s/v hello world: honeymoon cove

At the first sign of the norther breaking, we packed up and got out of Escondido. We decided to head over to Honeymoon Cove on Isla Danzante again and give the stern anchoring a shot in less exciting winds.

We pulled into Honeymoon Cove and headed for a U-shaped bight in the northwest corner of the cove. The bight was only 100 feet wide which means if we only set one anchor, we'd swing into the rock walls of the cove with a large clanking noise and a larger insurance claim. And probably at 3am. So we pulled our bow into the bight and dropped our main bow anchor in 10 feet of water. We then backed up about 200 feet and set the anchor. Given our 20 to 1 scope, the anchor set pretty quickly. I then scrambled to the back and hucked our stern anchor overboard. Actually, we used our secondary anchor - a 44lb Spade anchor with 80 feet of chain and 150 feet of nylon three strand - as our stern anchor. We were getting a hint of winds from the south which was going to put some strain on the stern anchor. We then pulled in all but 80 feet of our bow anchor rode while letting out the stern rode. We set the stern anchor by attaching it to a sheet winch and cranking on it. All these efforts left us lying in a tight, quiet little cove that we never would have been able to get into otherwise.

Honeymoon Cove turned out to be one of the highlights of our journey so far. The water was crystal clear and positively lousy with fish. Dolphins intermittently visited us in the cove. We rowed into shore and went on a great hike over to another one of the beaches.

At one point, I spotted a whole mess of fish schooling right below our boat. I couldn't tell what kind of fish they were but gambled that they would be tasty. I hopped in the dinghy, loaded the spear gun, floated over them and blindly shot into the crowd. Not entirely a sporting shot but if the fish would just hop into my frying pan, I wouldn't have to cheat, would I?

Turns out my stellar marksmanship netted us not one but two fish on the spear. The bottom one wiggled off but the first one remained firmly impaled on the spear. We took a closer look at the fish and our fish book and decided we had just scored ourselves a Mexican Barracuda. What the book doesn't tell you is that they are very tasty over rice, butter, limes and garlic.