The morning dawned brilliantly colored and flat calm. Although I love the sunrises and sunsets here, this time I’d have been happy to trade the Technicolor sunrise for a little bit of wind. However, trusting to the “normal wind pattern” I started out drifting with cats paws out of the bay and up around the North end of Danzante. Within an hour I’d given up, fired up the outboard and was quietly motoring down the East side of the island and over toward the South end of Isla Carmen. A bit of breeze from NW came up so I got the motor put away and set the main and the “cruising” spinnaker, my first try with the big chute. The day’s wind came and went, but always enough to keep the chute flying and pulling strongly.
Late in the afternoon as I was closing on Puerto Agua Verde I had handed the main and was doing really well with just the spinnaker. About two miles offshore I began to consider my arrival. . .dead downwind, into a circular bay with a reef protecting a tight little cove on the right side going in, with a wind getting up toward 20 knots and me flying a spinnaker that I didn’t know how to get down. H’mm. I tried heading up into the wind to see what happened, and didn’t like it. The
sail flogged and shook the whole boat. Finally I decided it had to come down whether it was fun or not and better to do it here than closer to the beach, so lashed the tiller in a broad sweeping turn to port, clipped on my tether and crawled up to the halyard, un-cleated and eased out on the line. Wow. The sail flogged and banged about my ears wildly for a few seconds while I tried to haul in on the lee sheet to collapse the mess on board somehow. It wasn’t to be. The halyard ran out, the sheet ripped through my fingers and the whole works went in the bay off to the right. Oh well. Nobody was watching, nothing broke and at least the wild sleigh ride was over. Pulling in on just one corner at a time brought it all on deck pretty quickly without fouling keel or rudder, then I found time to heave to properly on starboard tack. I put away the chute and dug out the jib, hanked it on, hoisted and hove to again, got the main up with one reef pulled down and squared away for the harbor.
Agua Verde has a remarkable signpost out front, an enormous finger of rock perhaps half a mile offshore painted completely white by flocks of seabirds over the generations. It’s called Roca Solitaria and can be seen clearly from miles away to the North and makes a landfall really easy there. Otherwise you’d have to know exactly where to look to find the bay. As it was, a pair of kayakers were coming out of the bay and heading North along the beach. I steered to pass behind them and waved. . .they made me feel like a big boat for a change. Coming in to the harbor and seeing how things lay I decided to heave to in the entrance, get the sails off of her and go in to the anchorage under power. All went well until I fired up the motor and swung across the wind to tuck in behind the protecting reef. The inflatable canoe flipped over in the cross wind though it had followed perfectly all day. Upside down under way isn’t her best behavior but this was worse. I’d left the removable middle seat in her for the day (remember it was calm in the morning and this was my first trip with her) and the seat immediately popped out and headed downwind for the beach a half mile away. Oh well. I headed off in hot pursuit and finally caught the runaway seat on the third try without tangling the canoe’s tow line in the prop or getting us ashore. Hence the rules regarding towing the inflatable canoe: 1. Remove seat and paddle before towing and 2. Don’t look back. There were 3 boats already in the harbor and another large sailing boat motor sailing in from the South so I took advantage of Gaviota’s small size to tuck way up in the corner to the left of the others, shut off the motor and anchored easily on good sand in about 15 feet of water. The anchor held immediately and thus began a fine evening after a grand day.
Agua Verde is a fishing village that also raises goats as I found out in the morning. The men launch their pangas off the beach in front of the village (where the canoe’s seat had been headed) or keep them on head and stern lines in the little cove where all the yachts had anchored. The choice is clear enough. On the beach in front of the village is close to home, easier to load gear and equipment but more work to handle the boats up the sand. The cove with the yachts lets the boats stay safely afloat but it’s about a mile from the village by road and the last 500 feet is not passable by vehicles since the cliff slid away some time back. The population seems about equally split between the two choices, which gives you an idea of the work involved in hauling a panga up the beach.
There is what is described as an “exciting dirt road” from Agua Verde out to Mexico Hwy 1 some thirty miles away, which allows access to Loreto or La Paz to sell fish or goat products. On Monday mornings a truck brings fresh vegetables, fruit and so forth to the little store (“tienda”) in the village, so if you’re there on Monday or Tuesday you could resupply if need be. I was still well stocked with stores from Loreto of course but even so, before breakfast I decided to walk into town while waiting for the breeze to come up for the day. Took the canoe ashore and tied it to a rock above tide line, changed into hiking shoes and headed up the road around the mountain to town. The walk took about half an hour, including time to let 50 or 60 vari-colored goats and their kids (pun intended) pass up the road, having just come from milking at the first homestead at the foot of the hill. The lead goat with her bell eyed me with quite a disapproving look as she passed and I decided to stand still to avoid bothering her crew. Looking up at the hills all around you see the goat paths through the scant underbrush and recognize the closely cropped shrubbery that marks the high tide limit for a goat standing on her hind legs. This seems perhaps a little greener place than many I’d seen in Baja, and the goats looked very fine and healthy.
The houses are small and plain and mostly made of plywood and similar materials. Each is surrounded by a fence of stout poles for posts and old fish netting. Remember, there are goats here and each house has flowers or fruit trees or vegetables growing. Most of the houses have one or two large shady structures either as porches attached to the house or just free standing in the yard, with a table or a big rope-strung bed or both under the shade and often an open fire raised cooking hearth as well. At one such hearth a magnificent woman in her 40’s I suppose, graying mane of long hair pulled back from her face, stood making tortillas on a cast iron griddle above the mesquite fire. I had skipped breakfast so I couldn’t help standing and staring. She said something I missed (my Spanish is awful anyway) so I just smiled and said Buenas dias. . .and before I knew it a bright eyed six year old with shiny braids and a yellow dress (spotless) came over to the fence with a napkin carefully folded over a steaming hot thick tortilla for me. Goodness was that good. I rolled it up and thoughtfully ate it, standing in the early sunshine with a bougainvillea bush overhead covered in red flowers, then I bowed deeply to the lady and her messenger, gave them “muchisimas gracias” and walked back to the boat. By the time I was aboard there was a good start on a NW breeze so I dressed the boat for sea, main and working jib and got the anchor aboard.