Fred Cooper was another kayaker on the April trip who turned back at Esteban. He could not spare enough vacation time to come with us on this trip, so he sent Tanya in his place. Tanya is a doll that comes dressed in a bare midriff outfit to go along with the Midriff Islands we were paddling between on that April trip. Fred had carried the doll on the bow of his kayak on that trip and now the doll was on Don’s bow. While planning for this trip we had received emails from a woman in Bahia Kino named Lupitha. This turns out to be a very common name in Mexico so we re-named the doll Lupitha and called it Lupy for short.
Lucy O’Brien was using a borrowed boat, a Greenlander, for this trip and not having the best time in it. The boat was designed for someone with longer legs than hers and she was unable make knee contact inside the cockpit. This meant that she could not edge the boat to turn it, even though it has very hard chines that should have made it a maneuverable craft. Instead of edging the boat she had to sweep on one side or the other all day to control it. This is probably why Lucy ended up being the slowest paddler in our group. Don and I were in big slow plastic boats but we kept pulling way out ahead of everyone. John was in a boat that should have been the fastest, a long narrow fiberglass kayak. But when he wasn’t hanging back to keep Lucy company he was usually pretty far behind. Several years ago when I first crossed over to Isla San Lorenzo, John was always pulling ahead of me in that same boat. So he just must have been in a mellow mood on this trip. As our slowest paddler we assigned Lucy to be lead on the crossing to Isla San Esteban. We are not allowed to pass the lead boat so this helped us stick together when doing an exposed crossing.
The tides were not perfect for us that day and we expected a quartering current at the start. As we launched we could see a rip current forming around the point where we had snorkeled the day before. The water rose up into little standing waves and flowed noisily around the exposed rocks. We expected Lucy to lead us well around this patch of dancing water but she lead us right through the middle! When we asked her why later she said “That was the most fun water in the trip so far!” Then we settled into a boring crossing. We could tell that the tide was pushing us west while we tried to paddle straight south. As the morning progressed the tide changed direction until it was practically coming straight at us from the south. This slowed us down and made the crossing take an hour longer than it would have in calm water. Don started joking about “The Curse of Esteban” since we had also taken too long to get to this island in April. Eventually we found ourselves in calm water on the north side of Isla San Esteban.
We had a back-up plan to paddle around the east side of Esteban and stay at the same beach we had camped at in April. But we also knew that there was a little valley on the north side and went there first to check it out. This turned out to be a wonderful place to camp with a gravel beach to land on and lots of room for camping on different surfaces. There were two valleys extending up into the mountains from the beach and they were covered with green brush and cactus. A pod of young sea lions trolled back and forth checking us out curiously. The water at Esteban was still warm enough to snorkel without a wetsuit and it was even less turbid than the water on Isla Tiburon. The beach ended on the north with a cliff dropping into the water and the shoreline along that cliff was full of life and other interesting stuff to see underwater. This time I brought my camera along and took some underwater shots, including some of John trying (unsuccessfully this time) to spear some more fish for dinner.
I also had time to go for a short walk up into the hills to photograph “happy valley” from above and to go beachcombing from one end to the other. The sun went behind the hills of our valley early and we were soon eating dinner and preparing for bed.
This beach had a bunch of gulls hanging out on it screaming at us every time we walked near their nests even though it was six months past nesting season. They all started screaming in the middle of the night and woke me up. I wondered what the noise could be about since there are not supposed to be any coyotes on this island. Then suddenly one of the gulls squawked like it was being strangled. All the gulls suddenly became quiet but for the sound of wings flapping in a struggle. I zipped open my tent to look out and see what was going on. I saw a tangle of flapping wings roll across the gravel near my tent. Just wings, no teeth or claws. After a minute the struggling stopped and two gulls separated from the tangle. Apparently all the noise was simply about some internal power struggle between the gulls.