Bahia de Tortugas, BC, Mexico
Not much to report. We were apparently more tired that we though after our passage and spent a lot of the time sleeping, dozing, cat-napping, etc. while confined to the boat because of some rather windy weather outside. Winds during the day got up to 15 to 20 knots in the bay, occasionally kicking up white-caps, combined with a bit of surge that kept the boat rocking gently back and forth most of the time. In some ways, the motion was worse than when we were out sailing, but we were quite snug inside. Sue made one of her famous pizzas last night - yum!
We are sharing the anchorage with a few boats that look like they have been here a while, and one other obvious transient who was here when we arrived. Two more sailboats showed up this morning, so we know we are not the only ones making this journey at this time. This is a big bay and can handle a lot of boats but we still wonder what it must look like when the Baha-Ha-Ha fleet goes through here at the start of December, with 156 boats this year.
Most of the time the skies have been clear except for some overcast this morning, letting our solar panels do their thing. They are not quite up to the task on these short days though - we are losing about 5% of our battery capacity each day, which means we would have to run the engine every 10 days to make up the difference if we were sit here at anchor for that long. Still, not too bad for running a fridge, freezer, numerous lights in the evening, listening in on the SSB nets for a couple of hours each day, running this computer and watching a movie on DVD each night. Temperatures during the day are in the mid 20s, lows at night probably around 17. Not bad but still not tropical. Actually feels a little cool with the wind blowing.
We topped up our fuel this afternoon using the excellent service of the "Servicio" Anabell Fuel Barge. Call them up on the VHF and they come to the boat with a metered fuel barge and very friendly service. The price is about 2/3 of what it was in San Diego, where they really rip you off. Too bad we didn't need all that much here - we bought just 80 liters for 794 pesos (about 83 cents Cdn per liter).
We will be off tomorrow morning, bound for Bahia Magdelana, about 250 miles further south. The swell on the ocean has reportedly been a little higher the last couple of days so we have been waiting for it to subside a bit before we venture out again.
{GMST}27|41.3|N|114|53|W|Turtle Bay, BC, Mexico|Turtle Bay, BC. Mexico{GEND}
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Turtle Bay
Bahia de Tortugas, BC, Mexico
We did have some winds last night and this morning after all. At times we were zooming along at 5.5 to 6 knots in a 14 knot following breeze, using our favorite sail combination of a double-reefed mainsail and a full Genoa. Since the winds were generally from the NE and we were heading SE, we were able to sail on just one tack for most of time - just had to hang on and enjoy the ride. For about 50% of the time, we had to use the engine when the winds dropped below 3 knots.
We did have some winds last night and this morning after all. At times we were zooming along at 5.5 to 6 knots in a 14 knot following breeze, using our favorite sail combination of a double-reefed mainsail and a full Genoa. Since the winds were generally from the NE and we were heading SE, we were able to sail on just one tack for most of time - just had to hang on and enjoy the ride. For about 50% of the time, we had to use the engine when the winds dropped below 3 knots.
We arrived in Turtle Bay around 9:00 AM. Here is our first view of the entrance at sunrise - there was a pod of about 20 dolphins accompanying us as I took this picture, although they would not cooperate for the camera.
We had the sails down and the anchor deployed by 9:45, just off the little fishing village located here in the bay. We have already been approached by two of the local boats (pangas) offering fuel, but we have put off that decision until tomorrow when we will be a bit better rested and have some idea of just how much we actually need. Probably don't really need any - I am sure we could motor all the way to Cabo San Lucas from here on what we have left, if we had to. Total distance travelled from Ensenada is 295 miles.
Note: As soon as we got the anchor secured, the wind started blowing and has not let up all day - where is it when you want it? We are pretty well protected here, even though the surrounding land is quite flat, because we have lots of scope out (about 175 feet of chain in 30 feet of water), plenty of swinging room and about 2 miles of shallow bay in which to drag if worst came to worst. We will sleep well tonight. BTW, as I am writing this, the wind has totally stopped, just like someone turned off the tap - that is sort of what it has been like sailing down this coast so far, one minute you are flying along under sail and the next, you are motoring in a dead calm.
No Wifi service available here, but our new Telcel 3G stick is working great- thus the text you are reading right now.
{GMST}27|41.3|N|114|53|W|Turtle Bay, BC, Mexico|Turtle Bay, BC. Mexico{GEND
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Day 3 - To Turtle Bay
At Sea, Baja California
It is now around 4 PM on the third day of this passage.
The last 24 hours has been a combination of sailing, sometimes boisterous, sometimes drifting along, and about 50% of the time motor-sailing. The winds for the most part have been very light except for a couple of hours in the middle of the night when they crept up to 15 knots. Of course, I stupidly left the entire mainsail up until is was a challenge to reef in the higher winds and bigger seas - but we managed to wrestle it down ok, continuing for a few hours with the Genoa alone. All of the winds have been from directly behind or from slightly off the starboard quarter.
After a non-event sunset the night before, last night we were treated to a spectacular sunset - red sky at night, sailors delight? Temperatures remain around 15 during the night, rising to as high as 23 during mid-day today. The water temperature, which we have been monitoring the entire way down the coast, has not changed by more than a degree since leaving Nanaimo - currently 16 degrees (still very cold water). Mostly sunny, with some wispy, hazy overcast.
We saw a pod of whales a couple of miles off about 2 hours ago, heading north - all we could see was their spouts.
Right now we are motoring, with a double reefed main, in dead calm seas - probably as flat as we have seen on this trip. We are approaching some islands off of Punta Falsa, the largest of which is Isla Cedros. We have used a very conservative off-shore route, being as much as 70 miles from the nearest land as we crossed the huge Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino. Our planned destination of Turtle Bay lies on the other side of this major point of land on the Baja coast and marks the transition from northern Baja to southern Baja, hopefully with a similar difference in climate. We are currently motoring at no more than 4 knots in order to arrive just after sunrise tomorrow. I'm not sure we are going to find any winds to sail by tonight, but hope springs eternal.
{GMST}28|23.1|N|115|41|W|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay{GEND}
The last 24 hours has been a combination of sailing, sometimes boisterous, sometimes drifting along, and about 50% of the time motor-sailing. The winds for the most part have been very light except for a couple of hours in the middle of the night when they crept up to 15 knots. Of course, I stupidly left the entire mainsail up until is was a challenge to reef in the higher winds and bigger seas - but we managed to wrestle it down ok, continuing for a few hours with the Genoa alone. All of the winds have been from directly behind or from slightly off the starboard quarter.
After a non-event sunset the night before, last night we were treated to a spectacular sunset - red sky at night, sailors delight? Temperatures remain around 15 during the night, rising to as high as 23 during mid-day today. The water temperature, which we have been monitoring the entire way down the coast, has not changed by more than a degree since leaving Nanaimo - currently 16 degrees (still very cold water). Mostly sunny, with some wispy, hazy overcast.
We saw a pod of whales a couple of miles off about 2 hours ago, heading north - all we could see was their spouts.
Right now we are motoring, with a double reefed main, in dead calm seas - probably as flat as we have seen on this trip. We are approaching some islands off of Punta Falsa, the largest of which is Isla Cedros. We have used a very conservative off-shore route, being as much as 70 miles from the nearest land as we crossed the huge Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino. Our planned destination of Turtle Bay lies on the other side of this major point of land on the Baja coast and marks the transition from northern Baja to southern Baja, hopefully with a similar difference in climate. We are currently motoring at no more than 4 knots in order to arrive just after sunrise tomorrow. I'm not sure we are going to find any winds to sail by tonight, but hope springs eternal.
{GMST}28|23.1|N|115|41|W|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay{GEND}
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Day 2 - To Turtle Bay
At Sea, Baja California
It is late afternoon on the second day of our passage to Turtle Bay.
We are currently about 130 miles south of Ensenada and about 10 miles off shore. Our ETA into Turtle Bay should be sometime on the day after tomorrow - actually we are having to slow down a bit to avoid arriving at night (not all that hard to do with the very light winds we are currently experiencing).
When we left Ensenada, around 8:30 AM, we motored until about 2 PM, in light swells and less than 2 knots of wind. At 2 PM, the wind freshened up and we were able to sail for the next 18-1/2 hours, through the night, on a broad reach, gybing back and forth to keep the wind on the stern quarter - downwind sailing is not a good point of sail for us without a cruising Spinnaker. We flew a double-reefed main and full Genoa throughout the night, only shaking the reefs out of the mainsail for the last couple of hours in the morning, on a lovely beam reach for a change. Did not last long until the wind totally died and we had to resort to the engine again around 8 AM. Our speed, with typically around 6 to 7 knots of wind, was pretty consistently between 3 and 4 knots.
It is 4 PM here now and we have just turned the engine off, sailing downwind again with a full mainsail and Genoa, broad reaching in less that 7 knots of wind on very calm seas. Temperature last night only got down to about 15C, high for today was around 20 and it is currently about 17. Still not tropical but not too bad either.
Susanne and I are starting to get used to our watch schedule, 2 hours on and 2 hours off during the night. We are learning to make sure we eat and drink enough and are sleeping much better than on our earlier overnight passages. Not a whole lot to do, so we read our ebooks during the day and listen to audio books on our Ipods at night.
This will be my first attempt at updating this blog while at sea. If you are reading this, you know it worked ok.
{GMST}29|20|N|116|05|W|Day 2 - To Turtle Bay|Day 2 - To Turtle Bay{GEND}
It is late afternoon on the second day of our passage to Turtle Bay.
We are currently about 130 miles south of Ensenada and about 10 miles off shore. Our ETA into Turtle Bay should be sometime on the day after tomorrow - actually we are having to slow down a bit to avoid arriving at night (not all that hard to do with the very light winds we are currently experiencing).
When we left Ensenada, around 8:30 AM, we motored until about 2 PM, in light swells and less than 2 knots of wind. At 2 PM, the wind freshened up and we were able to sail for the next 18-1/2 hours, through the night, on a broad reach, gybing back and forth to keep the wind on the stern quarter - downwind sailing is not a good point of sail for us without a cruising Spinnaker. We flew a double-reefed main and full Genoa throughout the night, only shaking the reefs out of the mainsail for the last couple of hours in the morning, on a lovely beam reach for a change. Did not last long until the wind totally died and we had to resort to the engine again around 8 AM. Our speed, with typically around 6 to 7 knots of wind, was pretty consistently between 3 and 4 knots.
It is 4 PM here now and we have just turned the engine off, sailing downwind again with a full mainsail and Genoa, broad reaching in less that 7 knots of wind on very calm seas. Temperature last night only got down to about 15C, high for today was around 20 and it is currently about 17. Still not tropical but not too bad either.
Susanne and I are starting to get used to our watch schedule, 2 hours on and 2 hours off during the night. We are learning to make sure we eat and drink enough and are sleeping much better than on our earlier overnight passages. Not a whole lot to do, so we read our ebooks during the day and listen to audio books on our Ipods at night.
This will be my first attempt at updating this blog while at sea. If you are reading this, you know it worked ok.
{GMST}29|20|N|116|05|W|Day 2 - To Turtle Bay|Day 2 - To Turtle Bay{GEND}
Monday, January 3, 2011
Oh, Ensenada
Ensenada, BC, Mexico
The marina we are staying in is very nice, good facilities and great staff, although fairly expensive (around $50US per day for us). We don't mind the expense too much since we will not have an opportunity to stay in such a place again until we get to Cabo, so it will all average out. There is a very strong cruiser community here at the harbour. They have a daily VHF net in the mornings around 8 AM where boats from all of the local marinas check in to discuss their needs and concerns, swap equipment and hear a weather report. Then there is a sort of informal gathering near the marina office where they talk about these same issues over coffee and snacks. A lot of the boats here appear to be semi-permanent - Ensenada has been described as a "vortex" into which many boats enter but few leave. I am afraid we are not very good joiners and have not frequented these groups other than to say hello occasionally.
Ensenada, or at least the part in our immediate vicinity, is quite touristy, with endless restaurants and bars and, oddly enough, not a lot of tourists. We are far enough from the US border to mean that this is not a tacky border town, but it is still only a couple of hours away by car - it appears that there are quite a few US citizens that make their home here. The climate is good, the living is fairly cheap, and the town itself seems quite friendly and laid back, and they have everything including big box stores like Walmart and Costco. I can see why some of the people here end up staying a while. New Years eve here was quite exciting, with fireworks going off everywhere around us from about 8 PM until well after midnight. Lots of police presence and checkpoints on the main roads, just like back home.
We originally thought we would be out of here by last Friday. As soon as we got checked in, the port captain closed the port, so no boats could leave - big storm brewing in the north. Indeed, the weather was very rainy and windy on Wednesday (the day we arrived) and Thursday and the port was not opened again till sometime on Friday morning. We might have been tempted to leave at that time but we had discovered a few boat issues that needed to be addressed before we left civilization. The port office is not open on the weekends or holidays, so the next opportunity to check out was today (Monday).
The other serious issue was with our solar panel controller. It had stopped working temporarily during our dramatic transit of Cape Medocino, but appeared to work OK after it was reset. The last few days however, it had become less and less reliable, working for a few hours, then going into a self-test failure mode more and more often, until it finally just stayed like that permanently. We did not feel we could leave without this valuable asset working properly and figured we would have to order a new one from San Diego after the weekend. Fortunately, I was able to take the unit apart and clean up the salt water damaged circuits, and it is working fine now. You may remember that our Magnum inverter/charger that was also damaged on that same passage never did work again - we replaced it with a new unit in San Diego. I have since repositioned these units so they should be less vulnerable to boarding seas in the future.
Those sharp readers will have noted that Ensenada is located in the Mexican state of Baja California, or "BC" as they abbreviate it here, not to be confused with our other BC in Canada.
After our first day of dealing with the numerous officials, we have spent our time exploring the town on foot, dining in eateries ranging from local taco emporiums to Starbucks (yes, they are here too). We would never have any problem surviving in Mexico as long as there is Mexican food around and, of course, there is plenty of that.
The marina we are staying in is very nice, good facilities and great staff, although fairly expensive (around $50US per day for us). We don't mind the expense too much since we will not have an opportunity to stay in such a place again until we get to Cabo, so it will all average out. There is a very strong cruiser community here at the harbour. They have a daily VHF net in the mornings around 8 AM where boats from all of the local marinas check in to discuss their needs and concerns, swap equipment and hear a weather report. Then there is a sort of informal gathering near the marina office where they talk about these same issues over coffee and snacks. A lot of the boats here appear to be semi-permanent - Ensenada has been described as a "vortex" into which many boats enter but few leave. I am afraid we are not very good joiners and have not frequented these groups other than to say hello occasionally.
Ensenada, or at least the part in our immediate vicinity, is quite touristy, with endless restaurants and bars and, oddly enough, not a lot of tourists. We are far enough from the US border to mean that this is not a tacky border town, but it is still only a couple of hours away by car - it appears that there are quite a few US citizens that make their home here. The climate is good, the living is fairly cheap, and the town itself seems quite friendly and laid back, and they have everything including big box stores like Walmart and Costco. I can see why some of the people here end up staying a while. New Years eve here was quite exciting, with fireworks going off everywhere around us from about 8 PM until well after midnight. Lots of police presence and checkpoints on the main roads, just like back home.
Our first, and potentially worst issue, was with our water supply. We have been noticing a bad taste in our water ever since before we left Nanaimo. At first we assumed it was all the crud that was lying in the bottom of the tank for so many years, finally getting stirred up in the bigger seas we encountered in our shakedown trip up north. Before we left Nanaimo, we completely drained, filled, bleached, drained and re-filled the tanks until the water tasted good. When we got to Newport in Oregon, we were again noticing an odd taste. We again drained and refilled the tanks with fresh water.
The problem seemed to stay away until we got here to Ensenada, where we found that the water from our manual foot pump was very, very salty - not a good sign. If we pumped for a little while, it started to taste OK again but if left alone for a day, it turned salty again. I finally tracked the problem down to the complicated system of gate valves that are installed on this boat to allow us to use fresh or salt water in our galley sink. We have never used the salt water choice and the gate valve was completely seized shut as a result of years of disuse, apparently still allowing a trickle of salt water to get by, into the line via a syphon effect, because our water tanks are below our water line.
The reason why this had not been a problem up until this year is that the thtu-hull ball valve that supplies the salt water had always been turned off until I teed off of that line to feed the new water maker and wash down pump. Most of the time this valve was still kept closed (we pickled the water maker when it became obvious we were going to be spending a lot of our time in marinas on the way down the US coast), but I had opened it before leaving San Diego in anticipation of using the water maker as we make our way further south. Needless to say I have now completely eliminated the salt water feed to the galley foot pump and our water supply appears to be OK again. Good thing too, as we cannot use the water here in the marina for drinking.
The problem seemed to stay away until we got here to Ensenada, where we found that the water from our manual foot pump was very, very salty - not a good sign. If we pumped for a little while, it started to taste OK again but if left alone for a day, it turned salty again. I finally tracked the problem down to the complicated system of gate valves that are installed on this boat to allow us to use fresh or salt water in our galley sink. We have never used the salt water choice and the gate valve was completely seized shut as a result of years of disuse, apparently still allowing a trickle of salt water to get by, into the line via a syphon effect, because our water tanks are below our water line.
The reason why this had not been a problem up until this year is that the thtu-hull ball valve that supplies the salt water had always been turned off until I teed off of that line to feed the new water maker and wash down pump. Most of the time this valve was still kept closed (we pickled the water maker when it became obvious we were going to be spending a lot of our time in marinas on the way down the US coast), but I had opened it before leaving San Diego in anticipation of using the water maker as we make our way further south. Needless to say I have now completely eliminated the salt water feed to the galley foot pump and our water supply appears to be OK again. Good thing too, as we cannot use the water here in the marina for drinking.
The other serious issue was with our solar panel controller. It had stopped working temporarily during our dramatic transit of Cape Medocino, but appeared to work OK after it was reset. The last few days however, it had become less and less reliable, working for a few hours, then going into a self-test failure mode more and more often, until it finally just stayed like that permanently. We did not feel we could leave without this valuable asset working properly and figured we would have to order a new one from San Diego after the weekend. Fortunately, I was able to take the unit apart and clean up the salt water damaged circuits, and it is working fine now. You may remember that our Magnum inverter/charger that was also damaged on that same passage never did work again - we replaced it with a new unit in San Diego. I have since repositioned these units so they should be less vulnerable to boarding seas in the future.
There have been numerous other projects as well (replacing the rusty anchor swivel on our primary anchor, servicing the main winches, sewing up a broken and fraying strap that holds the mainsail cover on, etc.), but this will perhaps give you some sense of what the phrase "fixing things in exotic places" is all about.
Today, we got our clearance out of the port from both immigration and the port captain and we should be on our way tomorrow morning. The most likely next stop is Bahia Tortugas (Turtle Bay), about 300 miles further south. With any luck, it will be warmer there. The weather here has been cooler than we would like - as low as 8C at night and rarely getting up to 20C during the day.
{GMST}31|51.303|N|116|37.315|W|Ensenada|Ensenada{GEND}
{GMST}31|51.303|N|116|37.315|W|Ensenada|Ensenada{GEND}
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