I'm using way to many exclamations points...

Time is moving fast for this sabbatical. And, it is a lot of work. We feel busier than we have been in a long time, so we must be doing something wrong. Hopefully, we will see a break soon. But, everyday we need to do home school, and make water, and cook and clean the dishes, and keep on laundry on the boat.... It makes for a very full schedule.

There are perks though - I mean who am I kidding? A couple of weeks ago, as we were sailing quietly downwind on a 4 knot breeze, we could hear two whales next us breathing. We heard them way before we saw them. Just deep exhales that we would not have heard with an engine running. We called everyone to the deck quietly and we all just listened, mesmerized and in awe. It has happened nearly every other day that we have been out since that day, but it is magical every time.

As well, mantas jumping 10 to 15 feet out of the water, flapping their wings, sea turtles poking their heads up above the water and numerous pods of dolphins passing by the boat at anchorage have all become common place out here.

Dolphin pods around the boat - the blurry frame looks cheesy - won't be doing that again

Every time I walk along the beach with the kids running through the sand ahead of me, I think of all the children who do not have this opportunity and who will never know what running in the warm sand of Mexico feels like. A little deep, I know, but it keeps me very grateful and I cannot help but feel humbled.

The sea life is so plentiful here. Unfortunately, that has not meant we have been very good at provisioning from the sea. We had one day of great fishing where we caught a lot of sand bass that made for very yummy fish tacos.

More dolphins and more cheesy framing

But we later discovered that fishing may not quite be allowed where we caught those. Oops. In our defense, regulations are a bit sketchy and hard to nail down around here.

Stinky, bloody skipjack

Then, we finally had a fish as we crossed from the islands to the mainland. Yay! I reeled it in, knowing it would be a great size and we were all very excited. We brought it up and Mike got it with the gaff - what is it? Definitely tuna family. Yellowfin? Yum! Nope, wait a minute, doesn't have that long second dorsal that it should. Oh man, it's a skipjack. Those not familiar with a skipjack, they are of the tuna family, sounds great, right? We caught another skipjack on a fishing trip in Cabo in 2000. Our first saltwater fish catch. We were so excited. Until...we brought our catch up to the fileting tables set up to service the fishermen coming in with catches for the day. All of the other tables had these great white filets being cut from gleaming silver fish. Our table looked like something out of the Chicago Stockyards. Bright red blood was raining off the edge of the table and the meat looked like sirloin. John Steinbeck ate a lot of skipjack on his Sea of Cortez science expedition, and seemed to like it , but I have not found yet how he prepared that fish to be good eating.

The following day, we got another big tug on the big line.  Always exciting to hear the fast zzzzzzzzz on the line as the catch takes that lure. I started to reel in and it was definitely fighting, but then it felt like I was lugging in a wet beach towel. I kept at it while we slowed down the boat and circled in. Whatever it was, it was heavy, but the 100 lb line kept up the fight. Finally, it broke the surface, and to our horror, we saw that we had managed to catch a giant sea turtle. The kids start freaking out thinking we are going to kill the turtle, the turtle is going crazy, the boat is still circling ..chaos.


We could see that the line had gotten wrapped around a flipper and the treble hooks were in the poor creatures hide. We decided that the only thing to do was pull it into the dinghy and perform some minor surgery. Mike jumped into the dinghy, went out to the turtle and lugged the 60 lb+ catch into the small boat. He brought it around starboard and I handed the helm over to Reid and jumped in to help. The beak on the front of the turtle looked like it needed to be treated with respect, so I tried to avoid his head and went at getting the hooks out. His skin was like leather, but the hooks were just superficial and it would be fine if we could get it disentangled. After we got the first set out, Mike had to take the second set out because I couldn't get a good grip. He warned that we should wrap the first hook up, but of course, I didn't want to take the time. Sure enough, he got out the second treble hook with a big pull that flipped the lure and smacked me in the finger and stuck in my palm. The turtle was fine, I was bleeding like a sieve.


Mike released him over the side and he (she?) was gone in a flash.

 

 Two days later, same pole, same lure... we try again while crossing over the deep waters north of the bay. Again...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz! What could it be? This one was fighting, definitely not the same as the pull of the turtle. With excitement and a bit of trepidation, I pulled it to the surface and found...

 

Tope shark. Mike looked at me and asked, do we eat it? I have no idea! I have had shark steaks in the past, I have heard of shark fin soup, but I have no idea how to field dress a shark. When we later let folks know that we released it, we learned that we definitely should have eaten it! Oh well... next time.

Just a shot of one of our anchorages - Agua Verde

Agua Verde at sunrise