Spirits of Cerralvo Island

Unlike my better half, I am not normally a superstitious person, but...

We had spent a restful day yesterday in our little anchorage just north of the southeast tip of Cerralvo Island. I scrubbed the propeller and shaft, scraping off barnacles and other growth, hoping this would 'cure' the roughness and vibration we were experiencing at certain RPMs. Rani preserved ginger in alcohol and made a hot lime pickle for the voyage.

We went ashore in the early afternoon and walked the mile of sand beach in both directions. At the south end of the beach we climbed up onto the rocks - uplifted seabed full of fossil shells and corals. There are two light towers at the point - one abandoned to an osprey nest and the other functional. There is also a memorial with a cross and a heart made of stones. Near the osprey's nest we found some worked stone fragments including what could possibly be a quartz arrow head. Magpie Rani added the quartz to her pocketful of shells.

We returned to the boat and after supper an osprey tried to land on the wind indicator at the top of our mast. I stepped into the cockpit just as something fell rapidly in front of me causing me to jump back and curse. Rani thought I had knocked over her racks of drying ginger, but what had happened was that the osprey had broken off the wind indicator vane, which fell into the cockpit, its arrow head breaking off. Later I was able to repair the vane, but restoring it to the top of the mast and replacing the starboard 45 degree indicator, which was also lost, will have to wait for a calm anchorage.

This morning, the wind came up to an unforecasted 25 knots and we awoke around 6 am to a big chop rolling into the anchorage. We started up the engine, but the noise I had thought would go away with cleaning was still there - possibly indicating engine misalignment. As we beat out of the anchorage, the dinghy slipped in its lashings, gouging the hand rails. I lashed it back down. It seems that our luck has left us. Perhaps we offended the spirit of the person who made the quartz arrow head?

And the arrow head? - it rests in the shallow waters off the point where Rani threw it, with a plea to any offended spirits, as we departed.