Due to a northerly coming through that week, we will only be able to stay in one anchorage for the time due to the weather conditions. We headed over to an anchorage called Puerto Ballandra which is on an island across from Loreto, just north of Puerto Escondido. We bashed into 15 knots of wind and 4 foot waves for three hours in order to get to the bay on the north end of the island.
We finally made it, and when we arrived we anchored and tucked in as well as we could to protect from the swell wrapping around. A couple hours after we arrived, a big catamaran pulled in front of us to get tucked in, at first it seemed fine but they were a bit close to us, they then circled around in front of us again to find a spot, but on their way around they came really close to the front of our boat, at this point we were in the dinghy, me my dad and our friends, and we were on our way to the beach, we looked back at what they were doing and realised that when they came close to our boat, there anchor had clipped our anchor chain because they left their anchor dragging along the surface of the water.
Next thing we new this big catamaran was dragging our boat with them without them aware of the situation, because it was a catamaran they have a much lower draft then our keel, so if they were going forward onto shallow water, our boat would get pulled right into the shallow rocks. My dad just started yelling at the people, and he told me to head to the boat at full speed from the dinghy. We circled the boat and saw our chain wrapped around their anchor, the two kids got off the dinghy onto the boat because it was safer, I was at the wheel of our boat, and then my dad and the dad of our friends went off in the dinghy to free the chain. Because the anchor of the other boat was already down, they had to pull theirs up, but they couldn’t because of our chain, so the wind ended up blowing them against us, and there were a few minor collisions.
Finally my dad got the chain off and they were able to go somewhere else, about 10 minutes after the dilemma, another catamaran by the same manufacturer came and tried to anchor in the same spot, my dad just went to the front of the boat and stood looking pissed, sure enough it worked. The next day we went for a hike up the mountain, it was a couple hours, and at the top we had a perfect view of the boat and the whole bay, after the hike we went dinghy trolling.
One of our friends said don’t return until you catch a big enough fish, we ended up with a fish too big that we couldn’t return. We were in the dinghy and my rod started buzzing as the line was pulled out, I fought the fish for about 30 minutes, it was the hardest fight I had ever had, finally it got to the surface and it was a massive yellowtail. There was no way we would have fit it in the dinghy, we didn’t know what to do, luckily the people in the catamaran that caught our anchor were now anchored next to where we caught the fish, they called us over because they had a net, they got it out of the water and the owner of the boat Brian even cleaned it for us, we became very good friends with their boat. After it was cleaned we took the fillets of the 50 pound, 4.2 foot yellowtail back to our boat, it was delicious, even after the twentieth meal.
The next day we returned to Porto Escondido to drop off our friends after a bit less than a week, and we are now on our way to La Paz.
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