POOPED DUE TO IMPATIENCE AND POOR PLANNING

I am currently (Monday September 9) anchored in Bahia San Francisquito (Little Saint Francis Bay). I arrived at 4:30 PM, Friday September 6. Mirador left Santa Rosalia at 4:20 AM on the 6^th and had a relatively simple and easy 75 mile, 11 hour trip to just south of Punta San Gabriel. San Francisquito is a large bay, about a mile wide and almost a mile deep and Punta San Gabriel is it's southeastern most tip. My original waypoint, for passing Punta San Gabriel, was 3.1 miles northeast of the point..

As I mentioned in my previous WEB post, I was concerned about the strong currents that flow near Punta San Gabriel and all the other major points of land north of Santa Rosalia. Both the Cunningham and Charlie's cruising guides mention the strong currents and big tidal rips that form near Punta San Gabriel. That is why I had put the waypoint I would use to enter Bahia San Francisquito 3.1 miles NE of the point when I laid out the course the day before I left Santa Rosalia and why I planned to arrive at high slack water.

The wind had been variable and less than 8-knots all the way from Santa Rosalia to about 10-miles south of San Gabriel. Then the wind increased to 12 to 15 from the Southeast. My radar showed me to be four miles south of Punta San Gabriel at 3:30 PM. At that time the wind was blowing from the SE at about 15 knots. The tide tables showed that high water at Bahia de Los Angles would be at 4:18 PM and would only be 0.3 feet higher than at 3:30 PM. The floodtide along this part of the Sea of Cortez shore flows almost due north, paralleling the shore. I scanned the water ahead and saw only a few whitecaps, similar to the three foot waves I was motoring in. My course was exactly downwind and the swell and windwaves were from almost astern.

I then decided that I could eliminate the waypoint (bearing 329 degrees magnetic) 3.1 miles NE of Punta San Gabriel and take a direct course (bearing 300 degrees magnetic) to the entrance to San Francisquito, staying about 1.1 miles off the point thus cutting 45 minutes off the trip. The charts showed 30 to 50 feet of water right up to shore and the cruising guides said there were no obstructions or dangers near the point.

When I was less than two miles from the point I realized that the white water I had seen was a little more serious than I had first thought. The one knot current that had been pushing me north, as a north flowing flood tide should do, had turned into a 1.5 knot current directly on the nose. At 2900 RPM, which is about 6.8 knots in calm water, I was only able to make 4.7 knots. But, even more troubling was the depth sounder consistently reading 15 feet while the charts plainly showed 30 to 50 feet. I decided the only prudent thing to do was turn 40 degrees to the east and motor away from shore into calmer and deeper water. At that point I was concerned but not scared.

Within three or four minutes I was terrified. I was seriously thinking , for the first time in over 30 years of sailing, that I was going to loose the boat! The waves built very quickly to a height above the radar arch and were breaking from several directions at once. I was desperately hand steering, trying to find some path thru the waves that would keep them more or less on the starboard stern quarter.

As I was watching over my shoulder, trying to keep the boat headed down the waves, a very large wave that I never really saw broke over the starboard side of the boat. My impression was of a solid wall of water striking the boat. One second I was steering and the next I was under water. The wave kept going and Mirador stayed upright. But, the cockpit was full of water to the transom, it was over the seat tops and running down the companion way. I was standing knee deep in water and everything that had been on the cockpit seats was now floating in 22" of water. That included the GPS, Binoculars, my shorts and shirt, both cruising guides, my reading glasses, the book I had been reading 10 minutes earlier, and my water bottle.

I was wearing an inflatable life vest with a strong built in harness and was hooked in to a serious U-bolt near the floor of the cockpit.

I knew the cabin was flooded since ALL the ports and overhead hatches were open and there were no washboards in the companionway. But all I could do at that time was try to steer the boat to calmer water. Mirador was slowly climbing very steep eight to 10 foot standing waves and then rushing down the backside. As we came to each trough the depth sounder would read 13,12, 9, 7, 6, 5.5 feet and then slowly climb back to 13 or 14 feet as we came to the top of the next wave. Mirador draws 5' 3" of water so I was expecting the keel to catch on the bottom in one of the wave troughs. I knew if that happened Mirador would roll or pitch-pole, depending on the angle of the next wave.

I have never been more certain that the boat was going to be sunk or at least destroyed!

I used VHF to call a boat in San Francisquito who had passed the same point 48 hours earlier to ask them if there was an unmarked reef or sandbar. There was no other explanation, at least at that time, for the sudden and dangerous change in the sea state. The wind was down to less than 12 knots and we should have been approaching high slack water. Gwen assured me that neither they nor any other boat knew of a sand bar one mile south of Punta San Gabriel. But, no other boat had come within 2.5 miles of the point so they weren't sure what was happening to me.

My problem was that I couldn't make any headway toward deeper water since that would put Mirador abeam of the very confused and breaking sea. I just kept trying to find a path toward the calmer water I could see about 600 yards ahead. I have no idea how long any of this lasted since all I could so was steer and hang on. Mirador was rolling over 35 degrees to both port and starboard as the odd waves came from abeam. I do know that the knotmeter was reading 6.3 to 6.6 knots but the GPS was showing a ground speed of about 4.7 to 4.9 knots. So, I guess the whole drama lasted less than 10 minutes.

Eventually Mirador found her way to calmer water northeast of the tide rip. From there on it was just an easy motor into the inner harbor.

After I anchored I was able to go below and survey the damage. The most serious problem is that the SONY Laptop PC was filled with seawater. The only thing I can figure out is that the boarding wave hit with such force that it went over the top of the coaming, all the way across the cockpit, and still had enough energy to go thru the port that opens from the nav station into the cockpit, below the seat. The water went thru the port with enough force to reach the computer, three feet away on top of the desk.

When I opened the computers case up I found the motherboard was sitting in seawater.

Other major losses were my Fluke digital voltage meter and the Infrared heat sensor ("heat gun"), both of which were soaked when the wave came thru the port in the workshop.

THREE BIG LESSONS that I guess I had to relearn:

1. Keep the ports shut whenever there is any wind or waves
2. Don't change the route that you carefully setup to avoid a charted danger such as "strong tidal rips"
3. Just because I know how things work in Puget Sound, e.g. tidal rips, doesn't mean I know anything about how they work here

The other boats here in the bay have been very helpful. The morning after I arrived, Katherine from Good Neighbor came over to Mirador and spent four hours helping to dry and clean things. She brought "de-salting" solution and Murphy's oil to rub down all the woodwork and floors. Gwen, from Tackless II, took all the wet towels and clothes back to her boat and used their washer/dryer to get all the salt out.

The moral support was of great comfort since I was pretty depressed about the state of the boat and the amount of damage the water did to electronics and tools.

I am now using the older NEC laptop I kept as a backup. It was fortunate that I had copied all my user data from the now dead SONY to the NEC just the afternoon before I left Santa Rosalia.

We are all anchored inside the "inner harbor" of San Francisquito. We are surrounded by low hills and sand beaches except for a 50 yard wide opening to the NNW. The bottom is deep sand about eight to 12 feet down.  The picture to the left is looking NNW out the entrance of the inner harbor toward the main part of Bahia San Francisquito.

There were seven boats in here for a while since Tropical Depression 11E had come up out of nowhere and was forecast to strengthened to a strong tropical storm or weak hurricane and then cross directly over the top of us. 11E went from being a thunderstorm complex southeast of Cabo San Lucas to a tropical storm with 40 to 50 knot winds in less than 24 hours. She was supposed to past just south of Cabo and then come north, paralleling the west coast of Baja until she reached our latitude where she was forecast to recurve NE and cross into the Sea of Cortez about 60 miles north of here.

This all happened on Thursday night and Friday morning. 11E would have been named Iselle if she had reached Tropical Storm status. The storm encountered cool dry air when she started northwest from Cabo and quickly fell apart. 11E is now a 1005 mb low about 90 miles SW of Cabo San Lucas and is not really moving and will pose no threat to the Sea of Cortez.

I was very surprised at how quickly the storm went from being a non-entity to a 40 knot storm. I guess that is the price we pay for living in 85 to 92 degree water.

I purchased a nice spear gun while in Santa Rosalia and shot my first two fish yesterday afternoon. The gun is a forty inch "3-bander" and shoots a spear a fair distance. In fact, my first shot flattened the tip of the spear because the spear traveled so much further than I anticipated. I lined up a shot on a nice Mexican Hog Fish (Bodianus diplotaenia) that was about 12 feet away. I did see the rock about 10 feet behind the fish but figured it was too far away to be a problem. I missed the fish but made a solid hit on the rock.

My other major snorkeling discovery is the advantage of wearing a weight belt. I now wear six pounds of weights and am finding the diving so much easier. I never realized how hard I had to work to get down to 15 feet. Now I can easily dive to 20 or 25 feet and stay there for a while. I am lucky to be diving with Paul (Ryoskosha) and Gwen and Don (Tackless II) who are all very experienced divers. Gwen ran a charter dive service out of St Thomas for years and used her CSY44 as the dive boat. They have all been very helpful, teaching me and showing me all kinds of neat tricks and techniques.

We are having our first rain of the summer. The wind switched from the SE, where it had been for days, to the NW last evening. Since about 3 AM we have been having rain showers every hour or so. More importantly the air temperature is down to 81 and staying there. It was cool enough last night that I had to pull the sheet over me to stay warm.

I will be staying in San Francisquito for several more days. I still have lots of work to do to clean up and dry out the boat. There are several neat caves to explore on shore and some nice hiking trails.