Update 6- Punta Tosca, Isla Socorro

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!