The Galapagos of México
10 February 2014 | South anchorage, Isla Isabel, México
Trying to be like Mom; Frigatebird chick on Isla Isabel, México
After raising the anchor and motoring away from Isla de la Piedra, early on Sunday afternoon (February 9th), we sailed south for seven hours with a reefed main and full jib. The wind faded around 9 pm so we furled the jib and motor-sailed through the night, each of us taking 2 hour watches which suited Randall in his somewhat weakened state. By 7 am, we were just off the northeast side of Isla Isabel and conditions looked promising for being able to anchor. We could also see several humpback whales so Mike and I were getting quite excited at the prospect of being able to stay for a night or two.
Before we approached the anchorages, Randall wanted to run the engine for 10 minutes at high rpms to clear some of the soot out of the system. In my excitement at having arrived at this National Park (1981) and UNESCO World Heritage Site (2003), I did not notice that Randall in apparent feebleness and confusion set the throttle to 3100 rpms, almost the maximum, instead of 2800 rpms which usually works very well. After 5 minutes the engine started to overheat and one of us luckily heard the alarm over the engine's roar and saw that the temperature gauge was reading dangerously high. Randall quickly turned-off the engine and we drifted for a while to let things cool down.
Not realizing the erroneously high rpm-speed until later, we spent our time adrift trying to work out what the problem was. Randall cleaned a surprisingly large collection of empty mussel shells out of the strainer for the incoming sea-water that was used to help cool the engine. He also tried to check whether the impellor in the cooling system had disintegrated (as happened when we were entering the reef to go to San Andreas Island in the Caribbean) but there was no indication that this was the case. If that was not the problem we hoped that it would be something easy to fix like the propeller being fouled with a line or sea-life growing thick on the propeller or on the water-intake screen for the engine-cooling water.
During this period of cooling and drifting, Mike and I were gloomily considering that despite having come so close, if the engine would not restart or immediately overheated again, we might not be able to stay at Isla Isabel. Instead, we might have to sail back to the mainland until we could find a safe anchorage where we could work on the boat and, if necessary, go ashore to look for spare parts. The tales we had heard from other cruisers (such as Al and Lindy on Enchanté) and the descriptions in our cruising-guides had made Isla Isabel a particularly attractive destination for us, especially at this time of year, so the idea of possibly having to sail past it without stopping was particularly painful.
Fortunately, when Randall restarted the engine and ran it at low rpms, the temperature behaved exactly as it was supposed to and we agreed that we should go into one of the anchorages. Setting the anchor requires running the engine up to 2000 rpms briefly so we were still not certain that everything would work out perfectly but we would give it a try.
Isla Isabel is 18 nm from the mainland coast but 40 nm to the nearest town of any size, San Blas. The island has a volcanic origin and it is about 1 nm from north to south and 0.5 nm from east to west, with a maximum elevation of around 250 ft (76 m). Although there are three small sandy beaches, the two anchorages have mostly rocky bottoms which are not ideal. With only the island itself to provide shelter from the winds whistling across the Pacific or down from the Sea of Cortez, it is not a good place to stay in rough conditions but we had arrived when it was supposed to be relatively calm with only a slight swell for a few days.
There were no boats in the slightly more exposed eastern anchorage near Las Monas islands so we continued to the southern anchorage which is in a bay and protected from all but southerly winds and waves. Here we found two anchored boats, SV Azure Te (a new boat to us which was deep into the cove) and SV Roughneck. We shouted our greetings to Cameron and anchored nearby, carefully avoiding the rock reefs on each side of the bay's entrance and the shallow pinnacle just west of the center, all of which were well-charted in our Breeding and Bansmer "Pacific Mexico - A cruiser's guidebook". All was well with the engine temperature when we set the anchor and, as recommended, we used a trip-line and float on the anchor which not only shows other boats where your anchor is (which is useful if it gets crowded) but can help to release the anchor if it gets caught between rocks.
By the time Tregoning was settled, Randall was feeling terrible; not only tired and achy but with an upset digestive-system and all the symptoms of a developing cold. Too excited to take naps immediately, Mike and I decided to compensate Cameron for waking him up so early by rowing him to shore since he did not want to be bothered with inflating his dinghy. Myself, I could not imagine staying overnight at Isla Isabel and not needing to go ashore to see the wildlife but until we came along, the single-handing, computer-jock Cameron had decided that he had seen enough from his boat to satisfy his curiosity.
What is it that makes Isla Isabel so interesting and worthy of the nickname the "Galapagos of Mexico"? It is the huge number of nesting seabirds and large population of resident iguanas. Being sufficiently isolated from the mainland, no predatory mammals had naturally colonized the island and as a consequence with its low trees and bald cliff-tops, it was a prefect nesting habitat for thousands of magnificent frigatebirds and boobies, most of which are relatively fearless of humans. Other nesting birds include brown pelicans, red-billed tropic birds, Heerman's gulls, brown noddies, and sooty terns (we did not see the latter two), and there are at least two native reptiles, the green iguana and the Mexican milk snake.
Sadly, domestic cats and black ship rats were introduced to the island in the early 1900s and took a toll on the native birds and reptiles but the cats, at least, have subsequently been removed. Although Cameron was a bit concerned about the possibility of encountering rats (we did not see any), he seemed to greatly appreciate the opportunity have a close view of the nesting birds and to explore a little of the island.
We landed the dinghy at the head of Bahía Tiburones (Shark Bay) where there were several fishing pangas tied-up to the beach and an extensive fish-camp of about a dozen green-painted, net-sheds built from corrugated metal. The few fishermen that we saw were very friendly but, like us, they did not seem inclined to chat. From the beach we walked through the derelict research station which once must have been impressively busy if all of the rooms there had been used.
Surrounding these ruins and covering much of the central part of the island was a forest of low trees (no more than 20 ft or 6 m high) the species of which I am embarrassed to admit that I did not identify. They had spherical fruit that looked a bit like small avocados but they were rock-hard both on the trees and after falling to the ground. However, the botanist in me was distracted by the countless nests of magnificent frigatebirds that were perched in the branches.
We had arrived at a perfect time of year with some nests still containing eggs but most having chicks with their long-hooked bills, their white fluffy head and body feathers, and their black-feathered, developing wings. Adult males were still puffing out their vermillion throat-pouches in their courtship displays, while the mostly black females (with some white underparts) and the white-headed juveniles, sat around between feeding-flights out to sea. Although, as the name suggests, these large birds (up to 40 inches, or 102 cm, long with twice that length in wingspan) are magnificent when viewed close-up or seen circling overhead, they are klepto-parasites meaning that they mostly harass other birds in flight and force them to drop or disgorge their food.
Many iguanas of various sizes scuttled around the ruins of the research station but they were going to have a tough time trying to compete for human attention with the raucous and restless activities of the seabirds. The squawking and clacking of the bills of the frigatebirds sitting in the nests just over our heads was almost comical but it was sad to see quite a few dead birds that appeared to have got caught in branches below the tree canopy. At least, there were no signs of the little piles of plastic that were the depressing, long-term remnants of most albatross carcasses that we had seen on Midway Island.
From the research center we followed a trail over to the beach on the west side of the island where the jagged, brown and black lava-rock shoreline was just like many beaches on the Hawaiian and Galapagos Islands. Here we saw a few blue-footed boobies standing at the top of the shore. We returned to the fishing camp and circled the stagnant-looking "lagoon" with its rim of numerous, narrow, pit-toilet sheds. Finally, we found the trail and stairs that took us to Lago Cráter, the small circular lake of murky green water that fills the bottom of the volcanic crater, with no visible in- or out-flow streams. The steep sides of the crater were covered with the same, low trees (although one large swath appeared to be dead) and magnificent frigatebirds were nesting all over the forest and were circling all over the island.
With midday approaching, it was starting to heat-up on the breezeless trails between the trees so we decided to return to our boats for lunch and a nap. Cameron left in the afternoon, heading out on an overnight passage for Puerto Vallarta where he would likely catch-up with Rob and Debra on SV Avant, who had decided to skip Isla Isabel. Meanwhile Mike and I decided to turn our attention to the other major attraction of Isla Isabel, the snorkeling.