After breakfast it was time to move to the north side of Carmen to a fan favorite, Vee cove. Also on the agenda was fishing. The lack of wind meant more motoring but once on the east side of the island there was enough wind to try sailing. “Try” is in operative word – as we soon gave up and fired up the port engine. I was instructing Julia how to reverse the engine to get the propeller in overdrive when ignorance struck me again (this happened last December), I failed to remember the fishing line and oh boy did I do a number this time. I heard the RPMs drop but it wasn’t another few seconds before I realized what happened. I quickly took the engine controls and shut down the engine. Then on to the task of seeing how bad it was. Once in the water my fears were confirmed we had a major fucking mess down there. Dive knife, screw driver, and I set to work. About thirty minutes later I had the mess removed with all 100 meters of 500 lb fishing line destroyed. Thankfully it appeared that the saildrive and propeller escaped without damage. Blerg. The rest of the trip was uneventful (to my relief) and we anchored in Vee Cove by 11:40am.
There was a swell coming into the cove with a small wind. Good for a day stop but the forecast winds caused me to reconsider making this an overnight for us. We kayaked to shore and walked up the sand dunes getting a few cool pictures of Strikhedonia in between the rock cliffs. I took some time to daydream while Julia swam around. Before heading back to the boat we kayaked past and into the sea caves. Some of which go back a few hundred meters. The challenge was not getting sucked in with the swell while still getting inside to enjoy the view and snap a couple pictures. Then Julia dropped me off on Strikhedonia, for a bit of dinner prep while she headed back to shore with her mask to get her snorkel on.
An unexpected surprise was to see Balam, the Westcoast Multihull catamaran, circle us. This was a sailing class and I asked the instructor if he was named Lance. Surprised, he said yes and asked how I knew that. I explained that I had met the other instructors and since I knew he taught classes it was by deduction. We chatted a bit, he was friends with Roy the previous owner of Strikhedonia (formally Selah). Lance had given a number of charter trips on Selah years ago and mentioned he nearly bought her. It was fun to talk but man overboard drills were on their agenda so after a few minutes off they went.
This was the favorite place for Julia so far, she loved the narrow anchorage that she felt kept the dangerous fish away (minor phobia of sharks and deep water). I wish it would have been safe to stay the night. Sadly we upped anchor and headed for Isla Coronado. We were pushing the daylight hours so motoring and then motorsailing were called for and minutes after the anchor was down the sun dipped below the horizon. Damn that was a full day, but overall a good day, fishing line drama and all.
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