IGNACIO WELCOMES ME BACK TO BAJA

Mirador is still anchored in Puerto Escondido where I arrived Friday evening. My plans had been to put the dodger and bimini back on Mirador and get ready to head north on Monday the 25th. I wanted to take Mirador up to Loreto (about 13 miles) and anchor off the breakwater while I checked out with the Port Captain and got all my supplies and gasoline in town.  Then I was going to make fast tracks north to Bahia de Los Angeles. I was in a hurry to leave here because we are getting into the peak of Baja Hurricane season. 

As it now appears at 2 PM Sunday August 24  - I WAS TOO LATE IN GETTING BACK AND HEADING NORTH!

 Our huge concern  is Hurricane Ignacio which is currently 180 nautical miles southeast of here headed directly for Mirador at 4 knots.  As of four hours ago Ignacio was producing 90 knots gusting to 115 knots and 35' (yes 35 feet) seas within 20 miles of it's center.  He is supposed to further intensify this evening and pass just 20 miles east of La Paz with 120 knot winds.  

When I went to bed Saturday night the storm was forecast to hit Cabo San Lucas Sunday morning and then head NW across the west cape and head off shore into the cool Pacific near Todo Santos. That meant up here in Loreto we would see maybe 35 knots for a few hours on Sunday afternoon  or evening.

When I got up this morning and turned on the HAM radio I heard Don (the Mexican weather expert) saying that Hurricane Ignacio would make a direct hit on Puerto Escondido about mid-day Tuesday with winds of 60 knots gusting to 75. I guess the track changed while I slept.

At 8 AM Sunday the eye was 15 miles in diameter and was going to stay about that size. The storm center is forecast to pass within 5 miles of here on Tuesday noon so we should experience the full force of the eye wall.

The storm is only moving at 4 to 5 knots so the winds will be with us for a while. Fifty (50) knot winds extend out 40 miles from the center and 35 knots extend out 75 miles from the center. That means we will have 35+ knots from late afternoon Monday thru dark on Tuesday and we should have 50+ knots from early AM Tuesday thru about sundown Tuesday.

Since the storm shifted direction last night - I am really praying that it shifts again. The Mexican government, at 11 AM Sunday, broadcast a message that said the storm would cross the Baja peninsula headed west when it got north of La Paz and head out into the Pacific. That would keep the storm center about 100 miles south of us so we would then have only 40 or so knots on Tuesday morning.

Ignacio is moving very slowly and is skirting the Baja Peninsula which has a 4000 to 6000 foot mountain range running down the center of it.  The Peninsula is 40 to 70 miles wide with the cool Pacific Ocean on the west side and the warm Sea of Cortez on the east side.  All of the forecasters keep saying how difficult it is to predict the track of this storm because of the complex topography and the presence of two very dis-similar water masses so close together.  Storms that track up the Peninsula have a famous history of not behaving as forecast. 

In October 2001 Hurricane Juliet flummoxed the forecasters when she was on the west side of the central Baja coast  over the cool Pacific Ocean and was forecast to continue NW into even cooler water.  Juliet made a 90 degree turn, jumped over the 5000' mountains and descanted on all the boats hiding in Bahia Concepcion while the forecasters kept saying she was headed out to sea.  Juliet spent the next five days wandering around the Sea of Cortez, making several dramatic and unpredicted changes of direction.   My hope is Ignacio will do something similar and head west before he gets here Tuesday morning.

The problem, if it stays on the course that Don projected up the Baja East coast, is that it will stay over 85+ degree water all the way up the Baja east coast. It is supposed to stay above 50 knots until at least Friday morning when it is between San Felipe and San Carlos.

I suspect the marina at Santa Rosalia, where I was last year at this time, will really get clobbered since the wind will be SE and then East for over 24 hours at over 35 knots. They are predicting seas of over 20' while it is north of here. The harbor entrance opens SE so I hope none of our friends are there.

Ignacio is supposed to hit Bahia de Los Angeles (BLA) with 50 knots on Thursday evening.  BLA was where I had planned to be by now if my HAM radio had not died and I had not taken it back to the states for repair.  I am not sure which Hurricane anchorage I would rather be in, here in Puerto Escondido, or the almost landlocked Puerto Don Juan.

One of the current dramas here in the Puerto Escondido area is that the Moorings charter base in La Paz is desperately looking for three 38' catamarans they sent out on Charter last Monday. The boats have only VHF radio and no one knows where they are. The charter folks may have no idea about the upcoming Hurricane that will hit them within 24 hours.  Right now it is clear, calm and hot.  The barometer has been steady all day and there are no unusual clouds to the south.  A 4000 mountain range is between us and the storm so it will be hard for them to know it is coming.  Every afternoon there is a significant cloud buildup over the mountains and there are lots of thunderstorms most days.

The Mooring boats were last seen near here yesterday but it appears they headed to La Paz to return the boats as scheduled on Monday.  That trip south would almost certainly be fatal. There are no safe anchorages between here and La Paz and they are predicting 30'+ seas and 120 knot gusts tonight and tomorrow morning for the area between Evaristo and La Paz. We are all hoping they turn around and head back to Puerto Escondido. As of 2:30PM no one from Agua Verde to Loreto has seen the boats.  In this case ignorance may be deadly.

The weather forecasters are predicting we will get 12" to 25" (as in one to two feet) of rain during the storm. That amount of water in a very short time here in the dessert will wipe out the roads for weeks. When Henrietta hit here several years ago they got less than 12" and Loreto was cutoff from the world for a week. Two years ago Juliet dumped 12" of rain on Cabo San Lucas and the road to town was closed for seven days.  I've got enough supplies to last a couple of weeks but it should be interesting.

I have a 66 pound Spade anchor down in 45' of water with 120' of chain and 200' of 5/8" nylon rode (&:1 scope).  It has been on the bottom since July 23 and has held in several 35+ knot Chubascos.  Elvin the diver, (he has been diving and taking care of boats here for 7 years) just finished checking the rode and chain. He said the middle third of the chain (about 40') is buried more than 4' down in the mud. He tried to pull it up put couldn't. He said the anchor shank is buried at least 2' down. He said it looked great. 

I thought I would put the Bruce on a chain in front of the Spade but Elvin said that didn't work so well for most boats in Puerto Escondido. He said my Spade would be plenty. I have the Fortress FX55 on with 150' of chain and 200' of rode as a backup if Mirador starts dragging.

I'm anchored in a great spot for winds and seas. The wind should blow from the NE then East until the eye passes then from the NW and W after the eye passes. I have 100 to 300 foot hills to the NE, N, NW, and West and they are all within 200 yards of me. I imagine the waves will stay down since there is no fetch for them to build in.  Puerto Escondid is completely landlocked and it less than than one mile to the furthest point of land.  

I was also going to take down the sails and the solar panels but Elvin just told me there was no need to do either. He leaves his furled sails and solar panels up on his boat and has been thru a lot of high winds here. This is a tough call for me because the sails are very hard to fold tightly when we drop them on deck.  If I bring them below they will either take up the whole bed or the entire main saloon floor where the table would normally be. 

I have the spinnaker halyard wrapped very tightly around the genoa and also have a line tied every four feet on the lower 15 feet of the genoa, up to the clew.  I have secured the roller furler drum with a three point line so it can not rotate.  The genoa sheets are tied off to the stern anchoring cleats. 

The Mainsail has a very tight fitting cover which is securely tied to the boom every four feet. 

I have done several calculations on the loads felt by the solar panel mounts.  In 75 knots of wind with no heel the total load on the arch and four solar panels is about 70 pounds and only about 380 pounds when heeled at 15 degrees.  Each panel has two mounts with three pop rivets in each mount.  At 75 knots and no heel each mount should feel about 2 pounds of loading and at 15 degrees heel there is about 34 pounds per mount.  So, I guess I'll leave the panels up.  We have had them up in 55 knot gusts at sea while heeled about 20 degrees with no problem.

I had removed the dodger and bimini before I went back to the states and will leave those off until after Ignacio passes.

If the wind really does start to pickup I will put about 40 gallons of water in the portabote to keep in from flying around so much.

I had to un-pickle the water maker and make a tank of water rather unexpectantly. I had planned on doing that when I left here tomorrow and Mirador was in clean water. But this morning I was down to about 20 gallons of water. I bet I will be here for at least another five days so I had to make the water today.

There are a LOT of very worried boater here. They keep talking to each other on VHF trying to be brave but are having trouble keeping their courage and happy thoughts.  This storm will probably be the most wind many of them have experienced.  Some folks are talking about leaving their boats and heading into Loreto for the storm but that doesn't seem like a good idea. The road between here and Loreto goes thru some real low spots that drain the 4000 foot mountains that are about 5 miles to the west. I bet those spots will be impassable for days so they won't be able to get back to their boat once the storm passes.

The problem with staying on the boat here in Puerto Escondido is that there are no shore side facilites to retreat to if such a retreat becomes necessary. 

Don the weather guy broadcasts weather updates on SSB HF radio about four times a day.  He has a very powerful shore based station in Ventura, California with a special FCC license (WPXU557) that allows him to broadcast on Marine SSB frequencies from shore.  He has cruised from San Diego to Panama for 40 years.  He has been a serious weather forecaster for many years and is by far, without a doubt, the best at forecasting weather in the Sea of Cortez.  Don uses the same raw data and numerical models used by NOAA, NWS, TPC, and the Navy.  He gets on the SSB radio and gives us real time updates of what is happening.  We are very lucky to have such a resource helping us keep track of the weather. 

Stay tuned and I hope I can tell you that Ignacio changed direction and this was all a false alarm.