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...