ALWAYS DO WHAT YOUR WIFE SAYS!

We are currently anchored in El Candalero on Espiritu Santo, about 25 nautical miles NE of La Paz. We arrived here Friday evening, March 22 after a lovely sail from La Paz. The Bay is named "The Candle Stick" (El Candalero) because there is an island in the middle that someone thought looked like a candle stick. Really! - it looks like a piece of cake to me, with runny frosting coming down the sides.

Bahia El Candalero is about 3/4 mile wide and about 1/2 mile deep. The water in the inner 1/3 of the bay is less than 4' deep and is lined with beautiful white sand beaches. The north and south sides of the bay are rock cliffs, some over 100' high. The bay offers decent protection from the NW winds and swell but it is wide open to the southerly winds, e.g. the Coromuel. The beaches on the east side of the bay lead up two valleys into the hills and 2200' mountains on Espiritu Santo.

When we first arrived here on Friday we anchored as close as we could to the big cliffs on the North side of the bay. This would have given us superb protection from the NW 15 to 25 knot winds predicted for Saturday and Sunday. Saturday turned out to be flat calm with a light Coromuel wind Saturday night.

We had anchored in 21' of water with our Fortress FX 55 anchor. We set the anchor at 3400 RPM in reverse and then let out 110' of chain and 30' of 1/2" nylon snubber line. I dove on the anchor and found that it was completely buried with only a few inches of the shank showing above the sand. We were happy, there was no way we were going to move with that big anchor dug in and that much chain down!

Well; so much for that good idea. The Coromuel came up around 7 PM and blew at only 10 to 15 knots until about 3 AM. The waves built to only about 2' from the SW which meant the rocks that were 10 yards to our stern were a lee shore. But we were still confident because the anchor was so big and so well dug in.

What I forgot to take into acount was the reflection of the incoming waves off the rock wall just 30' astern of us. By midnight the 2' waves hitting the rock wall and bouncing back toward us created a real mess of odd waves coming from every angle. Mirador was rolling, pitching, and yawing all at the same time. The rocking and rolling continued even after the wind died. It was tough sleeping because of the odd boat motion. We never moved but didn't sleep so well.

Sunday afternoon we moved Mirador to the SE corner of the bay, about 300 yards from shore. We dropped the FX55 in 18' of water and let out 120' of chain. The wind came up to about 15 - 20 knots out of the NE, straight down out of the inland valleys. Again, the anchor really buried itself and we spent a quiet and secure night with dead calm winds and seas.

What is this about Listen to Your Wife?

We got stuck for a couple extra days in La Paz due to my not listening to Arlene about a very important but personal matter. She has always insisted that we should not put any toilet paper into the toilet. She wants us to put soiled paper into a plastic bucket that we then dump over the side. I have always told her that the La Vac toilet could handle a reasonable amount of TP.

Last Wednesday I regretfully discovered she was right and I was wrong.

Our forward head, the one we use almost all the time, is plumbed so that the toilet discharges, via a Tee, into the holding tank discharge line. There is a Y-valve that allows us to pump directly from the toilet into the holding tank, but we always line up the valves so the toilet discharges directly over the side.

Wednesday morning I opened the anchor locker to get the extra dinghy gas cans. WHEW! The locker had some real smelly liquid in the bottom of it, real smelly!

The bottom of the anchor locker is the top of the holding tank on a Caliber 40. The 85 gallon holding tank is an itegral part of the hull. The aft wall of the holding tank is the forward bulkhead at the front of the boat. That means there is a watertight crash bulkhead about 5' aft of the bow of the boat. If Mirador were to hit a solid object with her bow it would only hole the holding tank.

But that also means the holding tank vent that I installed, drains into the anchor locker, right next to the anchor locker drain. I installed the 2" vent in the holding tank after I determined that the 3/8" vent installed at the factory on the outside of the bow was way too small and prone to clogging. I figured that any thing flowing out of the 2" vent would just flow out the locker drain.

Well, 'sorta.

It appears that the the holding tank/toilet thru-hull clogged some days before Wednesday. That meant all the stuff we pumped out of the toilet backed up into the holding tank, eventually filling it. After the tank was full the only place the new "stuff" being pumped into it could go was out the 2" holding tank vent into the anchor locker.

Unclogging the discharge line is not so easy on Mirador. We can't take the discharge line off the tank because there is no valve between the tank and line. The 85 gallon tank would discharge in the the forward head vanity if we take the line off to clean it. That means we can only clean the discharge line from the outside of the boat, coming in via the 2" thru-hull.

It was tough to do the first day since I had to run the straightened coat hanger in from the outside which means I had to lay in the dinghy, hanging over the side, while trying to run the snake up the line. The holding tank dicharge thru-hull opening is 18" below the water surface so I had to force the flexible side of the dinghy down to the water level. But, there were 2 foot waves coming from forward of the boat so the waves would break on the bow, flop over the side of the boat, and run down by back. Not to mention the waves pushed the dinghy into Mirador's side, smashing my head, shoulder, and arm. Then the next wave would push the dinghy away from Mirador, pulling the snake out of the line.

There is a 90 degree elbow attached to the inside of the 2" thru-hull and nothing would go up through the the elbow. I tried a coat hanger, 1/2" fuel line, 1/0 battery cable, 1/4" water tubing, coat hangers, and electricans fish tape used for pulling cable. We eventually had to buy a small plumbing snake and run it in thru the thru-hull and up into the discharge line and holding tank.

Finally on Thursday morning it was flat and calm so I could keep the dinghy close to Mirador. Bill, a friend from SV Shawnee, sat in the dinghy with me turning the snake handle to spin the thing while I pushed and pulled. Arlene stood in the forward head listening to make sure the snake went up the line into the holding tank rather than up the head discharge line which Tees into the holding tank discharge line. It took the three of us two hours but eventually the tank and the head were discharging properly.

We never did see anything solid come out of the discharge line, not even a mass of matted TP. There was no apparent reason for the blockage, but Arlene now supervises my use of TP.

Now, back to more pleasant boat stories.

We left La Paz at about 1:30 PM Friday. Once clear of the 6 mile La Paz channel we unfurled the 120% genoa and had a wonderful close reach across the west end of Lorenzo channel and up the west side of Espiritu Santo. We were glad to sail again because we hadn't had the sails out since we sailed down the San Lorenzo channel in December.

Cruising sailors often have different concerns about their sail trim than do more normal sailors.

We were sailing along quite nicely in 12 to 14 knots apparent with just the genoa out. We were heeled about 10 degrees headed almost directly for the waypoint off Prieta Punta. Arlene decided it was a good time to wash her hair since we were making 15 GPH water and the engine had been running to make hot water. By the time Arlene found her shampoo and towel the wind had come up quite a bit more and shifted more toward our waypoint. To stay on the layline I sheeted the sail flatter and increased our heel to 18 degrees while making 7 knots close hauled to the mark.

That didn't last long. There was no way Arlene was going to wash her hair, heeled at 18 degrees with Mirador pounding into a 3' chop. The new course was determined by her declaration that "I want less than 10 degrees heel while my head is in the sink." I had to ease the sheets and bear off to a medium reach. The boat speed went up to 7.5 knots but the VMG dropped to less than 5 knots. And, you think being a racing helmsman is tough!

El Candalero is turning out to be a very busy anchorage. There are three different groups of kayakers camped on the east beach. There appear to be 10 or so kayakers in each group. The camps each have four or five tents, a cook area under an awning, and a couple of tables under another awning. Several times an hour, all day long, pangas arrive and depart at full speed. They bring more kaykers and supplies, they take away kayakers and garbage. Every couple of hours five or ten kayaks come by Mirador on the way to explore the bay or other coves and points near here.

Read the next four paragraphs if you are not familiar with a Panga.

The Panga is the ubiquitous water craft used by all west coast mexicans for any form of water transportation and fishing. They range in length from 18 to 35 feet. They are designed to be very stable, fast, and have huge load carrying capabilites. They have high, flared bows and quite a bit of free board. A 30' Panga is designed to carry about 4,000 pounds of cargo and would usually be fitted with one or two outboards providing a total of 200 to 300 horsepower.

Very few Pangas have a steering console. In almost every case the operator stands at the stern and steers by directly turning the outboard. The other interesting thing is that almost all the outboards, at least up to 75 HP, are hand started.

Pangas operate at only one speed - as fast as possible! We have watched 30' pangas planning, or at least attempting to plane, into 6' head seas. They typically have three or four people in them, usually they are all standing 'cause who can sit when flying up and over 6' waves? I would have sworn the panga was going to flip over backwards going up the wave. But, the throttle operator had a fine touch and the bow of the boat never got move than 40 degrees above horizontal.

A 25' panga just came by Mirador, bringing supplies to the kayakers. She was loaded way past here design limits and could barely plane. The transom top was only 2" out of the water and she had come the 25 miles from La Paz, across the windy San Lorenzo channel.

When I dove on Mirador's anchor I was shocked at the water temperature. The surface water was warm enough to swim in with no wet suit and no shock when diving in. Saturday, around 1 PM, I tried to dive 24' to the bottom to check the anchor. When I got down to 15' I hit a solid block of ice. The water on the bottom must have been about 48 degrees. I suppose it felt so cold because the air temp was 93 and the surface water was heating nicely due to the complete lack of wind.

Early last week I tried board sailing in La Paz. The wind had been blowing 20 to 25 all day. I waited until early afternoon so I would have a outgoing tide against the incoming wind. My only board is a 9' Priester slalom board that won't plane with me on it, even with my biggest sail which is a 5.5 meter North Prisma, until there is a steady 20 knots of wind. I took the dinghy and all my gear out to the El Magote beach, about 3/4 mile across the channel from Mirador. I quickly rigged the sail, took off from the beach, got 1/2 way across the channel and then sunk into the water as the wind died.

I can water start in almost no breeze but there wasn't even enough breeze to lift the sail off the board. Two hours later I swam the board and sail ashore, next to my dinghy. Once again, no board sailing in La Paz!

But, I am hopping to see 20 or 25 knots here on the island once in a while.

We will be staying in El Candalero for a few more days and then we'll try some of the anchorages north of here.