Puerto Escondido-Puerto Ballandra
23 April 2022 - After delaying our departure for a day we finally planned to shove off from the dock at Puerto Escondido for Puerto Ballandra.
I got up before dawn to shower and shave. The Michin was nowhere in evidence which I knew meant he must have gone outside. He was nowhere outside on the boat which I knew meant he had gone walk about. Sure enough, as I walked up the dock with the trash I apprehended him trying to jump ship. I called him, he called back and I put the habeas grabbus on him just as he tried ducking aboard another sailboat. I had a mind to throw him in the brig, but we don’t have one, so I just gave him some food and confined him below while I showered and shaved.
When I got back to the boat Jimena had made French toast for breakfast. Just after 0900 we cranked up the engine and departed the dock. We motored out into the channel between Puerto Escondido and Isla Danzante. Of course the wind was out of the north (yesterday it was southerly) so we sailed close hauled and tacked all the way up to Ballandra.
We got in and anchored amongst nine other boats in 30’ of water. Some of the other boats we had seen before such as S/V “JASDIP”, S/V Helvick, and S/V “Phoneix 1”. The rest we hadn’t. The anchorage was good though deep and a bit rolly. We stayed put once anchored. In fact we stayed put for a couple of days here and it was quite nice.
On the 25th we went inflated the dinghy and went ashore for a hike around the beach. The shore was rather rocky and shallow. There was a very old wreck of a boat in the water near the waterline and we saw a dead sheep on the beach. That sheep could have been chased or shot by a hunter from the hunting lodge on the other side of the island. There was also a brackish estuary issuing from the interior of the island but we did not try to follow it.
Antoinette in Puerto Ballandra amongst the multitude
Sheep carcass on Isla Carmen at Puerto Ballandra
We also worked on shocking our water tanks and cleaning our speed log. I finished reading" “Moby Dick” (no one sailing a boat on a long cruise should be reading that book) and I started reading “Typee”.