It was early October. The quarter tides were happening. It's time to go to Baja. Pandro was planning to go with his pal, Marwan, but pookey at work had caused even the best laid plans to go awry. Funny how things work though. Pandro's other bud, Freddie, from the Bay Area, called him. He found out that we were going and agreed to be a last minute replacement. It took lots of persuasion.
Pandro had 4 nice sheets of 4' X 8' waferboard left over from his latest remodel project. Sounds perfect for a veranda roof. He loaded them atop his truck and hauled them down. He picked up some roll roofing for me, along with another bag of cement, some post bases and Tico nails. Sounds like the mettle of a construction project to me. I had assembled the frame to the veranda during the Memorial Day trip to Baja. We were ready for some shade...finally. Here's a shot of the finished product, right after sunrise.
I had just bought a new Uni-Solar US-60, 60 watt solar panel, two new T-105 Trojan Golf cart batteries and some joist supports. My old gel cells died between the April trip and the May trip. They were the wrong batteries for the job anyway. 120 bucks worth of learning curve. The new panel will supplement the old Carizzo 26 watt panel on the roof. I'll hook it up when we're there, so Cathy can run plenty of lights. I also got a Powerstar 1300 inverter to run my saw, drill, and blender.
Pandro and Freddie left early. We left "after work". The road between Puertecitos and San Felipe was in record poor shape. The Gonzaga road was in pretty poor shape. We got into camp at about 10:30 PM.
It was calm on Friday, so we went out to the Seamount. The water was nice, except for one little problem: there weren't any fish out there! This time, we were smart enough not to hang around or spend hours on end trolling for Dorado. The Mexican Needlefish were plentiful though. We stopped at La Barra to do some casting. 50 Triggerfish later, we left.
The fishing was good this time. The fish were hungry and were hitting lures without the need to use bait. The Corvina were in, and I caught 2 up to 5 lbs, lost two halfway up the gunwale into the boat (I was too dumb or lazy to use the gaff), and lost a bunch more before I got 'em in. It was fun. At Pompano Cove, the pompano were so thick that you'd hook one, loose it, hook another, loose it, and hook a third, all on one cast! Freddie had a good time. He'd never had much success fishing, so it was a pleasant contrast to his previous experiences. Here we are coming back from the point. Fish were plentiful off Three Humps. We caught enough bass for fish tacos, plus a few to take home.
On Sunday, we saw a flurry of activity with birds crashing the surface about a mile off-shore. We ran out there after this activity continued for a half-hour or so. We stopped short of this whirlpool-like zone in the water and cast. Boom. I caught a fish that fought well. It turned-out to be a small (4') fish-eating shark, a Sicklefin Smoothhound. I flopped it into the boat, got my $4 lure back and released it unharmed. Cast again. Same exercise. The heck with this: I ain't fixin' to catch sharks all day. They're a pain in the patoot to unhook, after they've knocked the hell out of everything in the boat and spilled my beer! We got closer to the center of the disturbance and there was a "meatball" of several thousand baitfish swimming in unison to avoid predators. They were doing a poor job, as predators of all types were wreaking havoc on them. Magnificent Frigatebirds were swooping down and picking them off near the surface. Brown and Blue-footed Boobies were crashing down on them from the heights. Pelicans were scooping them up, and 4 sea lions were munching too. The amounts of sharks, however, was the most impressive. It was a veritable feeding-frenzy. You could stand up and see 6 or so sharks at any one time. Undoubtedly, hundreds of them were in on the action down below. We saw one big bugger (6-7 feet long) cruising just beneath the surface with its dorsal fin out of the water. Classic. It was really neat. We avoided getting pooped on by the 500 birds or so that were in on the action. Freddie hooked a B-f Booby. We motored over to it, I threw a burlap bag over its head to calm it down and unhooked it. It flew away, happier, but undoubtedly not one bit smarter!
Cathy managed to get a nice picture of the sunrise. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camcorder out on the boat.