In transit to San Bendicto Island

It’s always a bit of a funny feeling to be on our little 116ft steel island, surrounded by ocean, without land or any other boats in sight. This is one deserted stretch of ocean and on a number of our transits from Baja California to San Benedicto Island, we have steamed for 24 hours without seeing another vessel. It’s like another world out here.

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Back in the driver’s seat

We are berthed in the harbour of Cabo San Lucas and in the midst of turnaround day. Our guests disembarked at 0900 and we are now hurriedly cleaning, washing, tidying, provisioning, fixing stuff and generally scurrying around getting ready for our next group at 1700. After that, we’ll be sailing off into the sunset for a lovely dinner at sea and overnight run down to Isla San Benedicto. 

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Spring Diving in the Sea of Cortez

We had a moderately rough crossing from Isla San Franciscito to Los Islotes (close to Espirito Santo) but were rewarded with an amazing sighting of a baby blue whale. At Los Islotes, we surprised some underwater harvesters fishing illegally. Unfortunately, they took off before we could get a good picture of them. Our divers had a couple of great dives and saw lots of neat stuff including California sea lion pups who came over to play with the divers.

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Exploring in a Mangrove Lagoon

We ventured inside for over a mile and saw amazing upside-down jellyfish and tiny oysters in the mangroves. We also saw osprey, egrets, ibises and herons. We then steamed over to the protected bay at the south side of the small island of San Franciscito where some of our guests went beach walking.

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Thousands of Leaping Mobula Rays

Our divers had two great dives and saw lots of sea fans, horn sharks, guitarfish, stingrays and yellowfin tuna. Dave went looking for a blue whale that had been spotted nearby and instead, found a huge school of thousands of mobula rays on the surface, jumping and flapping their wings (pectoral fins) and leaping up to 6 feet out of the water!

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Bunny Rabbits in the Desert

Today’s dive sites included the wreck of the ferry Salvatierra and Suwammee Reef with its enormous biomass of fish, sea lions and cormorants. This is where Peter Schalwyk, one of our favourite divemasters, shot his famous sequence of a determined cormorant chasing and finally catching a bait fish.

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Sea of Cortez Spring Scuba Diving Adventure

They started the dive day at the tiny little islet of La Reina – famous for the enormous bait ball of scad (mackeral) that hang out around the rock. Up until a couple of years ago, this was known as the best and most reliable site in the Sea of Cortez at which to find giant manta rays.

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