Best laid plans.....

Well, we meant to take a long leisurely sail down the coast, stopping at all the places we missed on our return to Santa Rosalia, and then the weather and breakdowns interrupted our plans. After spending two nights at Alacran together, the three kid boats were all planning to enjoy at least three more anchorages before returning to Santa Rosalia. Then on the second morning in Alacran, our first stop, we woke to mounting winds and blustery conditions. The weather on the Amigo net called for 25 to 30 knots in our location, increasing the following two days to up to 45 knots. It is really hard to enjoy an anchorage with 30 knots blowing past. so we all decided to move farther south to get out of the wind storm's way.

Our next stop was San Francisquito. It was a bumpy, long ride to get that far, but finally around 5:00 pm we made it to that anchorage. The weather update on the Southbound Net at 6:00 pm indicated that several more days of high winds were forecast for the area. When we heard that report, the JaM crew decided to just keep going. We had been nursing a leaking water intake pump on our starboard engine for the last two months, and in the last few days, the leak was increasing significantly. It didtn't seem like a good idea to get pinned down by a wind storm with a significantly increasing engine problem. Add to that, our propane system for cooking was acting up and working very sporadically for the last few weeks. Add to that, our water maker had begun leaking and requiring a lot of attention to continue working. With all that put together, the decision to keep moving was easy.

We had already been traveling since 9 am that morning and had put in about 8 hours in seas with 5-6 foot waves and gusts up to 30 knots on our port hind quarter. A very bumpy ride, and I was not feeling well. So we pulled over at a beach with north wind protection and cooked up some dinner, watched a movie, and caught a three hour nap before waking at midnight to continue the trip to Santa Rosalia, another 70 miles further south. At about the halfway point in our journey, our one good engine suddenly began acting oddly and so we shut it off. That left us with 1/2 a working engine and no wind! A new problem! It was excruciating to creep along at 3 to 4 knots, but about fourteen miles out of Santa Rosalia, the forecasted winds started up and we caught a fast and furious ride on 25 knots of wind. It was fun to scream along on a reefed in main and jib, after hours of bobbing around listlessly. We made it into Santa Rosalia around 2 pm, about 29 hours after we had left Alacran.

So here we sit at Santa Rosalia, with a few boat projects to occupy our time and decisions to make about where to haul out and get repairs made. The wind storms will be blowing through here until this weekend, but we will probably be here longer than that. The mound of laundry alone should take days to work through!
Laura