Conception Island I

After a night of too much chess games, we made our move to Conception Island. We thought San Salvador would be amazing but sailing there and back and seeing the island would eat up 4 days easily. Conception Island was only 30 nm, a far more manageable day sail. When we approached we caught a horse-eyes jack. Discovering that ciguatera was an issue for larger horse-eyed jacks, we had to set this big lugger back to his home. As we settled down from the excitement another friend playfully swam by. A dolphin swam around the boat, twirling about in the water and playing in the bow wake. At this point we found Conception Island to be most welcoming. The wind was just north of East which made the swell that wrapped around from the south to be very subtle. When the sun set and the stars rose we were completely alone in paradise. The next night we moved to the the northern anchorage and found two other sailboats perched nearby. We dropped the anchor and found three large nursesharks nestled in the shadow of the boat. All 4 of us flung ourselves into the water to get a better look. They were pretty great. I think of them like sheep, cute and harmless but in a beguiling shark kind of way. We enjoyed the beach and were intending to leave early next morning but then we bumped into the folks on the nearby monohull – a chatty bunch from FL and then two brothers from the catamaran dinghy-ed over and invited us over for drinks which quickly escalated to a potluck. I believe it was the words of fresh caught seafood that sealed the deal for us. We decided we’d stay another night and party with our new friends tonight. We found out there was a great mangrove river to be explored and so much more to snorkel.Read more