Wednesday, November 9, 2011

11/8/2011 -- Los Frailes, Part 2

Beautiful day on the boat anchored behind Cabo Frailes in 20-30 knot winds...The highest gust I saw registered mid 30's under a bright sun and almost cloudless skies...even the pangeros in the fish camp stayed on the beach.  A couple of boats had to reset their anchors and one single hander started dragging out to sea but discovered his situation before he had gone too far and re-anchored. 
 
One of the interesting things about Los Frailes is that the bottom profile is relatively flat and then drops off into a deep underwater canyon that runs to almost a 1000 feet at one point.  One of the cruising guides mentions that divers can often see sand cascading off of the shallow anchorage into the canyon...We dropped the hook in 25 feet with 150 ft of chain out on a 25' snubber which hold the chain about 10 feet deep.  In the big gusts the snubber was pulled taught at about a 30 degree angle from the bow!  We had the anchor watch set on the chart plotter and never had a drag issue; the course plotting feature drew a dark circle as we skated back and forth all day...

Los Frailes is starkly beautiful with jagged mountains outlining the sunset...I'm writing this after sunset (at 1830) and the wind has mitigated a great deal with average wind speeds in the teens...below deck there is no wind noise and the gentle rocking of WWV is a peaceful reminder that we are on the water, but when you go on deck the wind noise and chill get to you quickly...we're getting spoiled in the tropics...

 We all spent the day reading...I started and finished a Louis L'Amour "Ride the River" a Sackett Saga... Danny was reading "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" and Joe was reading "Dove Hunt"...an eclectic selection...I only read L'Amour when I'm at sea and since all the stories tend to follow the same formula, they bring back lots of good sailing memories...I'm on to Michener's "The Source" a book that I first read in high school and remember virtually nothing about (so far)...since Michener's books tend to run into beau coup pages, it should keep me tied up for a while...it's unfortunate that so few of his books are available for the Kindle...

 The gribs suggest that we'll be holed up here for another day or two...no worries, we be cruisin...

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