Exploring the Islands of Nicoya
Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Sat 30 Oct 2010 23:17
Yesterday was a day of sleeping, and going to beach recovering from the
night before, the boys were full of beans as they had slept well, but all
the adults were working on extra time. We took the boys to the beach rowing
in and surfing in on a wave on the last 20 m, allowing Sean to get his
boogey board out and surf for a couple of hours as they are nice waves.
Bahia Ballena is a large bay ob the bottom end of Nicoya Peninsula which
has a small town off in land 10 minutes away, but there is a small grass
airstrip on which we saw a number of plans come in low over the bay and
land. Bringing guests to the hotels in the area. The only boats other than
our 3 boats are fishing boats with all their character and a couple of
shrimpers at the mount of the bay. Last night we went to "Sunsation" to
celebrate Sharon's and Maggie's birthdays which happen in the last 2 days,
much celebrating and enjoying.
Today we were woken to the boat rolling quite badly, so Tracy and I decided
to go to Organic market this morning, it was fun, good selection, and came
ashore at the fishing pier and allowed us to see the fish caught the night
before.
But as soon as we got back to boat the rolling was too bad so we lifted
anchor (with all the effort of manual now, but we getting the process down)
and went out down the coast 10 miles to Isla Tortugas where we stopped and
dived, a bit murky but great islands and beaches.
We then lifted anchor again (second major weight lifting of the day) and
headed out targeting and Island combination 8 miles away, we ran into
Wahalie and Sunsunation sailing down the outside, the wind was 18 knots and
our cross/ mixed sea was there, but we ran with it splitting some islands,
(reminds me of the cruising we did the Gulf Islands of Vancouver). With small well wooded islands green with rocking bottoms and dark beaches and lots of small islands around the bigger islands. As we shot the two islands it as if we passed through to a new world where the wind was 12 knots, small wind ripples and lake like conditions, and we were now under sail at 6.8 knots which just the Genne out, and we raced along with Sunsation also under sail and we loved the conditions. We rounded the point and entered a passage in between two Islands Isla Cedros and dropped anchor in a "mill pond" of 20 foot deep. Out with the canoes and Tracy and boys were out exploring the edge of one island.
As the sun goes down to my port the orange and purple reflects off the water of the passage and the birds fly over, it will be a calm night tonight!!!!