On Tuesday, our friends on Whirlwind (the sailboat with the kids) and Sprezzatura (the Nordhavn 40) had gone to an anchorage called V Cove on Isla Carmen. On Thursday, we joined them. We left the marina in Puerto Escondido at 0930. We were delighted to find there was no wind and the water was calm and glassy. It barely felt like the boat was moving!
We arrived at V cove at 1400 (2:00 pm), not long after the wind picked up and the sea conditions had begun to deteriorate. The anchorage was small, tucked behind some cliffs.
We dropped anchor on the outskirts. According to the charts, we were anchored on land. After waiting a little bit to make sure the anchor was secure, we got the dinghy down and went to shore. There is a small, white sand beach with a sand dune. Eric and Keith snorkeled for a bit. The cove was loaded with fish! The family from Whirlwind joined us. The kids ran on the dune for a short while, then snorkeled in and around one of the caves in the cove.
In the evening, Eric from Sprezzatura had a dinner party for us and Whirlwind. Eric is a good cook! Here is the sunset, taken from his boat.
It was a perfect night to sit outside; warm, with a gentle breeze. Since it was a new moon, the stars were vibrant. On the way back to Kosmos, we saw several globs of bio-luminescence glittering in the water. We’ve never seen it in such big chunks before.
On Friday when we awoke, it was uncomfortably rolly. Eric went out to the cockpit to deploy the flopper stoppers. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw there was a bee-party outside the door.
We decided to wait, hoping the wind would pick up and they’d go away on their own. Between the heat and the rocking, we were all feeling lethargic and off-kilter. By 1000, it was obvious the bees weren’t going anywhere, so we looked up ways to get rid of bees. The first thing we tried was spraying them with apple cider vinegar. The bees did leave the mat, but they were still flying around. We noticed that ever so slowly, the bees were starting to leave Kosmos. By 1045, only about a half-dozen were left, so we braved the few remaining bees and deployed the flopper stoppers.
In the afternoon, the kids played at Whirlwhind for a while, then migrated over to Kosmos to continue playing. Once the sun was low in the sky, it was finally cool enough to go to shore. The kids ran around on the sand dune and swam for a bit.
On Saturday, our original plan for the morning had been to go to a nearby snorkeling spot with our friends on Whirlwind and Sprezzatura. We awoke to an ominous looking cloud approaching. Much to our surprise, it brought a thunderstorm! We sat outside in the cockpit for a while and watched the lightning. We are so grateful for the rain! The boat had needed a good rinse down.
The storm passed by the early afternoon, and we finally made it out to the snorkel spot at 1530 (3:30 pm). It is a shallow area located between the shore and a tiny rock island off the shore.
There isn’t much coral, but there are a wide variety of tropical fish, and the visibility was good. Once upon a time, we knew the name of all these fish, but we just don’t remember the names anymore. We’ll make an effort to look up the names soon.
We moved on to exploring the caves in the cliffs along the water.
This is the first cave we went into, filled with fish and nudibranchs. We also saw lots of crabs crawling along the walls, including an exotic, colorful crab.
The last cave had a giant school of fairly good size fish, with literally thousands of fish!
Sprezzatura Eric also towed the children on our inflatable platform, and they had a blast.
In the evening, Sprezzatura Eric made dinner for us all again. A lovely end to a lovely day.