Passage through the Midriff Islands

Often you can see the dolphins turn on their sides like this guy is doing and look at you while they are swimming and jumping and you can hear their calls both when they are above and below the water.

Rudy goes nuts when the dolphins show up. He must be able to hear them talking because he always runs up to the bows just before the pod breaks the surface in front of our boat. Then he races back and forth jumping on the nets. He used to bark and scare them away but he has learned to hold his tongue and just races back and forth whining.

Looking down over the bow at the dolphins swimming in the bow wake. Sometimes you think you're going to hit them since they get so close.

When the north winds started blowing on October 22nd, the anchorage we were sharing with Eyoni on the east side of La Guarda quickly became uncomfortable. We were reluctant to leave, but we knew our time had come. We had decided while in Refugio to change our destination from Santa Rosalia on the Baja side to Guaymas on the mainland, just so we could keep exploring new territories. The change in destination would take us through the Midriff Islands, some of which are very remote.

The first few days of the journey were spent working down the east side of la Guarda, then jumping to Isla Partida Norte, just ten miles south of La Guarda. The winds were very light these first few days, but high winds were forecasted to be building. We wanted wind to sail, but winds stronger than 25 knots can create some lumpy seas. With that in mind we decided to jump off on the 45 mile trip from Isla Partida Norte straight to Isla San Pedro Martir. We had planned to visit some of the other islands of the Midriff, but the descriptions of their anchorages didn't sound too promising on finding good protection for a strong blow, so we went straight to our main goal of Isla San Pedro Martir (St. Peter the Martyr). San Pedro Martir is a fish/bird sanctuary that is off the beaten path of cruisers. We were very excited to see it.

Since we were in the calm before the storm, we had no wind for our trip to San Pedro Martir - it was just one, long (almost ten hours), motorboat ride on flat calm seas. However, it was not a boring trip. Along the way, we saw several sperm whales, and lots of fish boils with feeding birds. We caught three dorado, keeping one 40-incher and letting the other two go free. The thing that was most amazing about our trip was the dolphins. We saw maybe twenty different pods of dolphins (mostly Saddleback dolphins, some Botttlenose) totalling probably 150 dolphins or more. For almost two hours our boat was their playground and they put on quite a show. The water was so calm and the seas so crystal clear, it was a magical show.