sailing casita

Bahía Asunción is a small town with one main paved road, a few other roads are paved but most of them are dirt (at least in the areas we walked). It has a gas station and 3 or 4 little markets so we were able to fill 2 jerry cans with diesel and pick up a few groceries. The town also has a hardware/auto parts/tackle shop so we were able to replace the lures we lost on the way to Turtle Bay, as well as get some heavy monofilament and some weights. Everyone we interacted with in the town was super friendly and we enjoyed our time there.

Landing and launching the dinghy on the beach means getting into the water, at least up to your knees. Not wanting to risk a foot injury, we were light sneakers or reef shoes for this process. When we were on our way back to Casita with our jerry cans of diesel Devon casually mentioned he could feel something moving in his shoe next to his toes. When he took his shoe off he had 5 little gray crabs crawling around inside!

We left Bahía Asunción Wednesday around 8am and we arrived here in Bahía Santa Maria this morning (Friday) at sunrise, so a little under 48 hours to get here. Before we could pull up the anchor at Bahía Asunción we had to unwrap the line from a crab trap, somehow it had gotten wound around our chain 3 times.

Early the first afternoon of the trip down Devon put out 2 hand lines using some of the tackle we were able to buy in Bahía Asunción. By late afternoon we had no bites, so Devon was preparing to bring the lines in when suddenly we had a fish on each line and then the lines got all twisted around each other! We managed to land both fish, two beautiful yellowfin tuna. The first one we landed was the bigger one which we kept, the other we gently tossed back. We actually would have been fine keeping the smaller one instead, it would have been plenty to feed us, but we had already dispatched the first.

Catching the tuna was a big moment for us, it is the first time we have managed to catch a fish underway despite trying for over 10 years!! It was actually pretty overwhelming trying to deal with a fish of this size. As far as tuna goes, this is pretty modest, but it was the biggest fish by far either of us has ever caught. Trying to clean it and process it on a moving sailboat as it is rapidly getting dark was a learning experience.

The rest of the trip was less exciting, we had pretty good winds most of the way, though it was pretty rolly at times. Here is a shot of the sun setting on the 2nd night (last night).

For us Bahía Santa Maria is more of a rest stop than a destination, it is beautiful in it’s own way but quite barren. There isn’t anything here, no town or anything, and landing the dinghy would be very tricky with the surf so we don’t plan to go ashore. The forecast for the next two days is for high winds and some pretty steep seas so it is looking like we will be here until Monday, then hopefully we will depart for Cabo San Lucas!