Yesterday while anchored at Bahia Uvita, we rowed ashore to walk around. When we got back to the boat, we found that the outside of the hull was covered by thousands of baby mosquitos. Some were bigger than others, but they were smaller than the ones we catch trying to feed on us at night. It's too bad we didn't think to take some pictures of all of them because I've never seen anything like it. We freaked out! We found that by splashing buckets of water on the hull, we could dislodge them. But then they just flew onto something else although we drowned some of them. Once we got the hull sort of cleaned off, we decided that we wanted to be somewhere far from mosquitos, so we pulled up the anchor and departed at once for Drakes Bay. We assumed that the wind of sailing would blow all of the little bugs away. I figure that there were 10,000 of them in the beginning.
We don't know why they chose our boat in the first place. We were anchored 300 yards offshore but maybe an offshore wind blew them out to us and our boat was the only island in sight so they picked it. We've had birds land on the boat when they got tired of flying and needed an island (but I digress).
Well, the sailing might have gotten rid of some of them, but there were several hundred still with us when we got to Drakes Bay (5 hours). We again threw water on them and swatted with a flyswatter those who got inside. Andrea was the relentless killer (Albert Schweitzer she wasn't).
By dinner time, we began to realize that truly drastic measures would be needed if we wanted any sleep and wanted to awake without needing transfusions. So we set up the table in the cockpit, made a pitcher of drinks, and set out dinner so that we could stay outside for a while. Then we closed up the boat and lit a bunch of mosquito coils. Folks in the tropics know what those are. With the boat closed up, it got smokier and smokier and finally there were no bugs buzzing around the lights. By this time, dinner and drinks were done and we opened up the boat and put Andrea's custom bug screens over all the windows. She made these before we left, not fully appreciating how valuable they would be. After airing out the boat, there was not a single bug to be found and we spent the night absolutely uneaten. Given that we started with 10,000 mosquitos (give or take a few), it is remarkable that neither of us have a single bite!
Once in a while, if we anchor too close to shore or if the wind is offshore, we get mosquitos. But it is not all that common, especially since we left Mexico which has marinas built in swamps. No-see-ums are much worse as they raise an itchy welt that can last for a week.
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