Safe and Sound in the Bay

When we awoke the next morning we were very pleased to find ourselves in this beautiful bay, part of a huge national park. Talk about protected, there was a mountain chain circling us a full 360 degrees after we had made the turn to the anchorage.

One can hear the parrots and monkeys in the trees surrounding the bay. And that morning we got to experience one of the coolest fish-feeding frenzies we had ever seen. You can see schools of tiny bait fish by the way they create ripples on the surface of the water. GALLIVANT was anchored about 200 yards away, and noticed that there was a huge school of bait fish between the two boats. I would say that it stretched about a third of the distance, or about 70 yards or so in diameter.

Then, as I was kind of casually watching it drift towards us, all of a sudden, the water started churning as thousands of larger fish started feeding on the bait fish. It was so intense that the sound was like a rainstorm as the fish splashed in the water perhaps 30 feet from RHAPSODY. We just watched in amazement as the feeding frenzy would calm for a minute or two and then start up again. I even got some footage of it on the video camera it was so good.

As we were still tired from the passage, we spent most of the first day in Santa Elena just lazing around the boat, sleeping in, reading books, having lunch and then napping again. We definitely enjoyed the sunset that night!