Return to Isla Monserrat, August 29th 2008.

It is best to rise early for a crossing, but I slept in almost an hour. Then when I did wake up I noticed that my hosts in the fish camp were still asleep. I didn’t feel it was being a good guest to bang my kayak around and wake them up, so I waited. I thought fishermen got up early, but these guys did not. They finally got up around 7:00 AM. One of the pescaderos, Chico by name, “talked” to me about features of my kayak. He recognized the brand “Garmin” on my GPS. I showed him my map of his island and pointed out where we were. I tried to communicate how to get good maps off a “computador” from Google maps.

I thanked my hosts and returned the cot to their end of the beach. I waved goodbye and started paddling directly away from the island. In calm flat conditions it took me less than 4 hours to paddle back to Isla Monserrat. An hour offshore I saw the Mexican Navy cutter between me and the island. It met a smaller, faster, boat in front of the beach where my friends were supposed to be camping. Then the navy boats motored away and left an empty beach behind. I could not see the tents and bright kayaks where I expected them. Had they been “consigned to the authorities” like some of the signs say? I had certainly seen activity from the authorities in the area.

I paddled right up to the beach where I left all my friends and there was no sign of them. I walked up and down the beach and saw marks in the sand where the tents had been. I eagerly turned over a pile of rocks, expecting a note but finding nothing. I looked for an arrow made from rocks pointing the direction they had gone, but didn’t find one. I had joked with them two days ago that if I came back and they were not here I would assume they had paddled south. Now I had no choice but to go that way around the island to see if they had moved camp.

I ran into a panga fisherman and asked him “mas kayaks?” He nodded and pointed towards the south end of the island, giving me a little more hope. I kept going and eventually found Andrea Wolfe and Herbe Howe tide-pooling on a reef. They were just about to call me on the VHF radio and Herb was joking that Mike would probably come around the corner and answer him without the radio. Apparently the camp I had left them in was windy on the second night there and they decided to move this morning. We would eventually have to go south anyway and this move put us closer to the next crossing.

It was my turn to cook dinner and I did this in a little pocket in the cliff out of the hot sun. The new beach was also windy and this kicked up waves. The waves broke noisily into this pocket beach and made it difficult to talk. The tide started to come up and we had to abandon the shade before the tide trapped us there. But by then the sun was going down and the camping beach was comfortable again.