Ilsa San Fransisco to San Evaristo – adjusting to a gale in 20 minutes.
Dec 20-21: We didn’t have great weather for our stay at Ilsa San Fransisco. It was chilly and damp and even rained a bit. There was a lovely looking hike up the ridge, but Kyber had torn a hunk of skin off the pad of his foot, and he could walk anywhere. Feeling sorry for him we passed on the hike.
Passing time
Kolby went spear fishing off the northern point while Fynn and I paddled around the rocks. The visibility has been poor, so we mostly watched the crabs scurry along the shore and played with a scoop and a bucket in the water. Kolby was still fishing when she got cold, so we paddled back to the boat. Of course Fynn decided she wanted to try to paddle which was ridiculous. Despite her claims of being cold, when we did finally reach the boat she jumped in and practiced her swimming (life jacket on) back and forth from the ladder to the paddle board – a distance of maybe 4 feet but she sure thought she was the bees knees.
Beachcombers paradise at Ilsa San Fransisco
We pushed off from Isla San Fransisco and it’s lovely half-moon sand bay on a sunny windy morning. After battening down the boat inside we rounded the corner in to full on gale. The winds were blowing steady at 27 knots, gusting to over 30. The seas are stacked on top of each other, easily six feet high. In short it was an uncomfortable ride. The first 20 minutes is always the worse. You leave the calm of the harbour and are affronted by the tenacity of the wind. It messy messy and uncontrollable. The motor is load, the waves are loud, the boat seems to protest. Even pulling out the sails feels messy. A shackle on the main sheet bent itself out of shape, so now I am driving the boat to keep her in irons, Kolby is replacing the shackle and Fynn is crying on the top of the stairs. Luckily she is old enough now to stay where I have asked her, but hearing her cry is distressing. I want to turn around and head back to the safety of the harbour. The whole situation feels distressing. But then the shackle is repaired and I fall off of the wind. Asunto heals over and harnesses the wind, controls it. The uncontrollable feels tamed. Over the next the hours we short tack up the channel, covering 7 nautical miles in 2 and a half hours. We drop anchor in the tiny fishing village of San Evaristo and pick up the pieces that are strewn around the cabin – a sign of hard to passage.
Later a second boat dropped anchor and we met up with them at the little restaurant just off the beach. They had bashed into the wind, running their engine and making only 3 knots of headway. The same trip had taken them three hours. Two other boats had turned back into Isla San Fransisco- the conditions being too much. But as Kolby and I later reflected – you really just have to get through those first 20 minutes of discomfort- pull out the sails and let the boat do her job.
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