Last passage of the season

Bahia del Sol, El Salvador

 

Well, we had one last kick at the sailing cat for a while. It had its exciting exciting moments and its boring moments but overall a nice finale to the season.

 

We left Marina Papayago early on a Tuesday morning. We motored for the first 1/2 day in absolutely calm conditions, until we started to round Punta Santa Elena. The winds and waves quickly built up, right on the nose of course, and we found ourselves tacking back and forth with the engine assisting the double reefed mainsail until we managed to claw our way closer to the Nicaraguan coast. We were treated to the antics of a large pod of dolphins, who seem to really enjoy the rougher conditions, sometimes leaping to great heights, although Susanne does not think they deserve many style points for their re-entries.

Dolphin escort

 

Around 4:00 in the afternoon we were able to change to a beam reach in the moderate Papagayo winds blowing offshore. We followed the generally accepted rule here of sailing with "one foot on the beach" for the next day and a half - this keeps the wind-waves manageable as the winds blow consistently offshore along this coast. We sailed for 50 miles on a single broad reach in about 15 knots of wind. Later, we got caught with a little too much sail up when we caught somes gusts in the mid 20's. For a while we sailed with only the double reefed mainsail in winds that were gusting from 12 to 25 knots. Our speed was only around 3 knots but we were in control and had plenty of time. Lots of fun dodging fleets of fishing boats in the dead of night.

A stowaway trying to get out of the wind

 

The last day, it got easier, although what sailing we did was now all close hauled in relatively light winds, rarely reaching 10 knots. We ended up motoring very slowly for most of the last night, in order to not arrive too early for our scheduled high tide crossing of the entrance bar at Bahia del Sol. Just before 7 AM, the pilot boat lead us into Bahia del Sol, almost exactly 3 days from the time we left Marina Papagayo, all as planned.

This time the bar was totally flat and basically a non-event. Total distance covered was 291 miles.

Sailing west into the setting sun

 

Parked between two monster 60+ foot boats

Now that we are here, we have been dumped into the whirlwind of social activities that is Bahia del Sol, meeting with other cruisers, some new, some old, heading for lunch at one of the Palapa restaurants in the estuary, Bocce Ball at low tide, pot lucks and pool parties and such.

We are staying at the dock at the resort for a couple of weeks before we will be moving the boat down to the same little Marina we used last time we left the boat here, a couple of years ago.

 

Meanwhile, I have volunteered to crew for one of our friends, who wants to get his boat a little further north to Chiapas in Mexico. We plan to take off on Thursday (day after tomorrow) and it should take about 2 days to get there. I will then attempt to find my way back through Guatemala and El Salvador by bus. Always an adventure...

 

{GMST}13|18.072|N|88|53.526|W|Bahia del Sol, El Salvador|Bahia del Sol, El Salvador{GEND}

 

 

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