Crossing to Isla Tiburon, April 9th 2004.

Roger, Dave and I set out to cross to Isla Tiburon. The night before Roger had agreed to go up the east side of Esteban first and take the shortest 10km crossing to Tiburon. But once we were on the water he insisted that he wanted to "point straight at the objective and make headway". To him this meant pointing across a 30km crossing to the southernmost point of Tiburon. I pointed out that my objective was to explore the coastline of Tiburon, while making headway. Roger was adamant, he claimed that staying south would have solved all the problems of the bad crossing two days ago. That would have required pointing almost 90 degrees south of "the objective" on that day, violating Roger's own rule of "making headway". I compromised and let Roger suggest that we head for the southern tip of Tiburon but let the northwest tide curve our path towards the island somewhere, probably after only a 20km crossing. Dave and I then started to follow the course set by Roger. However he did not! He turned even farther south and later admits that he was pointing his bow at Isla Turners instead of the southern tip of Tiburon as he suggested that we should do. I muttered out loud during the day watching him pull farther and farther south from us that "I hope he runs into a killer tide current out there and spends all day sprinting into it while slowly drifting backwards".

As I predicted, the tide ran stronger as we paddled northeast until we could see that it was opposing us along the shore of Tiburon. Dave and I curved our path and landed on Tiburon for lunch after only a three hour crossing. Roger gave up on his "objective" and landed a little after us and a kilometer or so farther east. He rejoined us on our way by as we made headway exploring the coast after lunch. Together we paddled around the southern tip of the island, Punta Monumento, and a good ways up the eastern shore. We found a nice gravely beach to camp on for the night behind Punta Astah Keem.