BLOWN OUT OF CANDELERO  

The SW wind at Bahia Candelero never did let up so I bailed out about mid-day July 7 and headed off to Bahia Marquer on Isla Carmen where the SW wind is a non-issue.  I sailed NW out of the Candelero anchorage with a reefed main and full genoa on a close reach at 6.2 knots.  Mirador was still sailing briskly along, still on a close reach, 1.5 miles out of Candelero when, in a distance of less than 50 yards, the wind went from SW 20 knots to N 6 knots and stayed there for the rest of the 10 mile trip to Marquer which is on the SW coast of Isla Carmen. 

Earlier in the day I had talked to a boat 10 miles south of Candelero and they had reported calm conditions.  It appears that the 15 to 35 knots that blew thru Candelero the entire 48 hours I was there was a very local wind.

Isla Carmen sits about four miles east of Puerto Escondido and is about 17 miles long and two to three miles wide.  Carmen has a mountainous spine that runs almost it's entire length, reaching a height of 1500 feet in places.  The island is oriented SW to NE and has nine good anchorages on it.  The prevailing winds are WNW or SSE so there is always a nice quiet anchorage to be found on the island.  There are no settlements or even fishing camps on the island.

Marquer is a wide and shallow indentation into the SW side of the island.  The shoreline is either steep sand beaches or low sandstone cliffs. There are several arroyos that lead from the anchorage into the island interior. 

I hiked up several of the arroyos to climb the hills you can see in the distance.  The problem with hiking the arroyos is that all the heavy vegetation grows in the arroyo bottoms where the water most often flows.  That means you often have to climb thru, over, under, and around cactus and other sharp, pointy plants.

The other interesting problem of hiking on these islands is the instability of the rocks and soil.  Every ground surface is covered by loose rocks, either small or medium size, or loose sand.  When I try to climb out of the arroyo I slip and slide going up and down. 

I climbed the highest hill  that you can see in the distance in the picture above.  That hill overlooks the NE side of the island and mountains on the Baja Peninsula to the SW.

This picture looks SW towards the spot that I took the picture of the pinnacle rock that you can see in the previous update.   Click here to see the Pinnacle Rock picture

While climbing and hiking around the hill tops I kept finding well defined animal trails and large amounts of pelletized "poop."  At the time I wondered if there were feral goats on the island.  I later learned that there are Big Horn Sheep wandering the hills. 

Apparently there used to be a settlement on the NE part of the island and they brought the sheep over and released them to provide big game hunting.

    At times there were seven boats in Marquer but there is plenty of room for them with no crowding.  We had serious team cribbage matches every afternoon and cocktails or potluck dinners almost every night. 

Clam collecting in the shallow water along the beach was very easy and the Chocolate Clams were delicious over pasta. 

Finally here is Jerry standing on the edge of one of the arroyos.