Month: April 2021

Happy Easter!

We are sitting cozily in beautiful Punta Tosca, Isla Socorro. Isla Socorro is drastically different than San Benedicto in that it reminds me of California with its green, rolling hills. The island is inhabited by a Mexican Naval Base and as a side note does not allow guests on shore without special permission. I’ll admit, I didn’t always think it was beautiful here, in fact, I was quite afraid of this place as we pulled into it. As Brad mentioned in the last email we had a 36nm sail to get here and Perspective was bringing up the rear of the pack at a solid 3rd place out of 4. (Its an unstated rule that if boats are going in the same direction it’s a race). There are benefits to not being the first boat in. As boats 1 and 2 rounded the corner into the anchorage they were met with 20kts of wind with their spinnakers up! Once they got things under control they were kind enough to alert the rest of us about the high winds and to prepare ourselves accordingly. Sure enough we were hit with the same winds but had only our reefed main up as we entered.

We waited as boats 1 and 2 got themselves anchored and then we made our approach. Here arose a missed training opportunity in my arsenal of skills. In these windy conditions its best to use the windlass free fall function via a clutch and rod. That’s something I’ve never done before and we decided not to practice it here. This meant that while I dropped the anchor, Brad would have to do some heavy duty piloting to keep us from blowing back from our anchor too quickly as it had a long way to drop before it hit the sea floor below. I let out 150ft of chain as quickly as the windlass would release it, then another 50 and we let the boat pull back on it. Then we let out another 50ft. We sat there and watched to see if the boat would drag backwards or stay put. Once we confirmed that we weren’t going anywhere, I went to the anchor locker with Brad and untwisted the rest of our chain so it could come out of the windlass. He went back on deck and slowly released the rest of our chain, link by link. Eventually all four boats were settled into the anchorage, all appropriately spaced with dragging alarms set. Just before bedtime a whale and her calf visited the anchorage and got pretty close to our neighboring boat. What a treat for us all!

Accompanying the wind we had large southern swells rolling into the anchorage, hitting us stern first. As these swells roared into shore you could see their true power as they pounded into land, spraying water high into the sky. I spent a lot of time on deck observing the power of mother nature as it was the only place I could handle being without feeling seasick. The waves were bouncing off shore creating a washing machine type of sea state. Even with our flopper stopper deployed Perspective was rocking in every direction. Even the multi hulls were getting bounced around quite a bit, albeit their motion was arguably worse as it was a quick and harsh jostling back and forth. We all rode it out knowing the conditions would soften up. And sure enough things did improve as the day went on yesterday. Bringing us to today, Easter Sunday!

You may be wondering why we left our last anchorage and headed to this one? We would have received the same high winds and swells in San Benedicto but with the unwanted bonus of volcanic ash and grit landing everywhere on our boats. No thank you! We are very excited to explore the new dive sites around this anchorage and will keep you posted on what we see.

We hope that each of you are having a wonderful holiday weekend, spending it with those that you love! We thank you for the email responses back, they’ve been quite entertaining and great for crew morale. If you’re reading this message on our blog we can be reached via email at crew@svperspective.com.

Cheers Amigos!

Happy Easter Eve!

We had been in the same spot at Isla San Benedicto for 10 days and wanted to get one more dive in before moving south to Isla Socorro. I am so glad we did as we experienced a first for us underwater. While we have had pretty close encounters with hammerhead sharks on this trip, it is normally one or two swimming around minding their own business. That’s good as we don’t want too close of an encounter, but it is nice to see these magnificent animals clearly.

Before we get into our sightings and pictures, I’ll talk a little about sharks here. If you are not aware, there are three variants of hammerhead sharks: The bonnethead, scalloped hammerhead and the great hammerhead. The bonnetheads are largely harmless, the scalloped not dangerous unless feeding or spearfishing, and the great hammerheads should be monitored as they *can* but rarely do get aggressive. We pretty much exclusively have the scalloped hammerheads here in the Revillagigedo islands and therefore are alert but not worried. Other sharks we see regularly are silkies, duskies, white-tipped reef sharks and silvertip sharks. The white-tipped reef shark isn’t considered dangerous and the rest are if there is spearfishing or feeding activities or a diver is trying to molest one (petting, riding, grabbing the fin/tail and other stupid activities). Again, we are alert but not concerned. The one shark we keep an close eye out for is tiger sharks. We have not seen any, but they are in the area and can be aggressive. Universally we are excited to see these magnificent creatures and surprisingly have never felt fear. I expect that’s largely because they show so little interest in us and just go about their sharky business.

Back to the dive, we had a great dive for April fool’s on what is known as the canyon. There is a fish/shark cleaning station where everyone congregates and gets ‘cleaned’ by the little fish, who then pick the parasites off the big fish. Amazingly, no one gets eaten… It’s an example of predator/prey cooperation in the wild and is fascinating to watch. While hanging out here, we saw our first school of hammerheads in the distance and it was beautiful!! A first for us and hopefully to be repeated.

Sorry for the clarity as they were right at the edge of our vision. This one is a bit better looking up from about 70 feet.

Happy April Fool’s day from Bruce!

Shifting gears, the wind was forecast to pick up, so we departed San Benedicto on April 2nd and sailed south 36nm to Isla Socorro and anchored at Punta Tosca( 18 46.894N, 111 02.722W). More about that in our next message.

Happy Friday Eve!

We had our first experience of having to pull anchor in the middle of the night last night. It was a learning lesson for both of us as we made an error in judgement. But first, let me back up before we get to the juicy gossip of midnight re anchoring! When Brad and I first rolled into the San Benedicto anchorage we were quite tired and struggled to place our anchor in a spot that wasn’t caught in the rocks. The wind was blowing off of the volcano at a steady 20kts which had stirred up the visibility in the water. Finally on our fourth drop we found a place that seemed suitable. But was it really?! The next day we got in the water and dove our anchor and chain to find it mischievously wrapped around several boulders and making several 90 degree turns. It looked like a drunken sailor dropped anchor! Nevertheless, our gear was holding and we weren’t going to go anywhere with how the chain was set. In fact, it was set so well that the it snapped our “snubber” (a line connecting the chain to the boat acting as a shock-absorber) due to the chain wrapped around a rock right under the boat–See attached picture.

Yesterday the wind was low and Brad and I set about fixing our anchor situation once and for all. Brad was at the bow and I was at the helm following his instructions while we tried to get Perspective freed from the tangled mess below. We cautiously pulled forward and our attempts were met with hard yanks from below, pulling Perspective like a toy. This would require another tactic. Cue our amazing boat buddies, Bruce and Alene on Migration. They had just finished doing a dive and were suited up and offered to give us a hand. Alene kindly offered to hop in the water and provide directions to untangle our anchor chain from the surface. When she first had a look at our tangled mess, she gave a good chuckle. Not one to back away from a challenge she said we could do it! Brad and I resumed our stations and Brad followed Alene’s instructions and repeated them to me. Step by step we were able to get our chain free from the rocks below and eventually pulled up our anchor.

Now all we had to do was find a new place to drop the hook and once again Alene provided her snorkeling services. She located some sand between Paseo (another buddy boat) and the shore. We pulled into the spot, dropped the hook and sighed in relief as we knew we would be able to pull anchor in a hurry should an emergency arise. We were pretty close to Paseo, about 200ft or so but felt it was a safe enough distance to stay put. Here’s where we made our mistake. We had asked Paseo how much chain they had out, and we had about 70ft less than they did. Combine that with a change in wind direction and you end up with two boats that are very close together, ready to go bump in the night!

If it weren’t for an annoying squeak on deck that required some on deck investigation, we wouldn’t have known just how close we were to Paseo. Brad being the trooper that he is, went on deck to find the squeak and silence it, but not before calling me up there. Paseo was maybe 35 feet from Perspective! I uncovered our dodger glass, hailed Paseo on the radio to let them know that we were going to pull anchor and to stand by. It was a tense time for all of us as we placed fenders, stowed our flopper stopper and finally pulled the anchor. Once the anchor was up, Brad took the helm and we began the process of finding a new spot to anchor. The moon had yet to rise making the anchorage and the surrounding land quite dark and disorienting. We made several loops and finally it was decided we were going to anchor in another area altogether.

I went to the bow with a flashlight in my hand waiting on instructions to drop the anchor. I had the light shining in the water to see if I could spot rocks below, but all I could see were the curious sharks making their way around our boat. With the bright light shining on them they looked like ghosts as they swam ahead of us. I thought to myself this would not be a good time to fall in the water, and if I did, I’m pretty sure I would be running on the surface! Once Brad found a suitable spot he gave me the command to drop the anchor and let out 100ft of chain. I did exactly that and stuck my foot on the chain to feel for any skipping or dragging. The feedback I received was solid. The chain pulled taut and the boat lurched forward. I dropped more chain until we had 200ft laid out, then another 50ft to finish the job. Words cannot express how thankful I was that we did not get caught up in the rocks below (at least from what I can tell) but that will require some under water investigating later.

Feeling confident in our new spot we radioed our fleet of buddies and gave them our thanks for the offers of help and support. We definitely learned an important lesson and are so glad that we managed to avoid that imminent bump in the night!

The lesson for the day is to ensure our chain is the same length (scope) as our neighbors so that we move *together*…