It was a short crossing to Cabo Banda from the island and all the way across we watched big waves breaking over the rocks off this point. We stayed a respectful distance and talked about how on a calm day it looked like there would be some great rock gardening in this area. We turned into a cove and found an area we had been reading about: “La Bufadora”. This is a famous blowhole that tourists come to watch. Gregg Berman paddled right into the crack in the cliff and tried to get surfed back out when it blew. He wished that he was not in a large heavily loaded boat. The water jetted at least 40 feet up in the air! Charles Harris suggested that the storm gods gave us big swell on this day just to make sure we got to see La Bufadora go off.
Around the next point was a big cove that was calm enough to have a bunch of aquaculture rings anchored there. As we proceeded down the coast we went around a large, round, low point that had big swell rolling under us far from shore. Are the conditions getting bigger or is the bottom just very shallow here? The next rough point we had to round is Punta Riff and we could see big waves breaking over a shallow spot far from shore there. They seem to calm down and reform before breaking at the point.
Just as we arrived at Punta Riff we saw a monster set of waves break offshore and cross in front of us. These waves were so big that they didn’t quite stop breaking in the “safe” channel close to the point. Gregg looked at me and I asked: “What’s the plan? Sprint across and hope one of those doesn’t happen while we’re in there”? He replied: “That’s what I was going to do”! Without another word we started sprinting. My logic was that we had just seen a very large set and there should not be another one like that for some time. Waiting would only give another large set time to arrive. If one came, we would hear it break in the shallow spot far from shore and have time to turn and paddle into it. We only had to cross a hundred yards or so of shallow reef off the point so RIGHT NOW seemed like the right time to go for it. Charles had been a little behind us and had not been part of the “decision”. He caught up with us about the time we took off and he sprinted after us. In general the “plan” worked well, but one wave snuck in without breaking far from shore first. I never saw or felt this wave since it passed behind me but Gregg looked over his shoulder and saw Charles slip up and over a twenty-foot vertical face! Although it didn’t break and push him into the point, it scared the living daylight out of Charles! He said he would be going the long way offshore around any more reefs on this trip.
In the satellite photos there were a couple small coves near the tip of Punta Rif, but it looked difficult to get in there under these conditions. So we continued for a few miles to the town of El Puerto below Punta Santo Tomas in a large south facing cove. We didn’t land at the boat ramp but chose a beach just east of town with a rocky berm to camp on above the high tide.
I called my brother Paul on the satellite phone to check on the weather. Clear with no storms (or hurricanes) forecast for the next five days. Paul looked at the StormSurf.com WEB page and told me that the swell was generally forecast to be less than 4 feet with just one day of 8 to 10 foot swell forecast for tomorrow. We, the paddlers, decided that the 8 to 10 foot swell had come in early today, hoped it would all blow over by the next day and we could keep going. We had a protected south facing cove to launch from and another village within our range if we needed it.