Los Gatos and San Telmo

Hunkered down in San Evaristo, we were waiting for the north wind to subside when a stout little sloop came in and anchored behind us.  The next morning we stopped by and met Dale on Let’N Go.  Dale spent eight years building the steel boat in San Rafael, California.  Derrick was very impressed by his steel cable standing rigging and galvanized steel turnbuckles.  Dale is a great guy and we agreed to buddy boat north to Los Gatos at first light.

Beachcombing in San Evaristo

Happy with his summer haircut

At 0630 on May 29, the twenty-nine mile passage to Los Gatos began.  Dale was already gone by the time we raised anchor and started motor-sailing in the light wind.  We soon caught up with Dale and had a brief chat as we passed by.  Within a couple of hours, Let’N Go was just a speck on the horizon.  At 1300, Interabang joined one other boat anchored in the spectacular scenery of Puerto Los Gatos.  We wouldn’t see Dale again for several days.

We took the dinghy ashore to explore the colorful rock formations.  While climbing on the rocks, we met the young couple sailing Andariego, the other boat in the anchorage.  A friend had loaned them the 1970’s vintage Columbia 26, for a couple of weeks of Baja cruising.  And we thought we were scrappy cruisers.  These kids seriously raised the scrappy bar.  When we met them, they were gathering wood.  For cooking?  They asked if we could spare any fresh water.  No problem.  After our hike, we stopped by their boat and picked up a five gallon and two one gallon water bottles.  When delivering the water, we found them cooking fish over an open fire in a coffee can.  The boat had no refrigeration and no electricity.  Interabang developed a symbiotic relationship with Andariego.  Whenever they needed their Kindle or cell phone charged, they would show up with a freshly speared fish.  For the record, parrot fish is delicious.

Andariego and Interabang anchored in Los Gatos

Parrot fish courtesy of Andariego

On our second morning in Los Gatos, we observed a couple of bees inside the boat.  Baja bees search for fresh water and frequently find it on boats.  Hoping to avoid the horrible swarms we’ve been told about, we started eliminating the water supply by drying dishes, spigots, sinks, and drains.  The number of bees steadily increased while we worked.  Convinced that we had sufficiently dried up the water, we left the boat praying that the bees would leave.  Hours later we returned to find that the bee count had increased to over a hundred.  The group of bees produced a haunting buzzing sound inside the boat.  During our outing Andariego told us that bees dislike bleach.  Armed with a spray bottle filled with water and a dash of bleach I engaged the bees.  Once sprayed with the bleach solution most bees would leave the boat as quickly as possible, but there were a lot of bees and the just kept coming.  After about an hour of splitting my efforts between the head and the galley I was starting to make progress.  It was another hour before number of new bee arrivals diminished to a trickle.  As the sun dropped below the horizon, the bees were finally gone.  Based on our conversations with the bee specialist Steve on Go for Broke, we knew that the bees would be back first thing in the morning.

As the sun came up so did our anchor.  We were off to San Telmo, a sweet little spot just a mile and a half up the road.  Hopefully, that was a place where the bees would not find us.  We were the only boat in the beautiful anchorage.  When Manuel stopped by on his daily panga visit, he asked if we wanted lobster and wanted to know why we left Los Gatos.  I made a buzzing sound and he nodded his head and said “no bees aqui.”  That was good news.

At anchor in San Telmo - we had the anchorage to ourselves!

The amazing view from our boat