Blue STAR

By Jim Spencer

The horizon is very close when you are sitting in the bottom of a little yellow, two-person life-raft. I should be in San Diego this morning, not floating around in the blue ocean beneath a blue sky. The western horizon is a saw-toothed wall with occasional specks of white from a breaking wave. East, toward land, toward San Diego, and safety, the sun is lighting forests, and deserts, and rivers, and home. Far to the west I can see gray clouds. Their tops lighted by the rising sun into roiling gold and silver towers. The Sun sparkles across the wave tops, leaving black shadows on their backsides. I fill the raft with water in an attempt to shield my legs from the sun. Luckily, I was wearing a ball-cap and a t-shirt when Estrella Azul went down. Also, luckily, I had the eleven one Escudo gold coins in a nylon bag hung around my neck. Unluckily I had driven Estrella Azul into a barnacle-encrusted shipping container. Steel corners and wooden hull planks are not a good match. The container ripped my lovely’s starboard bilge from bow to stern, like an iceberg did the Titanic. We were heeled on a starboard tack and I was looking at the storm to the west and did not see the steel box just below the surface. Maybe if I had seen it maybe we could have missed it, but I doubt it. That killer floated barley awash, almost invisible.

Now my beloved Blue Star was falling to the floor of the Pacific Ocean and I was floating in my raft. I had chained the dingy to a ringbolt in the deck to prevent in-port theft and hadn’t unfastened it, so the dingy went with her. The sun began to be hot on my legs. More sea water wouldn’t help, but couldn’t hurt. The wind picked up a bit, blowing me toward land but also signaling the storm’s nearness. I sat in my puddle and contemplated how I got here.

Treasure hunting appeared on my schedule during Naval service. Hanging out in bars quickly lost its appeal and I needed something to do other than emptying bottles and glasses.

Answering an ad for a metal detector introduced me to metal detecting which soon became an obsession. Every port has a beach. Every beach has people. People lose things. I find them, coins, jewelry, but more metal trash than anything. So, while I find valuable things I also clean a beach of metal trash. The ship’s library had among its three dozen books one about treasure.

Featured in the book was Mel Fisher’s legendary Atocha find. In 1622 the Spanish treasure fleet sailed from Vera Cruz Mexico only to be lost in a hurricane that scattered ships over 50 miles stretching from the Dry Tortugas eastward to where the Atocha sank. About 550 people perished along with an estimated 40 tons of gold and silver. Total

The westerly driving the storm towards me has picked up and the waves are getting bigger. I have my feet twisted under straps at the raft’s end and have a firm grip on the straps near my shoulders.

Mel Fisher found Atocha. Another hurricane in 1715 sank five galleons of a Spanish treasure fleet off Fort Pierce Florida. A man named Kip Wagner regularly walked his dog on the Fort Pierce beach. He often found flat, round, black rocks and skipped them back into the ocean. In 1966 he accidently knocked two of the black rocks together. The black crust covering the flat round rocks chipped off. Silver shone in the Florida sun. The flat round rocks were silver. Spanish coins covered in silver oxide, silver’s reaction to sea water. He had been throwing treasure back into the ocean. These tales spurred me to find other tales. The one story that grabbed my attention was that of the Galleon in the Desert. In Albert S. Evans' book, A la California, Sketches of Life in the Golden State. Evan describes his discovery of a ship in the desert near today’s Salton Sea. Evans' horse died, leaving him to walk out from the Colorado Desert's Dos Palmas westward toward Palma Seca, where Evans saw the lost ship. Another book about Cortez revealed that Cortez and sent two ships into the Sea of Cortez, neither of which returned. I put one and one together and came up with four, one of Cortez’ two ships was in the Sea of Cortes, probably on a reef and the other in a California desert. With very little research and my discharge money in hand I set out to find a ship.

The sea was delivering long smooth rollers, which gently raised and lowered me. On the top of a swell, I could see water to the East and the dark grey base of the of the storm in the west. On land, unless you are in open country, the base of a squall line is hidden by trees and hills, at sea the squall line is very apparent. The rain is a grey curtain slashing into the sea, throwing up white water. My destroyer had ridden enough bad weather for me to know what was happening and what to expect. In Estrella Azul we could have handled the storm with ease. Without those fragile boards, who knows. The raft has four rope handholds along the sides; those would have to do to keep me in the raft. Sliding my feet into the further ropes might help.

Getting discharged in San Diego let me get to the Gulf of California. A bus ride to El Centro, another to Calexico, Cross the border into Mexicali, another bus, this time Mexican, which was an eye opener, to Puerto Penasco. Boat dealers are a lot like used car dealers but I found a Marine Surveyor, Martine Andres, that seemed trustworthy. He found me Estrela Azur, a thirty-foot sloop, a deep-draft wooden beauty. She is old, has seen better days but Andres’s survey found her, except for cosmetic blemishes, sound. Her sails, though old and worn were serviceable. Her two-cylinder diesel engine, like the rest of her, worn but serviceable. The paperwork for an American buying a boat in Mexico seemed mountainous but Andres cut through it with ease. Estrela Azul cost all but three hundred dollars of my discharge money. I spent two-thirds of that on an eight-foot Rigid Inflatable Boat as a dingy. Buying stores and new cordage ate up almost all the rest. A bit of a safety factor was my satellite phone. If I got into trouble I could call Tony Blunt, a former shipmate and fellow treasure hunter.

A soft deep rumble came from the west. Lightning bolts weren’t visible, just a sheet of white behind the cloud towers.

Charts showed much more civilization on the mainland side of the Gulf, which meant a wreck was more likely to be un-discovered on the Baja side. Puerto Penasco to San Felipe took most of a day. I anchored inside San Felipe’s breakwater and sailed South at first light. The chart showed five small islands about ten hours South, Isla San Louis being the largest, about a mile by two miles. All five are surrounded by reefs and far enough from civilization to be harboring a wreck. The smallest, Isloets Blanko and Isla Region and the shallows between them were worth exploring. My plan was to search the reefs and island shores in the dingy, looking for wreckage or any sign of a wreck.

Waves are starting to build on the backs of the swells. The ride is starting to get exciting. I had been through a Tokin Gulf summer, raging gales and flat calms, but that was on a destroyer not a two-man raft.

I anchored in good ground inshore of Isla Jalme and launched the dingy. I explored the reef and Isloets Blanko and Isla Region. No joy on my first exploring. Estrela spent the night anchored with a very anxious skipper popping up every time she moved unimpededly.

Baja is desert and the adjacent inshore waters reflect that desert environment in losing warmth at night. The kerosene lamp quickly heated the cabin to comfortable temperature. The chart showed the next town or village with sheltered water to be Bahia de Los Angles about a hundred miles away. With a fair wind I could make Bahia de Los Angles in a day and, according to the chart maybe get a pier for the night. The wind cooperated and a pier was open. I ate ashore and slept well. Santa Rosalia lay a hundred thirty-five miles south, a long day’s sail in fair winds.

To be on the safe side I checked Estrela Azur’s diesel. We had leaked about a gallon from her twenty-gallon tank. That had to be fixed. I did not want to leave diesel trailing behind us.

Underway just after dawn for Santa Rosalia. A good sail on a broad reach most of the way. Thirty miles north of Santa Rosalia the wind turned fickle and I doused the main and jib and turned to the iron sails and motored the rest of the way.

We passed a freighter tied up at a T-shaped pier loading something that made lot of dust. A little further south, I found a ten-dollar berth inside Marina Turistica, a large catamaran across the pier. A ship chandler or Jose Demarco, artesano de suministros para barcos as the sign said had a man to crawl deep into Estrela’s bilge to find the leak. He tightened a fitting and charged two hundred bucks for twenty minutes work. You have to know which fitting. I should have looked behind us to see if I was leaking fuel into the water.

As I sailed south, I checked every small island with waves breaking in the shallows. I got really good at anchoring, climbing into the dingy, searching, up anchor and moving on. In the shallows of a reef between Isla Santa Inez and a smaller island which had a stone tower on its Northen point. My anchor and dingy routine paid off. Hidden in a crevice in the reef I found eleven gold coins in a wooden box. The box fell into itself when I poked it with an oar and the gold shone forth. From what I had read this was possibly the Santa Martiana. I think the stone tower was intended to mark the wreck of one of the two ships. What I found was not a Spanish treasure chest but probably from the captain’s expense money or his private stash.

Gold coins, shiny and heavy, tend to hold your attention, these most certainly held mine. What I should have been paying attention to was the wind. A roaring squall came over the peninsula, lifting desert sands on fearsome winds. The storm tore Estrela Azur’s anchor from the sea bed and hurled her onto the reef. Her port bow pounded on the rock and coral wall. I held onto the dinghy’s anchor line and prayed that it would hold. The squall blasted us for five minutes then moved east churning the waters of the Sea of Cortez. A hole in the port bow had let a foot of water into the bilge. I barely managed to pull Estrela off the reef using the RIB and its motor. With the storm jib as frothing, I managed to stop any more water from entering. I called Anders and told him my problem. He advised me to motor up Bahia Coyote to Coyote village. There, I was to anchor Estrela Azur and find Franco Perez to fix the boat.

The village had good holding ground. I found Franco Perez patching a fiberglass fishing boat. He examined our damage. There were no wood planks suitable for the repair. Standing in a rowing boat, he applied a fiberglass patch and warned me that the boat was old, the hull was getting fragile, although between my bad Spanish and his bad English it took awhile to get the idea of fragile worked out.

The wind and sea were starting to get up a bit; a wave expanded my horizon a mile or so more. The westerly was blowing me towards land but I had no idea how far I had to go.

Fiberglass needs to cure before it will be strong. Franco suggested I stay overnight at his friend’s Bay Coyote Inn. The Bay Coyote Inn was like nothing I had seen. There is only one building which contains two rooms. The rest of the establishment is very plush tents, kitchen and dining area outdoors under brush-covered canopies. The food was good and I spent a pleasant night in a conical tent. Mid-day found the fiberglass cured enough for me to continue.

Passing Punta Chivato, which translates to Snitch Point or something like that, or maybe Goat Point, and reaching the sea the boat began behaving oddly, not raising from a wave as quickly as before. Perhaps the weight of the fiberglass patch was the cause.

From Bahia Coyote to Cabo San Lucas, to San Diego was about twelve-hundred miles by chart measurements. Three hundred to Cabo. Then a night partying in the flesh pots of the tourist town and restocking with food and water, then North eight hundred miles to San Diego. Dividers and pencil let me calculate at least thirty days from Bahia Coyote to San Diego not including port call at Santa Rosalita for food and water. My noon fix placed me a few miles East of Isla Guadalupe at 29.03° N, 118.28° W. There I met the container.

The westerly driving the storm towards me has picked up and the waves are getting bigger. I have my feet twisted under straps at the raft’s end and have a firm grip on the straps near my shoulders. The wind is beginning to blow the tops off the waves. I ride up a wave and it breaks, tossing me upside down. I am underwater. I must get my feet clear of the straps. Breath pressing against my lungs, I bend to reach my feet. Breath, air, breath, my lungs demand a breath. I cannot hold it any longer, I exhale. I must not inhale, but I do. Seawater burns my lungs. I need air but there is none. A white light. I see a brilliant white light. The light seems to be rushing towards me. No, I am rushing towards the light. The light is bright but welcoming. Warm, I feel warm and…and welcome. My lungs no longer hurt.

End

Blue STAR

By Jim Spencer

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