Thursday, 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!

Monday, 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.

Sunday, 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.