| Volume
74
9 July, 2002
Yellowstone Beach, Isla Monserrat
 Isla
Monserrat is about nine miles east of the Baja peninsula. It wasn't
really our objective that day when we left Aqua Verde. We started
by poking four or five miles up the coast looking for one of those
"quasi secret" anchorages we'd been told about that was
said to have a hot spring in which you could soak while your fishing
line trails over into cool water! Our info was good, we did actually
locate this tiny cove, but it proved to be open to the southeasterly
wind and swell and we decided prudence called for giving it a miss
this time. In the distance we could just make out the hazy outline
of Isla Monserrat. Like the hot spring, it appears in one guide
book and not the other, as if the authors couldn't be troubled to
figure out where to insert an offshore island into their sequence
of pages!
Monserrat's
southern coves are popular, we're told, with the Agua Verde fisherman
who go out there at night hunting lobsters, but at this time of
year only the northern bay -- Yellowstone Beach -- would be a good
anchorage for a cruising boat. So we pointed our bow at the north
end and sailed there leisurely under genoa only. It was a nice day.
And Yellowstone
Beach (25*42.54'N; 111* 02.85'W) was a nice anchorage. There were
only two boats there when we arrived, one being friends  who
had left Agua Verde (without consultation!) and sailed up the other
side. The bay is long, with a hill to the east providing protection,
and a long white beach punctuated several times by bright yellow
cliffs of sandstone. Behind the sandstone cliffs are deep gorges
and canyons, some the size of quarries, up which we hiked one morning.
The terrain always seems so so lifeless from the water, yet up close
the plants are many, buds on a few already bursting thanks to dew.
Perhaps even more striking than the yellow cliffs, was the view
to the northwest, where several tall craggy islands overlap in the
mists with the Sierra Gigantica behind them. Although the anchorage
was nothing like Mountain Point in the BVI , the view was as close
to that layering as we have seen in many moons (see the home page
sunset view). Unfortunately it has been a bit hazy, and the second
night, when we hoped to get a photo of it, the islands had disappeared
entirely in the blur.
But Isla Monserrat
will be best remembered for our first substantial in water time
(not counting the bath water of L'Amortajada Lagoon)! Don actually
was the first in the water, when John and Janet of Bambolera, a
young couple with whom we've crossed paths now several times, seduced
him into an nighttime excursion to hunt lobster. I couldn't go (oh,
gee) as I was net control that evening for the nighttime "Southbound"
cruisers radio net. I  didn't
miss anything, as there were no lobsters. Don returned chilled but
much less depressed than you would think. For one thing he had an
excuse for no catch (there being none), and for another, he had
been given a huge slab of dorado by a large power boat he'd stopped
to chat with earlier in the afternoon, so he'd already done the
provider 'ting! But a day or so later, we dug out the 5mm cold water
wet suits, booties, hoods and the whole works and ventured out to
check out the other point. What a surprise! In the shallows, at
least, the visibility was very clear, and we found ourselves in
an, to us, exotic terrain of waving plants! It is some kind of kelp,
as it is floated by tiny bladders, but it is golden and small scale
to what we've seen in photos and documentaries of California kelp.
On the rocks amongst all this was a dense accumulation of corals,
sponges, starfish, urchins, blennies, and, yes, several rock lobsters
so small that we couldn't bear to take them, etc. all of delicate
colors in the afternoon lights. The fact that I was about mid-way
through a rereading of John Steinbeck's invertebrate collecting
tour "Log from the Sea of Cortez" (a trip made in 1940),
really fired my attention to these tiny critters. Unfortunately,
like the plants, I don't have the proper Identification books. Only
fish...of which there was a fair assortment, and the getting-greater
white hunter got us two for dinner.
Monserrat and
the islands in its view -- The Candeleros, Danzante, and Carmen
--promise a great cruising ground. This is the cruising ground easily
in reach of the of the Loreto area. There are many lovely anchorages
shown here, and many dives so hopefully the water will cooperate
by warming up and clearing up this next month. Otherwise we will
be very busy in October when we pass back through.
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