Sea of Cortez, April 29, 2012

We stopped for one night along the western shore of Isla San Jose before heading further north.  What a gorgeous sight as we approached Puerto Los Gatos.  This bay is surrounded by craggy red rock hills and piles of large slabs of sandstone.  The sunset on our first night there was the most beautiful we've ever seen: bands of red, purple, blue -- the photo doesn't reveal the richness of the colors lighting up the sky, but at least we tried!  Needing provisions we reluctantly left Los Gatos yesterday, heading further north toward Loreto which has several stores.    Along the way we caught our first fish of our season!  It is a Mexican tunny.  Roy cleaned, filleted and grilled it in time for our dinner.  It has dark meat, not red like jack kreval, but is edible.  The plan is to cook the rest of the fish tonight and use it in salads and sandwiches.

Knowing we had one more stop to make before reaching Loreto, we headed for Candeleros Chico, a beautiful one-boat anchorage; this anchorage is no more than 1/8 of a mile wide.  As we were heading for the anchorage, another boat, a small trawler, had the same idea and reached it first.  We saw them look around, probably looking for where to drop their anchor, but  we wanted to get a  waypoint on our chart for another time that we might have first dibs.  As we entered the anchorage, the trawler motored out!  How lucky can we be -- first a fish and then a night in Candeleros Chico!  We spent the last two evenings watching a two part series lent to us from cruising friends: Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James, an amusing mystery.  During last night's viewing, a great burst of wind turned our boat around 180 degrees, and for the next several hours we had wind about 10 kts, gusting to 16 at times -- just the right atomosphere for watching a mystery!

We awoke this morning to see the sunrise in a window to the sea and also gorgeous reflectons on the mountains on the other side of our boat.

~~~ Marlene and Roy ~~_/) ~~