Mirador is currently making 5.1 knots on a heading of 140 degrees magnetic under clear blue skies with a seven to 12 knot NE breeze. We left Puerto Ballandra on Isla Carmen at 9 AM and are headed for the Agua Verde anchorage on the Baja peninsula 35 miles SE of Puerto Ballandra. Mirador is flying a full main and her 165% 2.5 oz nylon reacher/drifter (a Code 0 sail in North Sail terminology).
Mirador and I are still headed for La Paz where I have an appointment for Mirador to be hauled out at the Abaroja boat yard on either Saturday November 2nd or Monday November 4. I plan to arrive in La Paz on Friday November 1 to check on the haul out schedule, unless I can contact them on the VHF and verify that it will be on Monday the 4th. La Paz is only 90 miles south from here so this will be an easy week.
The winds have really been cooperating and have been offering some great sailing.
Last week I sailed 24 miles from Punta Chivato, the site of my last WEB page update, to Playa Santispac on a wonderful North wind that then eased around to the ENE just when I needed it to. The North wind allowed me to sail out of the Chivato anchorage and continue on to Punta Aguja, the entrance to Bahia Concepcion, on a close reach with a full genoa and mainsail. Mirador made a steady 5.5 to 6.5 knots all the way into Bahia Concepcion where the wind clocked around to the ENE which gave me a 7-knot ride all the way to Isla Pitahaya, at the entrance to Playa Santispac. The 25 to 35 knot ENE wind was a little more than necessary since Mirador was still flying a full genoa and main but it was blowing directly offshore so I just headed Mirador more downwind when the bigger gusts hit and then headed back onto the necessary course as the wind dropped back to the low 20 knot range
Playa Santispac was the site for a two-day birthday celebration. Gwen, from Tackless II, was celebrating a momentous birthday and Don, her fiance, planned a major party at Ray's Restaurant on the beach at Santispac. The party was attended by 22 cruisers and a good time was had by all. As the party progressed we discovered that one of the other cruisers, Mickey from Mikelai, was also celebrating a birthday as well as her anniversary. And, Katharine from Good Neighbor had had a birthday just two days before. All the more reason for a party
The next day, which was really Gwen's birthday, we had a "picnic" on Tackless II which was attended by 10 cruisers. We called it a picnic because we had bar-b-que chicken, potatoe salad, baked beans, and of course beer. Katharine baked an enormous chocolate cake which was the hit of the picnic.
Here is a picture of
Second Wind, a Cheoy Lee 53 motor sailor, anchored just west of
me at Santispac.
While at Santispac the cruiser assistance network showed how we take care of each other. Circe, an Amel 48, was unable to move from their anchorage at the SW end of Bahia Concepcion.
Their Maxprop feathering propeller would not stay in the "forward" position. They were unable to sail out of the anchorage since the entrance is only about 20 yards wide and the wind was blowing directly into the anchorage. Circe made a priority request for assistance on Chubasco Net. I was net controller but was anchored in Chivato, about 30 miles from Circe. I told them that all the Chivato boats were headed for Santispac and that at least three of the boats had SCUBA gear and very experienced divers on board. I made arrangements to help Circe early the next day.
That however did not help Circe with their immediate problem. The wind was forecast to be a strong westerly during the upcoming night and that would put them on a lee shore with no engine. A local trawler owner in Bahia Concepcion heard about Circe's problem and towed them to Burro Bay which is a more secure anchorage where they would be safe in the predicted westerlies.
The next day Paul from Ryakosha, Allan from Good Neighbor, and I took Allan's dinghy from Santispac to Burro Bay, about four miles SW of Santispac. Paul and Allan were able to remove the Maxprop and put Circe's spare fixed 3-blade prop on in about an hour of dive time. I was only along to hand them tools and provide technical assistance since I had worked on my Maxprop a couple of times.
The divers could not get the Maxprop off the prop shaft because the lock nut appeared to be a 1 1/8" nut, recessed into a housing. Only a socket would work and the biggest socket any of us had was 19mm or 15/16". Once again the cruising community rose to the occasion. I put out a call on VHF channel 16 for any boat that might have the required socket. None of the ten or so boats that were within five miles had a 1 1/8" socket. But then I received a call from Dieder at "Striker Base."
Dieder is an American who lives in a house overlooking the next bay south of Santispac where he keeps his sport fishing boat "Striker." He had heard our VHF call and wanted to lend us the necessary socket. Dieder met me on the beach below his house about 10 minutes later and gave me his entire tool chest and told me to bring it back when we were done.
Here is a guy giving another guy in an inflatable dinghy a chest of tools. Dieder had never met me nor could he see any of our boats from his house. But still, he lent us the tools.
Well, it turned out that we needed a 1 1/16" socket and Dieder's tool box did not contain one. But, what do you know! Sasha Rose, the boat moored next to Circe, did have such a socket. With socket in hand, Paul and Allan had no problems changing props.
Paul is an accomplished diver and excellent mechanic
but we are still trying to teach him how to drive a small boat.
Here is a picture of Paul practicing some of the boat handling
skills I was trying to pass along.
Just to finish the story Circe story. In April Allan is taking Good Neighbor, a Tayana 37, to Lazaro Cardenas, a small commercial port in SW Mexico, where she will be loaded onto a semi-submersible transport ship. Good Neighbor will be off-loaded in Nice, France a month later. Allan, Katherine, and Good Neighbor will then spend several years in the Mediterranean Sea without the ordeal of sailing 1000 miles from Panama to the Eastern Caribbean, against the trade winds.
While chatting with Bill and Carol on Circe we learned that they will be putting Circe on the very same transport ship, at the same time as Good Neighbor, to transport her to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Small World!
I stayed at Playa Santispac for three days and then headed over to Bahia Santo Domingo which is the NE most anchorage in Bahia Concepcion. During the trip to Santo Domingo the fluxgate compass that provides heading information to my Autohelm ST6000 autopilot began giving very erratic readings. The heading would read correctly for a minute or two and would then jump 100 degrees or more and stay there for a while. The autopilot tries to keep Mirador on the specified magnetic heading, as provided by the fluxgate compass, so Mirador was making some very dramatic, and undesired, course alterations.
I tried to fix the problem while underway as I was hoping the problem was just a loose wire. But no such luck. Reseating all the wires and connectors did not fix the problem. The wind came up nicely, albeit directly from the NE, so I had a great sail, hand steering the entire way, out to Santo Domingo. I even managed to show off for the only boat in Santo Domingo by sailing onto the anchor and setting it by backing the mainsail, in 18 knots gusting to 25 knots. With an offshore wind and no obstructions for miles it is pretty simple and harmless to do.
While in Santo Domingo I re-rigged the Sailomat windvane in preparation for the next day's 42 mile run down to La Ramada anchorage. I have set up the Sailomat so that an Autohelm ST1000 tillerpilot can be connected to the mount for the big wind vane. The ST1000, which has its own internal fluxgate compass, can then drive Mirador on a compass course while the motor is running, or even when sailing. Sailomat recommends that the steering oar not be in the water when the prop is making the boat move at more than three knots, but I had few choices since the ST6000 fluxgate compass seemed to be dead or worse, in it's final death throes.
I left Santo Domingo at 9 AM and sailed out around Punta Aguja and Punta Concepcion. Once out into the Sea of Cortez the wind died and it was time to motor again for a couple of hours. I kept the engine speed below 2200 RPM to minimize damage to the Sailomat steering oar. But with a light NE wind and full main Mirador was making 5.6 knots at 2000 RPM, into an adverse tidal current.
After an hour of motoring the NE wind filled in enough that I could again roll out the drifter and shut off the engine. We sailed SE under drifter and main for three or four hours, seldom exceeding 4.5 knots. Finally, after rounding Punta Santa Teresa the wind picked up enough and moved far enough to the east that I rolled up the drifter and rolled out the 120% genoa. The wind kept moving south and increasing so Mirador was soon sailing close hauled in 12 to 15 knots and not quite making the course necessary to round Punta Pulpito, the last major point before La Ramada. That wind carried us into Bahia San Antonio which is NW of Punta Pulpito. At that point we were only nine miles from La Ramada but had to find a way to sail around Punta Pulpito.
That turned out to be much more difficult that anticipated. The winds were thermally generated due to the land heating and sucking wind in off the cooler Sea of Cortez. Every time I tacked back out into the Sea to clear Pulpito the wind would slowly diminish and move even further to the south. Three times I sailed several miles east of Punta Pulpito, only to find the wind dropping below seven knots and coming out of the SSW which was exactly the course I needed to clear Punta Pulpito.
I finally gave up and motor sailed around Pulpito and then sailed into La Ramada about 1/2 hour after dark.
Once in La Ramada; I again encountered the mystery of the NE swell. The wind in La Ramada, as reported by the boats anchored there, had been blowing out of either SE to SW since 10 PM the previous night. The wind in Santo Domingo had been blowing 15 to 25 knots out of the south to SE since 3 PM the previous day. But, there was a three foot swell rolling into La Ramada from the NE. That swell, combined with the 20 knot SW wind, made for a very uncomfortable night. Mirador sat abeam of the swell and rolled 15 to 20 degrees all night long.
Where does a NE swell come from when the entire Sea of Cortez has SW to SE winds?
I got up bright and early the next morning to work on the fluxgate compass again. Another boat in the anchorage had some test specifications for the compass. Those specs showed the nominal resistance between five wire pairs in the five wire bundle that connects the fluxgate compass to the ST6000 course computer. The wire bundle is provided by Autohelm when you purchase the ST6000 package.
By 2 PM the NE swell was again making the La Ramada anchorage very uncomfortable despite there being a SSE wind blowing at 10 knots. I pulled up anchor and motored 2 miles around Punta San Basilio into the beautiful San Juanico anchorage where the mystery of wind and swell continued. San Juanico is wide open to the SSE, offering a fetch of hundreds of miles, yet there was no swell rolling into the anchorage, even with a 10 knot SE wind blowing.
Once anchored in San Juanico with no swell; I returned to working on the fluxgate compass problem.
The problem, after two days of testing and experimenting, turned out to be two separate problems. The red wire that provides 2.5 volts to the fluxgate compass showed an internal resistance of > 5 Megaohms while the other four wires showed < 1 ohm resistance. There were only 1.00 volts being delivered to the fluxgate electronics. The wire bundle is wrapped in a heavy plastic case and is carefully routed thru the ductways in Mirador. I examined the whole cable and found no kinks, breaks, bends, or anything else that would account for the high resistance. I ran an 18 gauge single wire alongside the wire bundle and used it to provide power to the fluxgate compass.
The new wire solved the problem of erratic readings, most of the time. However at times, the heading reading would still jump around 100 degrees when the boat was not moving, or would not change when the boat was moving. I recruited the assistance of Paul from Ryokosha to help me. Paul is an aircraft mechanic with a lot of experience installing and maintaining fluxgate compasses. Paul took the whole compass apart and we tested all the internal and external connections. We found no corrosion, no loose wires, and no problems. But after re-assembly the erratic readings still occurred at times.
Eventually I determined that if there was slight downward tension on the wire bundle coming out of the fluxgate housing the erratic readings would not occur. I remounted the compass on the bulkhead with a cable mount just below the compass housing to keep tension on the cable. So far, after three days and about 15 hours usage, the compass is working well.
I am still a little concerned since we could not find a loose wire or connection in the compass housing or the terminal strip for the compass. I am worried that the erratic readings could begin again at any time.
Katherine organized a great beach party to celebrate
the San Juanico sunset. Each boat brought an appetizer and
something to drink. No one told me the party was actually on a
rock above the non-existent beach. I only discovered that fact
when I pulled up in the dinghy, wearing no shoes, to find
everyone on top of a rock which could only be reached by climbing
another rock.
This is Gwen from Tackless II and Mike from Priceless headed up the first rock.
All the guys wore skirts and the women wore sarongs,
per Katherine's instructions.
The party was attended by five brave people we met in San Juanico. They were all mature adults with responsible jobs in the Denver area.
But, all we cruisers had serious doubts about their sanity because they were cruising the Sea of Cortez in a 27 foot sailboat. FIVE full size adults in one 27 foot boat. An O'Day no less.
YIKES
The amazing thing was that after two weeks they were still friends and still having a good time.
I managed to shoot a nice
10 pound, 28" Leopard Grouper while in San Juanico.
It took three shots to get the thing. I found it at about 15' deep in a passage between a rock wall and a big rock. The first two shots I took were either head on or tail on and missed. But, each time I just floated motionless on the surface and the fish would come back out of its cave and slowly swim around. On the third shot I settled to the bottom (thank goodness I was wearing 10 pounds of weights so I could sink without moving too much)and waited for the fish to turn sideways so I could get a clean shot.
The thing was so fat and I shot from max spear range so the spear didn't go all the way through. The barbs were still sticking out the side it entered on. I was afraid it would wiggle off. But it seemed stunned by the shot so I was able to swim over to it and push the spear all the way through to make sure the barbs would keep the fish from wiggling off.
I cooked 1/2 of it that night on the bar-b-que. I wrapped it in foil with lemon, butter, ginger, and some Salsa de Pico de Gallo. It came out real tasty and I ate about 1/2 the 1/2 I cooked, along with baked potatoes, CousCous, and broccoli.
I sailed from San Juanico to Ballandra yesterday, a 25 mile trip that took six hours due to the light NE winds.
During my sail from San Juanico south to Isla Carmen where I stayed last night I had another one of those heart stopping experiences due to sailing these waters with poor charts.
I was passing between the Baja Peninsula and the SW tip of Isla Coronados. The reef off of Coronados extends SW toward the Baja Peninsula and the Baja shore has less than 6 feet of water 350 yards off shore. The charts showed that if I kept Coronados 600 yards to port and the Baja 600 yards to starboard I should never see less than 36 feet of water. I furled the genoa and ran the engine at a fairly slow speed as I passed thru the 1/2 mile long channel. The water depth stayed at 37 to 40 feet just as the charts showed.
Then the depth started decreasing until it was only 22 feet. I could see a definite change in the water texture about 100 yards ahead so I put the engine in neutral and slowly approached the disturbed water. The depth came up to 18 feet as I crept along. And it stayed at 18 feet for about 1/4 mile as I kept an eye on the radar to ensure I was in the middle of the channel.
The water never showed less than 18 feet and Mirador finally found 20 feet and then 30 feet of water. The Cunningham cruising guide has a very detailed chart for the channel and it plainly shows 37 feet in mid-channel. I guess Hurricane Juliet last October really changed the bottom in this area. But, no one updates the charts for the Sea of Cortez.
I am now anchored in Agua Verde and just finished
listening to the Anaheim Angels win the World Series. The Armed
Forces Net (6.4585 MHz USB) carries ESPN sports radio so I can
listen to all important sporting events. Neat!
Here is a picture looking NE from the hill above the NW anchorage at Agua Verde. The island in the far distance is Isla Catalina.
This update is getting way too long so I'll end it here.