Cabo Corrientes 1, Sine Timore 0

Bahia Tenacatita, Jalisco, Mexico

The weatherman was calling for light winds around Cabo Corrientes on Firday, with a cold front moving in late on Saturday, giving some 20 knot breezes.  Our plan was to head out early on Friday and be well south of the cape before the higher winds arrived, possibly giving us some good sailing on Saturday morning.  I expected we would be motoring around the cape itself.

After the slow process of checking out with the Port Captain, paying for our moorage at the marina and stopping at the fuel dock to top up our diesel and gas supplies, we got out of the marina around 10:30AM.

We motored for the first two hours, across Bandaras Bay, in very light winds.  As we got closer to the cape, the winds came up and we were able to sail on a beam reach, changing to a broad reach as we got to the mouth of the bay.  We were given a send-off by several whales and a small pod of dolphins.  Everything was just perfect, although the motion of the boat in the small swells had worked their magic on Susanne and she was sick after about the first 5 hours of the journey.


Approaching Cabo Corrientes

As we started rounding the cape, never closer than 5 miles, we hit a counter current, slowing us down to not much more than 3 knots for much of the time.  It took many hours to crawl our way past the cape and into deeper water.  When we were about 10 miles west of the cape, the breeze picked up and we found ourselves on a broad reach in 17 to 18 knots of wind and some larger swell coming in from the NW.  We sailed along with our double-reefed mainsail and about 1/2 of the genoa, maintaining a very comfortable 6.5 to 7.3 knot speed (basically hull speed for this boat).  As the day progressed into night, the winds increased to between 21 to 25 knots and the seas became very confused, with enough motion to make the Captain sick.  Yes, I was sick, for the first time since we started sailing - I have no idea why as we have seen much worse conditions elsewhere and I never had any problem before.

Susanne was down for the count, so I spent the entire night at the helm, not that I would have been able to sleep anyway.  I reduced sail to keep our speed around 5 to 6 knots and hung on for the ride.  The only real problem with this sail setup for downwind sailing is that I could not get the boat balanced.  This means that the rudder was almost hard over all of the time, just to keep us going in a straight line - the autopilot could handle it, but it was working very hard.  I think in the future we will take the mainsail down completely when sailing down wind in any winds more than 15 knots - I am sure we would be better off with the genoa alone.

We sailed for a total of about 80 miles in 15 hours, gybing back and forth only 4 times, to keep close to our chosen course.  Gybing the boat by myself was not as much fun as you might think - I am sure this contributed to the fact that I was not feeling my best.  Had to dodge a couple of large freighters and a field of what was probably long-line fishing pangas (hard to tell in the dark), but otherwise saw no traffic to speak of.

We would have kept on sailing except that about 60 miles from our destination the autopilot made a few rude noises, then stopped moving the wheel.  Panic, panic!  I attempted to steer the boat manually, but with the extremely unbalanced rig and my half-asleep state, I was forever at risk of an accidental gybe.  I got Sue up from her death-bed to steer the boat while I struggled to get the mainsail down.  Once we had the sails down and the engine on, it was a lot easier to steer and there was no danger if I lost my concentration and went off course for a while.  Some clouds had come in and blocked out the moon and stars, so the night was pretty much pitch black, with only the compass for a steering reference.  Fortunately we do have all the modern electronics so we were no jeopardy of losing our way.  The winds continued to blow at between 23 and 25 knots for the rest of the night, and the seas continued to be quite rough.

Come morning, as the sun rose, the winds died and we would have been motoring anyway.  With the lighter winds and smoother seas, Sue and I were both feeling a bit better and we managed to keep ourselves awake and hand-steer our way to Bahia Tenacatita, arriving around 4PM, where we now find ourselves in a picture-perfect anchorage.  I think I slept for 15 hours straight as soon as we were settled.  I am afraid to look to see what has happened to the autopilot, but I guess I can't put it off forever.  Without a good working autopilot, I cannot see us going very far.  All in all, this is just a typical passage for any sailor - just ask any one of them.

{GMST}19|17.94|N|104|50.11|W|Bahia Tenacatita,Jalisca, Mexico|Bahia Tenacatita, Jalisco, Mexico{GEND}
{GMST}20|44.88|N|105|22.82|W|La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico|La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico{GEND}