Bahia de las Animas

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

028-48.580 N
113-21.212 W

Ahoy from Bahia de las Animas!

We're currently in a bay named "las Animas" which refers to the church bells which are rung at sunset to summon "lost souls." I don't know how that applies, but it's an interesting name. To get here we motored up Canal de Salsipuedes, which translates to "Leave if you can channel". It gets it's name from the fact that it's very deep (over 5000' deep in places) and has strong currents, which can make it very hard to leave the area given the right (or is it wrong?) conditions. Thankfully we had relatively wonderful conditions with almost glassy seas and a 1-2 kts of current flowing with us. One can only imagine what the conditions can become given the strong norther's that sweep through here and blow against an opposing tide...

We started our 40 mile passage yesterday after being awoken by a cacophony of bird sounds. There was a huge feeding frenzy going on around the boat with Pelicans and Boobies dive bombing schools of fish and Sea Gulls swarming in attempting to steal their catch or at least get some morsels. Between the constant splash of them diving into the water and the cries of the gulls, it was hard to sleep and this started well before sunrise.

The change in the terrain between Bahia San Francisquito and Bahia las Animas was quite striking. In the former, the landscape is primarily low lying rounded hills that are just brown in color. As you move northward you quickly run into the Sierra Agua de Soda mountain range, which are high and steep and absolutely amazing in their color. The primary color is red, but it's mixed with veins of yellows and greens and dark browns. How all of these colors got mixed together baffles me, but it's wonderful to look at.

We had intended to pull into an anchorage known as the Animas Slot, but unfortunately there was already one boat anchored there, and they were middle of the slot. This is a very narrow slot in the rocks which has room for 2 boats if you each anchor 1/3 of the way from the sides. Given that they were in the middle, we kept going and pulled into Punta Islotes which provided reasonable protection from the NW swell. This is probably one of the most colorful anchorages that we've been in. To our east we have the stunning Sierra Agua de Soda mountains and to our south there's a beautiful valley filled with cactus.

However, I can't say that there's a lot to do here. I took the dinghy out to explore and had a fun time getting into the lagoon which is NW of where we anchored. The tide was going out and the current at the outlet was so strong that I got the dinghy up onto a plane while standing still! At that point I had enough speed to get into the lagoon, but it quickly got too shallow to continue. It would probably be cool to explore at high tide. Other than that, the other bays around here are too shallow to go into and the only other small beach is near a fish camp and I didn't want to go ashore there. There are tons of small sting rays in the water and I didn't want to risk stepping on one of them. Oh, the water is 10 degrees warmer than it was in San Francisquito, but it's quite cloudy and full of stuff.

At sunset we were treated to an beautiful show. The setting sun made the mountains to our east just glow and then suddenly we saw the full moon start to rise over them. Absolutely stunning! What was also interesting was that the Pelicans continued to fish all night long. I've never seen them do this before, but I guess that they had sufficient light to see. The coyotes who are common in the area also serenaded the moon all night long.

Today we're either headed N towards Bahia los Angeles or we'll head E towards Isla Angel de la Guarda.

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 1455