Took a hike with Ouest again this morning, this time up a different ridge. She spent most of the time searching for good rocks to throw. I’d find her a level spot to stand and then sit back while she spent ten minutes doing what would have taken erosion a thousand years to accomplish.
While up there we looked across at the other anchorage and spotted two boats, one of which was a previously unseen Spindrift. These have to be the most popular cruising boats in Mexico.
Not to keep on harping about how bad these Navionics charts are, but here is just one more example. Today we sailed around the northern tip of Isla San Francisco and headed for San Evaristo ten miles away. According to the charts it was basically a straight shot. After rounding the corner I realized that Isla Coyote was nowhere near where the charts were showing it. I thought about going south of the island but then changed my mind and veered north around it instead. Once clear of the island and all the uncharted reefs and rocks sticking out from it we pointed straight towards San Evaristo again. This time according to the charts we ran right over Isla Cayo when in actuality we had passed it well clear a few hundred yards back. Anyway, in our entire previous sailing experience we only encountered this once and it was on a completely desolate stretch of the Sudanese coast. An anchorage probably used by two or three cruising sailors a year. This is a passage no doubt used by hundreds if not thousands of sailors a year. Maybe it isn’t specific to Navionics charts, I don’t know, but it’s making any night sails look pretty dubious.
San Evaristo is a tiny village. Just a scattering of shacks around the bay. No cell phone tower, which these days seems to separate the villages from the towns. We went ashore and just walked along the beach for a while, stepping around, over, and through fish bones the whole way. That’s what they do here. They fish. Nobody was out except a couple of young boys and a couple of mangy mutts. We swam around for a bit and called it an early night.
When we came into the bay today we were the first to arrive. By dark ten boats filled the bay, all way too close to one another. When we came back to our boat after being ashore we were waved down by our new neighbor who apologized right up front for being so close, maybe fifty feet, but was not the least bit inclined to move. There is plenty of space in this bay, including a second bay which sits empty tonight, but the herd mentality of anchoring cruisers is tough to break. We haven’t been this crowded in Mexico and don’t much care for it, so tomorrow we move on.
