continued from yesterday... walk over to Colimilla for lunch. This time, once we exited the gated community, we made our first left hand turn and walked back down the hill.

Our destination was a waterfront restaurant named Colimilla that claimed to have the best seafood. Street signs.

Sign on the water taxi stand:

The restaurant was large. The majority of the seating was onshore — bare dirt covered by papalpas — but we got lucky and found seating on the deck above the water. A bird hovered around Keith for the majority of the time we were seated. The bird bounced between the deck railing, the chair next to Keith, the chair behind Keith, and occasionally down to the floor near Keith’s feet. The bird was always intently eying Keith’s food. We kept expecting it to attack the food, but it never did. 

After lunch, we walked back to the boat and did the last-minute things to get ready for sea. We untied about 1730 and made our way out of the bay into the open ocean. Not far from the entrance to Bahia Navidad, we saw a wrecked tanker ship smashed up on the rocky shore.

The sea conditions were wonderful, with swells at about 2 – 3 feet with long intervals. The wind was light, and thus the wind chop was minimal. The current was with us and we were making good time, averaging about 6.5 knots at only 1600 RPM. 

It was overcast and oppressively hot and humid, making all three of us feel lethargic. The cloud cover blocked the stars, and the moon didn’t rise until the wee hours of the morning. Except for when we passed Manzanilla, which was a fairly large city with a lot of lights, it was pitch black for most of the night. 

Sunday sunrise

Around dawn, the wind began to pick up and the current shifted to be against us, creating head seas. Our estimate is 1 – 4 foot wind chop waves, coming at rapid enough intervals to make Kosmos hobby horse. The ride was moderately uncomfortable and we had to hold on tight when we moved around. We increased the RPM to 1650 and were averaging about 5.5 knots. 

In the early afternoon, we saw three whales swimming relatively close to us. They dove deep before we had a chance to get the cameras out, but we saw all three of their flukes.

With the head seas, the terrible creaking has returned. We failed to mention that one of the chores that Eric did while we were in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle was to remove the ceiling of the aft closet in the stateroom to try to locate the source of the noise. He did see a somewhat loose cable tie and tightened it, hoping that may address part of the creak. He left the ceiling panel off so he could look at it while the noise was happening. He checked today, and didn’t see anything that would cause the noise. When we’re in a marina, he’ll try looking in the wall

Sunday’s sunset — the fog made the sun look pink.

In the late afternoon, the wind died back down. By 2000, the wind chop had seriously diminished. But, even though the swell wasn’t that big nor frequent, the swell was still against us and thus we were still in head seas. Eric was sea sick. 

The seas continued to steadily calm down, and by midnight, the seas were pleasant and Eric was feeling good again. 

It was another overcast night, with few stars visible most of the time, and no moon until the wee hours of the morning.