Today we motored to my favourite anchorage in Las Perlas to date.  Even the journey was exciting.  We kept seeing what looked like islands where there shouldn't have been any.  They were roiled patches of water, probably caused by fish in a feeding frenzy.  The highlight of the voyage was sighting five WHALES!!!!  Only one was BIG, but it is such a thrill to see these oceanic mammals!

The anchorage itself is peaceful and somewhat reminiscent of Northern Ontario.  There are no tropical palms, just deciduous trees and scrub.  The tides are immense- after the 1 foot changes of the caribbean-10 to 15 feet!  As a result at times there are no beaches and at others there are huge beaches.  As you will see from the photo, I did not take any chances while I swam around the island.  I juat wish I had not left my Paul Humann book of Fish Identification  for the Pacific in Victoria.  I can guess the famililes of the fish here, but not their specific names.  I DID encounter some rather aggressive barracuda- somehow the lazy inquisitive ones of the Caribbean now seem rather cute!

I DID finally manage to spend three hours doing laundry.  The boat curtains were FILTHY!  Then, just as I finished, it POURED for a couple of hours.  Then it was too late to hang them before the evening's heavy dew.  So everything was shoved into bowls until the morning.  Unfortunately, this meant everything smelled a little musty.  Sometimes you just can't win!

On Wednesday morning, we decided to travel to the southern anchorage of Isla Canas, not far away.  We reached the anchorage only to find a southerly WIND (not breeze) blowing.  The holding was poor and the motion very boisterous.  We decided to just make it a lunch stop and hang the laundry to dry while I took a swim.  The swimming was not pleasant because of the large waves and the strong current.  Most of the clothes DID get dry.  The wind was becoming stronger, so we returned to Isla Espiritu Santo- a haven!  AQUALUNA was there by now and I had a nice visit the next morning as I swam by.  I should say POWERED by; the current was so swift I almost flew past!  On my earlier swim I chose the wrong way and ended up walking part of the way along the beach as it was too difficult to swim upstream.

Dave scraped the barnacles off ANGEL's bottom and worked on replacing a bolt that had shaken loose on the alternator.  A local boat came by and offered us a large jack fish for $3.00 and Dave gutted and filletted it for dinner.  It was an extremely red fleshed fish, but tasted very good- rather like tuna.

Needless to say, after all this activity we slept very well last night!