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 Friday, February 24
On Friday, we stayed aboard all days and did chores. All three boats took us up on our offer to come over, and we had a lovely time visiting with the other cruisers in between chores.
The only chore of interest to report on (beyond the mundane regular chores such as cooking, cleaning, school work, etc) was that Eric changed the belt on the main alternator. We’d mentioned that when we were in Puerto Don Juan, Eric had removed one of the alternator belts. He did this to stop the vibration issues that was caused by using belts made by different manufacturers. The alternator has been running great with only one belt. Even though it wasn’t supposed to be time to change the belt yet, Eric was concerned that the belt was making too much dust (and thus deteriorating too fast), so he swapped it out with the other belt.
On Saturday, we went to shore with the crew of two of the other boats. Enrique picked up all of us from our respective boats and took us to shore at once. We had no real goal; we just wanted to wander around and see what the town had to offer. We started by walking north up the main drag, Calle Benito Juarez, until the pavement ended and it became a smaller dirt road. We even followed the dirt road for a ways until we realized it was going to dead end. We then followed random streets back towards the water.
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.
Continuing on with Wednesday, February 22 — We decided to anchor near the only village in the bay. We’re unclear on whether the name of the village is Bahia Tortugas or if it is Puerto San Bartolome — we’ve seen both. There were three sailboats and three trawler-style fishing boats already anchored there, though one of the trawlers looked to be abandoned.
At about 0730, we made our first attempt to anchor. Unfortunately, the anchor didn’t set. When we brought the anchor back up, we saw that it was covered in seaweed. We moved to a different spot. The anchor didn’t set a second time, either. We moved locations again. Fortunately, three times was a charm and the anchor did set. We saw quite a few dolphins while we were anchoring.
Continue readingTuesday, 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.