Sat. Mar 13, 2010 11:20 am CST
19° 8.835 N 104° 43.010 W
A month to the day I left San Carlos, I left Barra de Navidad for places south. This time aboard the sailing vessel BLISS.
This morning I got up at 6:30 and spent three hours doing final packing, loading (extra chain, fresh water), and saying goodbye to friends. Fred came to the marina and helped with dock lines, and with the high tide I had plenty of room to motor slowly through the canals of Barra to the sea.
Close in (within 4 miles of the Barra headland) there was a lot of confused currents with an occasional large wave, but it's always like that, and my practice is to motor out to the big Pacific rollers before hoisting sail. Today the wind was almost right angles to the waves and trying to bring BLISS' nose to the wind meant lying abeam to the sea (bad idea). I split the difference by swinging the boom as far starboard as it would go, moving the lazy jacks to the mast and hoisting. That worked well, and my thoughts are that I might keep the jacks there until I drop sail.
I'm currently motorsailing SE at 4 knots for the the anchorage at Santiago.
5 pm Update-
Settled into anchorage at Santiago Bay, took a few minutes to find an open network, but I did. This evening I'm going to pick up the boat a little. In my hurry to get out of the Cabo Blanco marina on the tide, I just threw stuff onto the v-berth. CB was driving me crazy.
I'd spend two days scrubbing the boat and the next day some guy upwind of me would start a trash fire and then leave it to smolder and die. That would usually take all day, smelling the smoke and the boat would be filthy again.
Here in Santiago it's the waterski boats who throw in a tour of the anchorage to whomever they're towing. There's three big power boats and three jetskis here towing people through the cruising fleet. But it's better than the smoke and it looks like they're having fun. At sundown they'll leave us in peace.
Thanks to the 1st Mate for introducing me to Hunt's boxed tomato sauces. They're good, easy and fast. Hard to beat.
1 comment:
Those trash and grass fires at Barra have always been the worst thing about that place. It's a wonder the residents don't all have lung problems (maybe they do). The CB marina seems to be like a little bowl that collects all the surrounding smoke. Yuck! Glad you're outta there.
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