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.
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.
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!
