Whale watch (posted by SSB radio)

While we have no internet to look up all the details, the news traveled fast among cruisers that a sailboat, crossing the Sea from around San Juanico (our current anchorage)to Guaymas/ San Carlos was sunk quickly by a whale encounter about 30 miles off shore sometime last week. Luckily, the sailor was rescued, and was able to get into dinghy, and even grabbed his liferaft, before his boat sank.

It gives us a different appreciation now when we encounter whales. And lately it seems that we encounter them almost daily. They are a wonderful to watch, from a distance! Yesterday while setting our anchor, we had one about 100 feet off our stern (swimming in maybe 20 feet of water!). Today, we had one about the same distance on our beam, while we were preparing the set up our spinnaker for the 2nd time this season. Both, too close for our comfort, but not much we can do about it. We can only prepare for the worst: our ditch bag is close by, EPIRB and PLB are working, and life raft ready to deploy if needed. Beyond that, we just keep enjoying the beauty of the remoteness of the Sea. Now with Semana Santa in its second week, we are seeing more Mexicans enjoying their remote beaches as well. Planning an Easter egg hunt tomorrow.

The attached picture is Bliss sitting at anchor at San Marte, a lovely cove where we stayed for a couple of days. (If you zoom in you can see Tessa standing near the dodger -- sorry for the low resolution, but we are very bandwidth-limited!) We enjoyed snorkeling there -- saw hundreds of fish around rocks close to shore, and Tod went out 1/4mile to a detached reef to snorkel there. We even convinced Tessa to try her goggles and snorkel tube and to stick her head in the water and look at some pretty violet fish! On our way into that anchorage we also got to see *hundreds* of porpoises in a large area (maybe a couple square miles) apparently having a feeding frenzy!

In the next anchorage called Agua Verde, while snorkeling Tod got to see dozens of large sea urchins, and a large ray swimming about 30 feet away. We get to see these rays often when they repeatedly fly up out of the water and do belly flops, but it's the first time we have seen one underwater. Very cool to watch swimming!