Ophelia Offshore

Our next anchorage could not have been more different than Los Gatos – It was a sand spit running along the lagoon on the northwest corner of Isa San Jose. When we pulled in, glassy water and majestic cactuses greeted us. Excited to explore this picturesque spot, and feeling so lucky to have it to ourselves, we began preparations for dinghying to shore. As we packed stuff up and hoisted the engine down, a few bees showed up. Pretty normal. But we were slightly worried, because two reviews of the anchorage had mentioned bees coming out to swarm your boat if you had fresh water out. Out of an abundance of caution we dumped out our fresh water cups and wiped the fresh water drops out of the sinks.

For context, on the app cruisers use to mark various spots and add reviews with helpful info, pretty much every anchorage we’ve ever gone to or looked at has at least one review saying the bugs were horrible. The no-see-ems relentless. The bees swarming. The gnats blood thirsty. Worst night of their life. Character altering experience. Etc. Etc. But it’s the outdoors! It’s seasonal, changes day to day. So we’ve read many of these reviews, and never once had a serious bug issue ourselves.

Back to Mangle Solo North, we enjoyed our beach and lagoon walk with no thought at all about an entire bee hive moving onto our boat in our absence. But just because you’re not thinking about something, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. When we returned, we were greeted to hundreds of bees swarming in the galley – they were after the little bit of water in the bottom of the dish drying tub. Man o man were we thinking of @larry.golkin who tried to warn us: “Never got to enjoy it. Swarm of bees in, on, and around Cockpit.” That’s a lot of spatial prepositions we’d brushed off. Or the even-keeled @matt.gaddis, “Beautiful quiet anchorage. There were lots of bees.” Clearly this man not prone to exaggeration should have be heeded!

We knew we had to get the fresh water out of the boat. Jesse buttoned up his shirt, flipped the collar, and tucked his swim shorts into their mesh lining so bees couldn’t fly up them, a very special look I’ve coined “Baja Beekeeper”. He carried the dish tray outside very slowly without a sting. There were still many bees inside, so we set another decoy tray of water outside the boat. This worked surprisingly well, and the bees all moved out. We dug out the screens and covered every hatch and port hole – successful in our mission to rid the boat of bees.

But we’d won the battle, and lost the war. The bees were out on deck, enjoying the beautiful sunset with their multiple dishes of fresh water, while we sat trapped inside the hot boat. None the less, we decided to stay the night since the bees would leave after sunset and we could still go on the hike we planned the next day.

The hike was absolutely worth it. One of the longer, hotter hikes we’ve done on the trip so far, we crossed over the mountain range at a pinch in the island to reach the coast on the other side. A few fishing shacks dotted the bay on the other side, where the ocean blended into the sky.