal colony. The seals clearly weren't familiar with humans even as we peered over the rocks from a distance some seals were on high alert scampering for the water. We crept in closer and peered over the rocks to the tiny entrance where the seals were now swimming through. There were probably two types of seals here. One looked like they might be elephant seals and they didn't even lift their heads, the others we suspect were the Guadalupe Fur Seal, but we are no experts.
We headed back from the lagoon towards the sandy beach where we landed. Luckily there was a trail to the fish camp because I was not going to be walking through the spiky vegetation that grew thickly on the island. At fish camp they were collecting seaweed, there were tubs labeled abalone, but they were empty. We're not sure how the camp works, we saw about 10 men there - there were some pretty decent buildings and structures but it seemed most of the men were sleeping in tents and shacks with crappy tarps as the only covering.
The island is an old volcano and we would have liked to walk to the top, but did I mention the spiky vegetation?! So we walked up the east side of the island along a path to another smaller camp and checked out the old lava tubes. It's a super cool island to explore, but unfortunately the beach was littered with plastic trash that is washing up from the water.
We could easily stay longer but we'll be off again tomorrow so that we can get to Bahia Tortuga, the first natural habour on the Baja Peninsula before a strong Northerly comes though - 30 knots and 4m seas!
