Puerto Refugio Days 3 – 5

On Thursday morning (September 22), Eric took a dinghy ride to scope out the general area.

In the afternoon, we went snorkeling with the dad and kids from Auryn at the western edge of the middle anchorage. The tide was low at that point, so many of the rocks were exposed and we couldn’t get all that close to the shoreline. While there were quite a few fish, there weren’t many varieties of fish or many colorful fish. The topography was interesting, though.

The dad caught a couple of grouper and offered us one of them. Christi offered to make dinner for everyone if they’d fillet the fish. They took us up on the offer, ad In the evening, they came over to Kosmos for dinner. The boys even dressed up! The fish was so good; the secret to fish is the freshness. 

Friday sunrise, looking at the sea lion island

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La Mona Anchorage to La Gringa Anchorage, Both in Bahia de Los Angeles

When Eric woke up, on Sunday (September 11), a few of his toes were bruised and it was a bit hard for him to walk. Not a fun way to start the day. He is glad he did not fall farther on the stairs.

The almost full moon was visible — and magical looking — long after sunrise.

A few boats had left the Bay of LA on Saturday, but most had stayed for the party. Today, people began to part ways. One by one, people announced on the radio that they were leaving and where they were going. Even though we’d only known most of these people for ten days (some more, some less), after so much fun socializing and going through the hurricane together, we felt bonded with them. It was sad to see them go.

We weren’t going very far, just to the northern tip of Bahia de Los Angeles. Before we left, we had some of the boat kids over to play D&D for a couple of hours. 

We pulled up anchor at 1315 and headed for La Gringa, about a 1.75 hour ride from La Mona. We knew we were in the right place when we saw a giant sign on a hill that said “Welcome to La Gringa.”

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Puerto Don Juan to La Mona Anchorage

Thursday, September 1 — One of our neighbors in the anchorage at Don Juan was throwing herself a birthday party this evening, and she had invited us to attend. The party was taking place in a different anchorage, called La Mona, which was about an hour ride away.

On Thursday morning, we got up early and hustled through our chores. Thursday was also Keith’s first day of school, so he did his schoolwork while Eric and Christi did chores.

One of Eric’s chores was to remove one of the alternator belts. When Eric had changed the alternator belts in Puerto Escondido, he used the same size belt made by two different manufacturers. Even though the belts were supposed to be the same, they were slightly different and it was causing a vibration. Eric figured that removing one of the belts would solve this (the alternator can run with only one belt).

Once chores/schoolwork were done, we got Kosmos ready to go to sea. We pulled up anchor at around 0915. We were the last boat to leave Don Juan. In transit, we passed “the window.” After enjoying the view through “the window” for several days from inside the anchorage, It was fun to see the view from the outside looking in.

La Mona was a lovely beach on the east side of Southern Bahia de Los Angeles, protected by large hills and jutting rock formations to the north. The beach was lined with homes. Some of the homes were nice, some were mobile homes.  

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Puerto Don Juan Days 2 – 3

Sunrise, Tuesday August 30

As the sun was rising, a fleet of little fishing pangas came roaring into the bay and stopped suddenly near our boat. They fished for maybe an hour, then roared back out as fast as they came in. We heard several conversations between Americans, so we are guessing that tourists hire the pangas to take them fishing.

Eric had spent Monday evening trying to figure out how to fix the AC water maker. He realized that there was a way to re-set the computer on the AC water maker to keep it running despite the sensor indicating that the water was too salty. On Tuesday morning, he got up early, emptied out the lazarette so he could get to the water maker, took the water maker apart, turned the setting dial behind the control panel, tested it, and then put the water maker back together. He is pleased to report that it worked, and the AC water maker is again operational!

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