Puerto Escondido - Day 7

DAY SEVEN

[Feb. 8, 2015]

Today is our last day of quiet, “private” yachting in the wilderness.  We are making our way into port today, near Loreto, where Sarah, our naturalist, will join us in preparation for the arrival of guests.  After breakfast, Randy invites me down to the engine room to watch him start the engine.  This is a major event.  The process takes about 20 minutes. 

The engine room is as large as a huge kitchen; every wall surface covered with gauges, dials, hoses, wiring, levers, switches, and there is the gleaming dark green and bronze engine, the size of a Volkswagen bus, bolted in the center.  This is the original 1923 Atlas Imperial engine, the oldest operating one in existence.  The boat was literally built around it.  Replacement parts have to be custom made.

Randy escorts me to a door hidden along the starboard passageway, and we descend a steep, black iron ladder into the belly of the ship.

Part of Randy’s job includes manually oiling all 134 exposed moving parts, every three hours during operation, plus eight grease points, maintain the levels in five drip oil canisters, and keep a vigilant eye on all valves, pressures, temperatures and levels.  I guess that’s what we have computers for in modern engines today. 

When everything is lubed, primed, positioned and ready to go, he grabs the big 40 lb. iron bar and manually rotates the giant fly wheel into position; adjusts pressures, gives the engine a shot of compressed air, and the mighty pistons jump to life – sounding bogota, bogota, bogota -  the heartbeat of the boat, pumping in rhythm once again.

If all is well in the engine room, Randy goes topside to haul the immense anchor, which has its own long listed procedure.  Then, Captain sets the course, and we are off to sea.

There is a glimmering line ahead in the water, silver flashes in the sunlight.  It is a pod of common dolphins, smaller than the bottlenose, about a mile distant.  As we approach we can see them gaily dancing through the water, literally hundreds of them, their sleek wet backs rounding up and then down again, going in every direction.  Several veer away from the group and make a beeline in our direction, to play in the bow waves for a few minutes before re-joining the group as we pass on by.

This is deep water in this part of the gulf, perhaps 700 feet.  A perfect spot for a great blue whale, the largest creature ever known to inhabit the planet.  An adult can be as big as three city buses, their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts, as much as an automobile.  These whales dive deep to feed on shrimp-like krill (up to 4 tons per day), and they come to the warmer waters of the gulf of Mexico for winter breeding.  Sure enough, before too long, Bill spots a misty spout in the distance.  These 100-foot long mammals can exhale a spume up to 30 feet high.  As we close the miles, we see that there are two whales, most likely a mother and calf traveling together.  We idle at a safe distance, and watch them for several minutes.  First, the mighty blow; then, slowly, the broad glistening back appears smoothly above the surface, and keeps going, and going; then the distinctive dorsal fin; then, finally the powerful flukes emerge, and keep rising, and rising – massive flukes the size of an airstream trailer, we see clearly the gentle blue-gray color and water dripping from the edges back into the sea.  Without a sound they slide under the surface, and the whale is gone.

Rare Glimpse of a Great Blue Whale Sounding

It is a long, pleasant day of sailing north, turning into Puerto Escondido about 4 pm.  This is the closest protected marina to the town of Loreto, about 30 minutes away, where we will pick up our guests at the airport day after tomorrow.  I see a committee of vultures soaring lazily over the cactus-studded hills that gird the marina, and a lone frigatebird perched atop a large rock near the shore.  A great blue heron watches us from the marina dock. 

We are moored in the center of this broad blue harbor, which is surrounded by high desert hills and dotted with many white boats on scattered moorings.  This marina is still recovering from the massive hurricane five months earlier – there is a boatyard full of recovered, broken and uninsured vessels.  I see the skeleton of a small boat tossed high up among the cactus – and a bulldozer is hard at work near the new marina office.

As Tracie cooks dinner, I watch a blue-footed booby hunting along the shoreline. She flies low over the water, then dives in head first, covering several feet under water before she comes up sputtering, and takes to the air again.  I watch her do this six or seven times in one direction, then circle around and return, doing the same glide, dive, sputter, glide, all the way back to her starting place.  I watch her do this, up and down the shoreline, for about 20 minutes.  Either she’s a very bad fisherman, or she’s getting a very big belly full.  Eventually she circles higher, and flies off out of sight around the last hill.