In the morning the stinging gnats drove us to rush through breakfast and pack our boats quickly to get away. The tide was predicted to be against us most of the day and we planned to eddy hop close to shore to avoid it. Soon after we launched the wind from the north came back and helped push us south. Normally when a tide is opposed by a wind there can be dangerous wave conditions. But despite the hellish name of this channel, Canal el Infernillo, the wind and waves worked in our favor and we zoomed down the coast. The water here is very shallow and in a real storm it must be dangerous indeed to be here.
In the afternoon the wind got stronger and Don Fleming’s GPS clocked our speed at often over four miles an hour. We approached a point near Punta Tortuga that had several buildings and radio towers on it and found the source of the tire tracks in the roads at Bahia Agua Dulce. The Mexican Marines had a base on the island here with several trucks parked in front of it. Half a dozen men came out to watch us paddle past but they didn’t ask us to come over and talk to them. The wind and waves shoved us by even without paddling hard and soon we were past them anyway.
By this time the wind was blowing diagonally across the narrowest section of the channel and the tide had turned and was also going our way. Don suggested that we use these great conditions to return to the mainland. Everyone agreed so we sent Lucy O’Brien to the front of our pod as our lead boat again and started across. This crossing should have taken over an hour, several by our usual slow pace, but we made it back to the mainland in only 45 minutes! Just sitting in our kayaks close to shore the tide grabbed our boats and pulled them around the end of Punta Granita. There the current continued to run our way along the south side of the point and we could use it to take us farther east before setting up camp.
Punta Granita has a large lagoon in the middle of it and we figured there would be mangroves and insects there, so the best place to camp would be at the base of the sandy beach just before the shoreline rose up in cliffs again. As we approached that spot however, we noticed a large white and red structure there. Through his binoculars John Somers identified it as a tent with the Tecate Beer logo on it. There were several cars and one large bus visible. The entire length of the beach along the south end of Punta Granita had tire tracks on it as if a large number of vehicles had been driving here. We decided to land a couple kilometers early and set up our own private camp. This meant setting up within spitting distance of a swampy area with mangrove trees. The wind was still blowing so there were no insects yet, and we planned to prepared better for them this time. On the previous morning several of us could not find where we had packed away our insect mesh head coverings. This time we got them out and ready for action. While we were setting up tents and cooking dinner one truck drove by on the beach. The driver waved at us and kept going.