Cayo Calubra
Dolphin pursuit
The morning of cleaning was interrupted by dolphins surrounding Argonaut, and a rapid drone deployment beautifully captured the juveniles playfully jumping over their mothers and turning their bellies to the surface in an effort to dislodge pesky remora fish.
Piling in the dinghy at midday we set off for another expedition in the Sian Ka'an Biosphere.
Heading south from the anchorage, for a distance akin to the Guernsey to Herm run I was more familiar in taking on my Fletcher back home, we arrived at an uninhabited island known as Cayo Calubra. We passed slowly through a cut and with the drone deployed again we scouted a landing point between the thick and gnarly mangroves. From above Ben clocked a inlet and we slowly made our way through a mix of dead, and less compliant living branches requiring an equal measure of laughter and wrestling all whilst presumably confused mangroves climbing crabs watched on.
Emerging into the clear lagoon, we had entered a new millpond world. Birds called from the surrounding trees and the water was a dark milky green.
To one side a torpedo like tail caught my eye in the shallows above a sandy bed peppered with crab holes. Spinning the dinghy around, the full length of the Barracuda, over a metre long revealed itself and appeared to stare back at us before launching into the depths.
Continuing on we were hopefully for a more straightforward exit from Mexico's answer to Narnia. Initially it looked clear but a full 4ft thick floating tree stem blocked our route with root ball attached. Hanging off the front of the dinghy standing on the floating tree and with some tactful throttle input the large tree was slowly rotated and we emerged on the other side of the island.
Barracuda lurking beneath the mangroves
A sandy beach awaited us to land upon and we joined many hermit crabs in exploring the shoreline.
By most measures this was a truly natural and un-spoilt land, with wildlife such as cormorants, kingfishers, lizards and iguanas merely bemused by our presence. That was with the sad exception of a large volume of plastic waste which had been washed onto the leeward shores by prevailing Easterly winds. Charles had landed without flip flops, but with the sheer abundance of shoes of all shapes and sizes he could have soon found a suitable pair if he wished. Fundamentally it was upsetting to see how humanity's use of single use plastics has tainted even the most remote and natural locations on earth.
We had planned to depart the anchorage later that afternoon before sunset for our next desination, so hot-tailed it back to Argonaut across the vast bay, from the middle the mainland only appeared as small islets cresting the horizon. Once again dolphins joined us to steal the show passing close under the dinghy and riding our bow wake. Ben captured the top down footage we had only dreamed of. We didn't know at the time that would one of the DJI Mavic's last flights.
I hauled the anchor and stowed surplus deck gear for our next passage as Charles negotiated the shallows consulting the forward scan sonar and severely conflicting chart data. Simultaneously Ben and Alex prepared some of the best loaded nachos we'd had yet as the sun slipped over the horizon on another very special day.
At times the B&G chartplotter had us crossing land whilst in reality we had 10 metres clearance, this was a sign of things to come with the Mexican coastline.
Leg 5/ 1200nm/ 7 day passage.
Squalls, hitchhikers, and pirates?