28 January 2022 – We weighed anchor in the morning to try to arrive in Bahia San Juanico (60 NM) around sunrise. This was to have been an intermediate stop for us to break up the long leg down to Bahia Santa Maria of (155 NM by the book). Our distances are always a bit longer due to tacking and clearing hazards by wide margins.

There is a dread reef called Arrecife Sacramento located off Punta Pequeno which one must clear to get into Bahia San Juanico, in the lee of Punta Pequeno. We gave the dread reef Sacramento a wide berth.

The winds were good (15-20 knots) and we flew, coming abeam Arrecife Sacramento around 2100, which would have put us into Bahia San Juanico around 0100, way too early. At 1930, upon seeing that we would arrive off Punta Pequeno too early in the morning, necessitating heaving-to for almost six hours, we discussed and decided to spend those six hours traveling on to Bahia Santa Maria. This meant another whole day and night of sailing, but would also save us some days of water and food consumption by putting us further down the road.

In the event, the wind died off for awhile during the next day northeast of Thetis bank, about 20 NM short of our destination. As we drifted, we saw several humps in the water which we first took to be some sort of brown fishing floats, but when they raised their heads to look at us, we realized they were four sea turtles.

We passed close aboard Thetis bank about, 12 NM NW of Cabo San Lazaro just before midnight on the dark and moonless night of the 29th. And, as luck would have it, the wind had stiffened, we were sailing along at a good clip under reefed main sail only, when I saw a float pass close aboard in the green glow of our starboard nav light. Moments later I heard something splashing along behind us and, with the spot light, confirmed that we had picked up some fishing gear. A small dogfish (a type of small shark) was on part of the line being dragged alongside the boat. I was able to hook the line with the dogfish using our boat hook and cut him loose but the line off our bottom was too deep to reach. We rounded up and tried unsuccessfully to heave to. But, in doing so, the float came alongside us and I was able to bring it aboard and reel all the attachd line into the cockpit. It was still fouled on either our rudder or our prop but at least we were not dragging the float (an empty plastic 5 gallon cooking oil container) with all the attached line, behind us any longer.

We sailed the rest of the way into Bahia Santa Maria without incident, arriving just at sunup. We saw several whales on the way in, and found a beautiful bay where we could anchor in 30 feet under sail, a good thing since we could not engage the prop. Barry aboard SV MaKai was alredy anchored there and welcomed us in on the VHF.

Once we had gotten anchored and all secured, I dove under the boat and cut away some stout fishing line and a small cork float from our prop. Then we relaxed, took hot showers and had some breakfast before going to sleep. This was almost exactly 48 hours after we departed Abreojos.