WINGSSAIL

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Ensenada Carrizal

We’ve been anchored in Ensenada Carrizal for a week. It is a wild place. I mean it has a wild feeling. Here the wind and rocks and the trees and the sea around us remind us more of some remote place on the West Coast of Vancouver Island than a small bay in Mexico.

One thing is the sound. The crash of the ocean as it rises against the rocky shore and then hisses as it runs back into the sea and the moan of the wind through our rigging are constant sounds. They are wild sounds, untamed.

Swell hits the Shorline

The sea here is a restless sea. It is like a living creature whose breast we watch rising and falling against the rocky points of land at the mouth of our bay, and whose breath we can hear, a long whooosh, from the blow holes. The water around Wings undulates with the swells, always in motion but seemingly with no direction, just moving, and on top of it the wind waves, sparkling silver in the sunshine against the indigo blue water, sweep past towards the ocean behind us.

The gusts roll down the bay, off the hillside, and come towards us like a dark shadow on the water and the moan increases as they hit the rigging of the yacht, which turns and rolls away from the wind then rights itself. The moan dies as the wind passes.

This sound and this motion: they are eternal and it is clear to us that we have no part in it. They would and will go on the same if we were not here, and they have done so for countless centuries. We have just arrived here to observe for a short time and Ensenada Carrizal ignores our presence. When we leave it will go on as it was before and never remember we were here.

High rocky cliffs surround the bay. They tower over us and cut off the sun in the mornings and evenings. At their bases the shale is broken and dark and the water reflects that darkness. A white bird wheels and turns and stands out in contrast against the cliff, and plunges into the sea, then rises flapping. Above there are steep hillsides covered in jungle growth, a mixed jungle of leafy brush and dense, stark, dry white trees and shrubs bereft of any greenery. But it is dry season and I think that when the rains come the hills will blossom out in green with a startling suddenness. But now the hillsides of dry tangles seem to add to the impression of wilderness.

And the air here is cool. We sit on deck, in the cold sunlight, the cool wind blowing and the sea constantly moving, looking at our surroundings, and we feel the wildness of it all.
The waves also hit the rocky beach at the head of the bay and wash up high, white, then slide back with astonishing quickness. That beach you can hardly walk on due to its large gravel and steep angle. It is a difficult beach on which to land a small boat; the waves carry a power, and there is no sand over which you can drag up a boat. We’ve landed our small boat here twice, and both times we were nearly upset. Once Judy was thrown out and swept under the boat, but that was on the other side of the bay, where there is sand, and she was only doused and not hurt. At the main beach we had a different strategy: I stayed at the controls of the motor and approached the beach, whereupon Judy jumped out with our duffel bag and scrambled up the steep shore while I backed out quickly before the next wave came. Then I anchored the dingy off shore and swam in.

To leave we reversed this: I swam out and got the dingy, then I came close enough for Judy to jump in between the waves, and we roared out before the next big wave came. Still it was a close thing, and that was a very calm day. Today the waves are much bigger, and the white wash from each of them extends 30 feet up the rocky beach before receding. I would not try to negotiate that surf with the dingy today.

There is wildlife here, mostly birds, but not many. I see some small white terns or gulls flying in circles near the cliffs, and diving into the water, and there is a red tailed hawk we see each day, patrolling the hill side. A few pelicans have flown by but I don’t see them diving, or in the numbers of, say, Bahia Tenacatia. Nor frigate birds; once in a while one soars overhead. Some other bird screes from the trees but I don’t see it. There are also some animals on the land. We saw tracks of a large cat or perhaps an otter and nearby there were scraps of crabs, legs pulled off, where some creature was eating. When we walked up the hillside and found the road, which we followed, there were beautiful magpie-jays and other birds.

But this is a remote place and there are no swarms of birds here or people. No houses or signs of humanity on the land around the bay other than the road which comes down the hillside and ends just above the beach at the head of the bay. We saw a man come in a pick-up truck and he parked and then raked the area at the end of the road, some landscaper perhaps, then he left. So maybe the remoteness of this place is an illusion. But it seems real.

Now the sun has dropped behind the hillside, it is late in the day, and we’re running our engine to charge batteries. We have retreated to the cabin where it is warmer. Once the sun goes down the air is even cooler. Again, it seems like Canada, not Mexico. Soon I will pull on some jeans and a long-sleeved sweatshirt to go outside and BBQ our evening meal.

We’ve come to like this place. There is peace in wildness.

We are at peace here.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Ensenada Carrizal

Note: We were last here on Feb 25, 1998. It was windy then also.

Next Up: Las Hadas