Turtle Bay is a nice bay. It has a small town, and some restaurants. There was a person who had a water taxi service and could take us to the town on his boat. But he dropped us off at the pier, which was covered in bird poop! It was disgusting. So we did beach landings when we went to town one our own dinghy.
Sunrise on Sunday, February 26
In the morning, we went to shore to enjoy dry land. The wind had shifted and the waves were coming from a different direction now. Even with the paravanes, the anchorage was rolly. Not rolly to the point of uncomfortable, but rolly enough to desire going to shore.
Continue readingSunrise on Thursday, February 23
This morning, we got dinghy down and went to shore, along with a fellow cruiser named Garth. Not wanting to deal with the scary pier, we opted for a beach landing on the south side of the pier. With the waves coming into the bay, the landing was a little bit tricky, but the shoreline was sheltered enough that we managed just fine. Here are some shots of the buildings along the shore where we’d landed.
Tuesday, February 21 — The seas had been calm on Monday until about 2030 (8:30 pm), when the swells, swell period and wind chop all started to pick up. By midnight, Kosmos was pitching so much that we had to always had to have one hand holding onto the boat or else we’d get knocked over. The forecast didn’t have the seas picking up this much this fast; it was supposed to be a gradual worsening.
The wind continued to increase throughout the night. It was hitting us on the forward port quarter (for a visual, from 10:00 on a clock). Even though it was dark, from the incredibly uncomfortable motion, it was obvious that the wind chop was coming from that direction, while the swells were on our nose, making for confused seas. The motion was like a half-pitch, half-roll.
At 0400, an alarm went off which indicated that the autopilot couldn’t see the data from the navigation system. Christi woke Eric up. He turned it off and back on again, and it magically worked fine.
When it was finally light enough to see, we surmised that it was probably 5 – 6 foot swells at about 4 – 6 seconds, plus 2 – 3 foot wind chop.
Sunrise on Monday, February 20
The panga picked us up from Kosmos at 0740.
It was a 20-minute ride back to the mouth of the bay in their fast panga, as opposed to the over 1.5 hours that it had taken us with Kosmos yesterday. It was the perfect day for whale watching, with light, variable winds and totally flat seas, thus making the whales easy to spot. Only licensed tour operators were allowed to get close to the whales, so taking our dinghy back to the mouth entrance in hopes of seeing them on our own would have been illegal.
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