Living the dream of cruising the world on our 45' sailboat, the Liahona. We are limited budget cruisers just trying to enjoy every moment of this amazing life and sharing our experiences along the way.
After a great visit and overnight stay with Nathan down in Buenaventura we are back anchored down in Santispak. I love this anchorage for it's great protection from almost every direction and beautiful sand bottom that holds on to the anchor like a commercial sized piece of industrial velcro. Locally we are waiting out a short little norther that is bringing about 20 some knots of wind over the next few days. Long term we are waiting to see what Hurricane Patricia is going to do. More on that...
Hurricane Patricia has wound up tight and quickly strengthened to become the strongest hurricane on record for Pacific Mexico...that is saying something! Yesterday it went from a Cat 3 hurricane to a Cat 5 (the highest level given for hurricanes). It is packing sustained winds of 175 mph with gusts to 215 mph and bringing torrential (probably not a strong enough word) rain to the coastline of Mexico near the Manzanillo area. It is expected to turn inland between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta and they are calling for flooding to be complete inundation in some cities and towns. The turning inland part is good news for us as we are far north and if it stays inland it will weaken and knock itself out. Sometimes they bounce off of the mainland and continue north. Something that we hope does not happen. Either way we are keeping a close eye on it and have excellent weather reports every morning that all cruisers are paying strict attention to.
This morning has been beautiful here in the Bay of Conception and Marne and I went for a nice run along the beach enjoying the beauty of the early morning sun as it glistens on the water and casts shadows on the back sides of the beautiful mountains that surround us. All is well on board and we send much Mexican warmth and love north to all of you.
Yesterday we made our way down the Bay of Conception to Playa Buenaventura where Nathan lives. When we got there and dropped the anchor we spotted a whale shark just off the bow in about 15' of water. We immediately dropped the dinghy in the water, threw in some snorkeling gear and the GoPro and headed his direction. Marne has never seen a whale shark before so I told her not to be shy and jump in. The whale shark was a bit more skittish than normal but Marne jumped right in and swam over to him, reached out her hand placing it on his back and let him swim on by as her hand slipped over the length of him and off the back of his enormous tail. At that point he dove down a little and we lost him. It wasn't a very long encounter but Marne said it was one of the most amazing things she has ever experienced in her life.
Our time at the bar/restaurant with Nathan was awesome enjoying some great food and good company with our friends off of Harmony and also Cake, both other cruisers on sailboats. It got pretty windy and choppy in the afternoon but we decided to stick it out and stay here in front of Nathan's place overnight then leave sometime later this afternoon headed back for Santispak farther north in the bay and much more protected from the strong north winds that are predicted over the next few days.
We decided to hop on down to Bahia Conception yesterday from San Marcos. As we headed out we rolled out the main, actually tried to roll out the main and got it jammed. Really jammed! First time in 2 years that has happened. So we sailed with headsail only for the 20 some miles south to the head of the Bay of Conception to an anchorage called Santo Domingo where we had our friends onboard the sailboat Harmony waiting for us. The sail was near perfect, the only glitch was not having a mainsail in the 8-15 knots of wind coming off of our starboard beam. With headsail only we moved along nicely at about 5-6 knots in a nearly flat sea. Such an amazing day. About 4 miles short of the anchorage we hooked into a small dorado which we landed. It was maybe 4-5 lbs but made for an amazing fish taco dinner shared with our friends on Harmony.
This morning after a good night sleep and a clear head, Robert from Harmony, Ken from the sailboat Cake and I went up on deck to tackle the jammed mainsail problem. It was like magic. After a mere 3 minutes or so it popped free and is working perfectly. As a sidenote, I spent over 3 hours messing with it yesterday with near zero success. We are so happy to have it all working well.
Right now we are heading the short 7 miles south to Santispak in the Bay of Conception. It is a beautiful day and we are a pair of very happy cruisers today! Hope all is well on land. Until next time....
Day two here at Isla San Marcos but there are some moderate winds heading our way over the next couple of days so I think we will pull anchor this morning and enjoy a nice sail south 12nm to Punta Chivato where we will find good protection from the NW winds over the next day or two.
Yesterday was a very nice day here with no wind and about 88 degrees. It has been a bit muggy lately, around 70-80% humidity but other than that we have no complaints. We rigged up the new WindScoops over the forward hatches and they are delightful. A windscoop is a spinnaker like sail that is about 5' tall by the width of the hatch and funnel a serious bit of wind down into the cabin. Yesterday we took a peek into the lobster cave and saw several but they were smaller so we let them be to grow up some more. We did get some great GoPro footage of a couple of them along with the ever present morray eels. Hopefully we will get good enough interenet connection in the next week or two to upload a couple of those vids.
Last night we took out the Hooka rig, a dive tank with a 30' long hose, and did a little looking for more lobsters. Visibility was poor but I saw several smaller lobster and wound up taking two pretty nice ones that are now in the freezer waiting to fill the lobster cravings that will most certainly come up soon.
All is well onboard and hopefully this afternoon we will be securely anchored at Punta Chivato, just north of the town of Mulege. Oh, by the way, we are LOVING the new windlass! It is quiet, smooth and powerful.
It was a long, very hot, very humid week on dry dock preparing the boat for the upcoming cruising season. An entire day was used just unloading the car with all of the parts, pieces, stocking supplies and provisions we brought down from the states. Who would have thought that it would take an entire day to unload a 1991 Honda Civic? Let's just say we did a pretty good job of using every inch of space in our trusty steed. After the unloading was done we put a fresh coat of bottom paint on the boat, installed a brand new Lewmar windlass on the bow, two new deck hatches and generally organized, cleaned and re-commissioned the essentials in order to get 'er wet.
Thursday the 9th of October at 9am was the official time for the splash and things went off without a hitch. The boat was loaded on the trailer and trucked down the road about a mile to the San Carlos Marina. Then she slowly rolled down into the water. It is hard to describe the feeling of happiness once we were in, all systems checked and then motoring out of the marina and into the bay. We dropped anchor in about 20' of water and have had huge smiles on our faces ever since.
Impressive Sonoran thunderstorm
Once in the water there have been plenty of project still to complete in order to be ready to make the crossing over to the Baja side of the Sea of Cortez. In between some spectacular thunderstorms all of the running rigging had to come out of lockers and be properly put in place as well as raising and furling the sails. We have worked on electronics, heads, furnishings as well as some nice homey decorations under the watchful eye of the first mate Marne.
First mate getting the jib up
At this point, we are only lacking one key component to be ready to head out for the season...the refridgeration. After going in the water we turned it on and although it was working, it was well below par, working very hard to produce very little cold. Monday we will tackle that project and are praying it is nothing major. Once that is fixed we can go to the grocery store, buy provisions and be ready for a good weather window to make the crossing over to Isla San Marcos.
As cruising season is just getting under way here in Mexico, we have met up with several friends from previous seasons and are looking forward to running across their paths over the next several months as we head south down the Mexican coastline...indeed one of the very enjoyable things about being part of the very close knit cruising community.
