1/8/2012

It was too good to last and it ended yesterday about 1500 local...the calm winds accelerated to the tens, then the teens and occasionally into the low twenties...all on the nose...During my watch last night I must have barber hauled the main to opposite tacks over 50 times...every time I'd get it set and to stop flogging, the wind would shift 15 or 20 degrees to the opposite tack...I began to get the feeling that King Neptune had an eye on us and was having his jollies...You've just got to grin and bear it, it could always be a lot worse!

With the big wind came the big chop and swells...occasionally practically stopping us in our tracks...it's enough to make a grown man cry when he sees VMG of 2 kts!  The forecast for this morning is for the wind to start to veer to the east...it's been doing that VERY slowly for the past couple of hours...if it continues we'll start to get some power out of the main and we may even be able to roll out the jib and sail for a while...so far sailing has been hard to come by...

We're set up to take advantage of any eastern angles predicted once we get north Cedros Island (we'll be about 50nm w of Cedros, headed for the north end of Guadalupe)...the gribs show winds from SD to Guadalupe out of the NW and we wanted to get a decent port tack angle...around Cedros, the gribs show wind veering east starting this morning and remaining east of north for a couple of days then shifting back to nw...by getting a little offshore we hope to be able to take advantage of the normal nw winds common to this coast.

We've seen an big increase in ship traffic...several freighters and tankers have come within 3 miles of us...I always call on the radio and they'll frequently alter course slightly, but they never reply even when identified by name (thanks to AIS data rec'd).

We've switched back to SD time...and got the SD offshore cold wx to go along with it.  I'm now in full foul wx gear for my watches...I'm going to have to have a talk with the union guy...

1/7/2012

We are at 24.17N/112.09W...which is just off of the southern opening of Mag Bay (beam on the northern light of Isla Santa Margarita) and about 26 miles (almost due south) from Bahia Santa Maria...winds have been consistently just far enough off of our nose to keep the main marginally useful...it changes from port to starboard, we haven't really had to make minimal course corrections so far as the change happens within a short period and the winds are light enough not to beat up the main even when it's slatting.

When I came on watch this morning at 0600 the big swells from the north gave the impression that we were sailing uphill...we would slow down to 5.5 knots going up the swell and speed up to 7.5 knots going down the back side.  We're turning a few more rpm (1800) than we usually do in order to take advantage of this weather window...exhaust temps are still just over 600F so nothing is straining.

The temps are slowly starting to decline...I remember coming south how much warmer I thought things were when we got to BSM...we're not looking forward to the "freezing" temps of SD...we're still in tropic mode.

We've seen little or no traffic since leaving Cabo...with the exception of cruise ships.  The Disney Wonder was anchored in Cabo and passed us heading north last night and three other cruise ships were in the vicinity, although one had Manzanillo as a destination in the AIS so I don't know if they made the Cabo scene.  As I write this, there is a container ship (Toledo Carrier) about 8 miles off of our port beam...headed to Manzanillo...

1/6/2012

We got to the Cabo harbor entrance at 1000 and were fueled and gone by 1030. Fortunately the fuel dock was completely devoid of customers so we go first rate attention. We burned 34 gallons in 24 hours...roughly 1.5 gal/hr...I'm pleased with that because it means that if the good weather holds we can bypass Turtle Bay because we'll have enough fuel on board. 

The winds are out of the west for the most part and we're making good time toward Isla Guadelupe...it's about 542 miles NW of us but if we can get there in this mild weather we should be able to fall off and sail to San Diego...that's if the north winds fill in as predicted...time will tell. 

If this weather holds, we'll be off of Bahia Santa Maria tomorrow afternoon... We're having arrachera steak tonight...the high pressure system has raised temps by about 10 degrees so it's not too cold to barbecue outside...

1/5/2012 -- Underway

We were underway at 0700 from Mazatlan...we had to swing the compass after the auto pilot fix and we then headed WSW toward Cabo.  There is a great deal of commercial traffic around Mazatlan so the first hour involved some application of the gross tonnage rule but two hours out we seem to be in the clear.

I'd fish, but I'm afraid I'd catch a fish...the sea is teaming with them...

1/4/2012

Today is the last port day in Mexico...we'll resupply this morning and get underway tomorrow at about 0700 in order to catch the high tide out of the marina.  Danny and Laura are going to help me with the food shopping and then spend a last day together.  I'll check on oil levels etc. and check out of the marina so we can get away before the staff comes in.

The Mazatlan "Gold Zone" is totally set up for American tourists...all the signs are in English and almost all the local stores and restaurants have English speaking staff...The El Cid resort has an "all-inclusive" package that costs $330 pesos/day that includes all meals, drinks and a show...you can get a 20% discount on that if you have a boat in the marina...that would come to about $20/US/day...a couple of cruisers have signed up for 90 days...they may never leave...

1/3/2012

Today I spent all morning fixing the autopilot...Jamie inadvertently connected the wind vane when we were motoring and it apparently burned up the ram or at least the rams clutch...I'll get it rebuilt when I get back to SD.  Today, I wasn't sure what the problem was, so I had to go through a series of checks...I finally replaced the ram (linear drive) with a back up I got on ebay a couple of years ago...it's working fine so far and I'm hoping it continues to work fine because if there's not enough wind to make the wind vane work, we'll have to be steering if the pilot isn't working...that would suck!

1/1/2012 -- Happy New Year!

Last night must have been one of the tamest new years in history...a couple of boats came into Los Muertos just before dusk but didn't even launch a dinghy...we ate left over tuna caserole (which turned out really well) did a little Kindle reading and hit the sack a about 1930...

I got up at 0130 to a perfect night sky with winds out of the north at about 9 kts...with Mazatlan laying just south of east, it doesn't get much better than that!  After getting underway I send Danny to bed and sailed in slowly building winds until 0600 when I woke up Danny and got about 90 minutes of shut eye...

Talk about fixing your boat in exotic places, this morning the battery charger failed to light off when I started the genset for the refer...that took about an hour to repair...another Rube Goldberg job...it's going to catch up to me at some point.

We're at 23.51N 108.55W and it looks like we're going to get to Mazatlan more quickly than I had planned...we're making between 6.5 and 7 knots and I'd only planned on about 5-6 because the winds were forecast so light...hey, we'll take it...Neptune is finally smiling on us.