On Friday morning (September 9), we were surprised to wake up to no wind and no rain. The storm had cleared much earlier than expected. What a relief! It did start to drizzle not long after we woke up, but the drizzle didn’t last long.
The rivers had dried up. We couldn’t believe how clear the water in the bay was! Between all the mud that had come down and the churned up water, we’d expected the water to be too dirty to run the generator or watermaker. Another happy surprise!
Continue readingThursday, September 9 – We were all up very early. In good news, the forecast had improved to only 30 to 40-knots of sustained winds with gusts to 50. Also, the worst of the storm would hit in the late afternoon, not after dark. Taking the storm at night was scary because it meant we wouldn’t necessarily be able to see a problem arise and head it off, so having it hit in daylight was very comforting. While Kay was a category 1 hurricane out in the Pacific, it was merely a tropical storm strength here in the Sea of Cortez.
In the early morning, there was light rain and no wind at all. This was taken at 0715.
At 0730, the wind started. 1000 is when it started to get strong. We actually had a relatively normal morning until 1100. At that point, Eric and Christi stopped everything and did nothing for the rest of the day but watch the storm from the pilothouse while Keith played video games.
At 1150, there was a 39-knot gust. Kosmos moved 60 feet closer to shore. Eric freaked out, thinking that the anchor had dragged. He did some quick math and realized that the chain was now as streched out as it could be and the anchor was holding firm. That was a relief!
Continue readingHere is the sunrise on Tuesday, September 6. Look at how bright the moon is despite the early morning sun.
Not long after that photo was taken, the wind picked up. We had 17-knot sustained winds with gusts to 25-knots for pretty much the entire day. Since the wind was coming from the same direction as the hurricane would be coming from, this was actually a blessing. It meant all the boats were pushed into the place that they will be during the storm, allowing each of us to more accurately judge if we are far enough away from other boats/hazards to be safe on Thursday. One boat left, deciding they’d rather ride the storm out in the Bay of LA than Don Juan. A few boats repositioned themselves into different spots here in Don Juan.
Continue readingMonday, September 5 — Here is the sunrise.
Eric had been so focused on the wind speed forecast that he’d forgotten to check swell size. Out in the Pacific, 100 miles west of Cabo San Lucas, the waves were expected be 44-feet at 15-seconds on Wednesday. Cabo’s forecast was 24-foot waves. We are so glad we moved north!
In our neck of the woods, on Thursday, when the storm would be at its peak up here, there would be 4-foot swells. But Friday morning the waves were supposed to build to 10 feet. Guess we won’t be going anywhere on Friday. The seas were expected to calm back down on Saturday.
Continue readingSunday, September 4 – The alarm went off at 0500. Outside, there was no wind or rain, and the skies were partly cloudy. Eric did a quick weather check to see is the forecasts had changed. They’d both worsened. One model said the sustained winds were expected to be 29 knots with gusts to 55 knots. The other model said sustained winds of 52 knots, with gusts to 66 knots. The storm would hit on Wednesday morning, peak on Thursday night and die down Friday around noon. There would be .25 inch of rain every hour. Fortunately, the eye, which would bring 87-mph winds, would stay over the Pacific, so we would miss the worst of it.
We determined that yes, we really did need to go to Don Juan. We did a few last minute things to finish getting Kosmos ready for sea and pulled up anchor at about 0600. Oddly enough, there were tons of dead termites all over the exterior of the boat.
Our first stop was The Village, which was a short 45-minute ride. When we pulled into the anchorage, the panga fishing fleet was there. We anchored farther away from shore than we had initially intended to so that we could stay far away from the fishermen.
