Cruising Kyrie: A month out of touch

After nearly a month in one spot, it was time to move on again. Besides, it's been getting hotter and us poor Alaskans are melting! We've seen temperatures in the 90s during the day, only dropping down to the low 80s at night if the high dryer-type wind doesn't blow up off the land late at night and roast us in our beds. We made the decision that on the next southerly, it was time to head across the sea to our reserved slip in San Carlos for the summer. We still have the air conditioner we bought in San Blas, so once we plug into power, we can be comfortably cool again. To be honest, I think we're all looking forward to being at a slip again for a couple of months. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is what happens when we stay in isolated anchorages for a while--no blog posts! We stayed in Bahia San Juanico--about 25 miles north of Loreto--for about a month, bouncing back and forth between the north and south anchorages, depending on conditions. There were three other kid boats there that we enjoyed hanging out with--Arena, Love & Luck, and Utopia II have ten kids among them, so our kids were able to have someone to play with regularly. For us, the north anchorage was better. We could tuck way up behind the rock spires and were protected in all conditions except a really strong southerly. The other anchorage had a beach that wasn't accessible by anything except a boat so it felt rather private, but there was quite a bit of wraparound swell and Joe and I just didn't feel comfortable there.

For the second time ever, Kyrie is
aground on purpose. We love our
catamaran!

We got a few things done in San Juanico, including a much-needed oil change on the outdrive. The beach was shallow enough and the tide was big enough that we were able to ground Kyrie and get the job done. Thankfully, it was an uneventful task, but grounding a boat on purpose never feels quite right. While Kyrie was aground, we took advantage and walked ashore to the cruisers' shrine tree. People have been leaving trinkets with their boat's name and year(s) visited for a long time and we felt Kyrie needed to be represented as well.

We left La Ramada Cove (just north of Bahia San Juanico) on June 25. The forecast said the wind should be good for us to sail the whole way across, so we started out with the spinnaker. Joe set up our handline rig, hoping we would catch some sort of fish for dinner, but we ended up catching something much less desirable. Joe looked back to check the rig and saw something was on it. That something was a brown-footed boobie! I've heard of people catching birds on their fishing gear before, but this was a new experience for us. This poor bird was hooked in the bottom! Joe thinks it must have tried to go after one of the floats on the daisy chain and the hook caught it. He hauled the bird in as quickly and carefully as he could, and thus began the process of unhooking the catch of the day. We wrapped the bird up in a towel so it couldn't hurt itself further, or anyone else. Boobies are much bigger up close than they seem flying around! There was no way of extracting the hook without hurting the bird further, so Levi dug our giant bolt-cutters (intended for cutting rigging) out and Joe used them to cut the barb off the hook. Once that was done, the hook came out easily and thankfully, the bird didn't seem to be hurt badly. When I released it from the towel, the boobie shook its feathers, glared at us, and waddled over to the lifelines, attempting to restore its ruffled dignity. It stayed on the lifeline for about 15 minutes before glancing back at us and flying away. After waiting for about twenty minutes, and making sure there were no birds around, Joe tossed the handline out again. Darn it all if three brown-footed boobies showed up again and one of them grabbed the hook, getting caught in the beak! That time, Rachael helped us remove the hook and that bird didn't stick around the boat long after we released it. Needless to say, we didn't fish anymore that day. Those birds are aptly named "boobies," for sure...