Unpleasant passage

Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua

The day started off OK, then gradually turned against us.

Early in the morning, just after 7AM, we were able to complete the process of checking out of the country.  Considering how long it took us to get our visas to allow us to stay longer, it sure was fast getting permission to leave.

 

Leaving the safety of the dock behind...

Approaching the bar

After many tearful goodbyes, we left the dock at Bahia del Sol around 8AM.  At 9AM, the pilot led us over the bar and we were free of the estuary for the first time in almost a year.  The exit was uneventful, almost flat, certainly much gentler than the seas we were about to face on this passage.

We put up the mainsail right away, with our usual 2nd reef installed - it remained this way for the entire journey.  Lots of bat crap, and at least one dead bat, descended on the deck as we were hoisting the sail - quite a mess!

We attempted to sail in extremely light winds for the first hour or so, finally giving up and motoring into less than 5 knots of breeze for the next few hours.  At this point it was looking like we were in for a lot of motoring over a calm sea - not a bad idea for our first time out after so long in the estuary.  Susanne was not feeling good, but mostly from nerves at this point.



Crew is dying!

Around noon, the winds picked up to around 10 knots.  We unfurled the full genoa and started sailing close-hauled on a starboard tack.  The winds picked up to a steady 14 knots by 1PM and stayed that way for most of the afternoon.  Unfortunately the wind was almost directly on the nose, forcing me to tack ever closer to the shore.  When I attempted to tack the other way, I lost so much ground that I might as well be going back the way we came.  So, at around 4:15PM, I turned on the motor and used it to try and gain some sea-room.  By night-fall, the winds died down to less than 10 knots and we motored into somewhat lumpy swells.  By my reckoning, we were on schedule for an anticipated arrival at Puesta del Sol around 8:30AM the next morning, in order to catch the slack high tide at the entrance to that estuary.  I saw lots of shrimping and fishing boats and one frantic panga that guided me around their long-line fishing line. Sue was now sea-sick and huddling below.

Around 10PM, everything started to unravel. I noticed that the oil pressure was unusually low.  I checked the oil and it was OK and I assumed it must be our ever-troublesome gauge that was at fault.  About an hour later, the overheating alarm went off and I was forced to shut down the engine and try and diagnose the problem.  Nothing seemed amiss; lots of coolant, lots of water flowing through the raw-water system,  at least some water flowing through the fresh-water system (kind of hard to tell), etc.  Nothing obvious.  The temperature gauge was telling me that the engine was not even up to operating temp, but I had long ago learned to mistrust this gauge. The overheating alarm would not shut off, even after I left the engine off for over an hour while we drifted around some 10 miles off-shore.  Now there was not a breath of wind, so sailing was not really an option.  I disabled the overheating alarm and restarted the engine, and we motored at much-reduced RPM in hopes that that would keep the engine cooler.  As a result, our speed was now reduced to around 3 knots and our ETA into Puesta del Sol in the morning was no longer on the agenda.

Around 3AM, the winds came up from the east (the direction we needed to go) at around 17 knots.  In the process of turning on the spreader lights to allow me to see on deck to pull out the genoa, I inadvertently turned off the chart plotter.  For some reason, once it was turned on again, it could NOT get a GPS fix.  At this point I found myself sailing with about 1/2 a genoa unfurled, close-hauled on a port tack, with ever-increasing seas, on a pitch-dark night (the clouds had now obscured the moon and stars), with no working chart plotter.  I started dead reckoning in the log book, just in case, and sailed ever further from the Nicaraguan shore.  Susanne was now really sick and totally out of it.  This was the low-point of the passage!

 

An hour later, the GPS finally got a fix and I was able to see where I was on the chart plotter again.  By morning, the winds were steady between 16 and 20 knots and the seas were just nasty.  In spite of the fact that we had lots of wind, the boat was still not making any great speed - slamming into the waves kept slowing us down dramatically.  At around 7AM, I was forced to turn on the engine and try to motor towards the shore (I just could not find a way to get there under sail alone).  We were around 12 miles offshore and that was just too much fetch for these strong winds, allowing the seas to build up (at least that is my theory).  Being forced to use very low RPM on the engine, the best speed I could make towards the shore, even with some help from the mainsail, was around 2.5 knots.


Exciting times, but under control

The rest of the day was more of the same.  Alternating sailing on a port tack, close-hauled, then motoring for a bit to make up the ground we were losing.  We are really rotten sailors!

Nicaraguan estuary approach

We managed to fight our way to the entrance to the Estero de Aserradores, where we were able to navigate the tricky dog-leg estuary at low slack tide around 2:30PM.  We saw the depth dip down to 7 feet at one point but made it through OK.  Conveniently, the winds completely died and we were able to make a very uneventful landing at the Marina Puesta del Sol.  Since we had arrived so late, we were not able to clear into the country until today.  Needless to say, we are happy to be here and expect we will be for a couple of weeks, touring the country a bit and trying to figure out what is going on with our engine.

We are sure glad we did not have to come in this morning.  The wind is blowing like stink here at the marina today.

All in all, life is still good!

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