Since leaving Ipswich in April 2008, Trish and I have had many a night’s sleep disturbed by high winds, rolly anchorages, noisy ports and marinas and even

on one occasion our anchor dragging.

But a visit to San Cristobel gives the tired mariner another more unusual problem to contend with......... Sea Lions.

As can be seen from our earlier Blog they sleep just about anywhere they please and love to jump up on boats and dinghy’s.

We were up two or three times the first night shooing them off our transom before we learnt to block their path with fenders and buckets.

Even then one or two youngsters would jump up and look for a way to climb higher onto the back of the boat.

But last night...............a very young Sea Lion probably no more than a few months old found its way up on to the stern platform and from there

on to the deck and into the cockpit and when found by Trish just before midnight was fast asleep on one of the cockpit cushions, only waking when

disturbed by the flash of the camera and even then didn’t bother to get up.

Trish was woken up by the sea lion jumping into the cockpit (I was not) and got up and took some photographs but her motherly

instincts would not allow her to disturb the seal and she returned to bed and left it to sleep.....Until.....the frantic mother arrived

looking for her pup and jumped up onto the transom bellowing her annoyance...this did wake me up wondering what the noise

was all about to be told by Trish that there was a sea lion pup asleep in the cockpit and its Mum was looking for it. I didn’t believe her

and told her to go back to sleep. Eventually she convinced me that there REALLY was a sea lion pup asleep in the cockpit and perhaps

we should reunite it with its angry mum.

With Chris’s help we succeeded in moving it on the cockpit cushion bit it did not want to leave its comfy spot.

There was no alternative but to take a more forceful approach but all it did was to move from the cushion to my dive wetsuit

and needed still more encouragement before we eventually got it off the back of the boat and into the water.

We returned to bed and lay awake worrying if it had found its Mum!