Bahia San Gabriel on Espiritu Santo

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

024-25.742 N
110-21.712 W

Ahoy from Bahia San Gabriel on Isla Espiritu Santo!

For those of you who need a quick translation, we're in a bay named San Gabriel on the island of Espiritu Santo. We've been here a bit longer than expected as strong north winds have been lashing the area and we decided to just stay where we were. If you look at the photo to the right, we're in the large bay at the bottom right and we're tucked into the NW corner. And just to clarify, there are actually 2 islands in this photo. About 2/3s of the way up, you'll see a spot where it gets really narrow. Well, water flows through there and the upper island is named Isla Partida.

Espiritu Santo is a beautiful island with towering red mountains and steep cliffs that descend into beautiful aquamarine water. There are wonderfully soft white sand beaches that ring the northern half of the bay and give the water it's color.

We departed on Saturday on a relatively windless day and motored about 15 miles to get here. Despite it being so close to La Paz, it feels like you're miles and miles away from the hustle and bustle of La Paz. At night the stars shine like diamonds and in the morning you can hear goats in the surrounding hills.

Later that day we went snorkeling on the NW point of the bay and we were quite impressed with the amount of live coral that we saw and the number and variety of small to medium fish. I'm really looking to forward to getting my scuba gear on and my dive camera out!

After snorkeling we took a tour of the bay, which is probably about a mile in diameter. When we got to the NE side of the bay we found a Frigate bird rookery inhabited by thousands of nesting birds. The sky was absolutely filled with them, which was a pretty impressive sight. It was fun to sit silently in the dinghy and watch the interaction and squabbles between the birds. Although it's hard to see in this photo, there are baby Frigates in the nest and you can see them as they look like white puff balls.

We had intended to move to the next bay on Sunday, but Mother Nature had different ideas as she sent a North'r in our direction. The winds have been blowing 20-30 kts out of the N for the past 2 days and we had 1-2' waves in the anchorage and 6' outside the anchorage. Unfortunately that made it too rough to get out to the wreck that I want to dive at. Happily the winds have subsided and we should be moving today.

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser: We anchored at 24-25.728N, 110-21.708W in about 20' over sand. Holding was great. Be careful about where you drop your hook as the dark, well defined dark areas are live coral.

Log ID: 1441