We left Bahia Santa Maria just before dawn with a 28 hour
voyage plan south east to Cabo San Lucas under ideal conditions. If all was well we would get to Cabo and
round Cabo Falso after dawn and arrive to anchor at 10am or so. The voyage plan as far as timing was as good
as could be. We crossed over the Tropic
of Cancer just as the sun went down. We are officially in the Tropics!
Cindy's artwork |
The seas decided to throw us a curve ball. After an entire day of smooth sailing (ok
motoring) where our bow was the main location for all of us, Steve even got to
take a nap on the bow and at times I sat on the bow, read and did my
watch. We are always looking for
wildlife or debris in the water; which by the way we see wildlife but not any
debris or hazards to navigation. Conditions
deteriorated at about 9:30pm. So seas
became choppy with wind waves hitting our port side. When reviewing the chart, the wind was from
the north just as forecast, even though we feel like it is an east wind as the land
is to our port side. Forecast was 10
knots and we were seeing constant 20 with gusts to 25 or so. We feel this mostly when it is a beam of us
or coming toward us. Had it been to our
stern we would not have noticed. While Kathy was on watch, suddenly the stabilizers overheated, and since they are pretty smart devices, they shut down to protect themselves. Without these operating, we started
a pretty large rolling motion. Steve
was quickly up to assess while items are falling all over from different parts
of the boat. We had this happen four
times between 2-4am. At first we turned
into the waves and then start the hobby horse effect. The stabilizer pump had sucked in too much
air and needs water to maintain temperature.
Steve got it restarted within minutes which felt more like a half
hour. This had not happened in our four
months at sea and of course it then happened several more times in one evening. We got smart and turned to the sea so that we
had following seas while trying to get them operating again. It's a much smoother ride when the waves are on your stern. One the last shutdown, the kids came up from our
stateroom a bit concerned about some books falling on them that are above the
head of the bed. They then slept on the
salon settee (we put the table down and cushions on it for overnight passages
or watching movies while at anchor). Most of the day and evening we often spoke
with SV Namaste as they were running east of us closer to shore and also headed to Cabo. Quite a few of the other
vessels in our "group" were also leaving that day or the following day headed to Cabo.
Seas began to calm down at about 5am and Steve and I
switched watch so he went down to the stateroom for a nap. The sun was coming up as we were approaching
Cabo Falso. Beautiful morning and
excitement as we got closer to the anchorage and turned the corner. It was also nice to see SV The
Red Thread anchored and not yet off to Mazatlan. SV
Namaste came in just before noon and by the next morning we saw that SV Kai, SV Astrea, SV Kha-Khan, SV Kialoa
had all come in. Most of our group had arrived.
Sunrise and Cabo Falso up ahead |
Cabo San Lucas is just behind those rocks. One more left turn and we are done with the Pacific Coast, |
We've been here in Cabo San Lucas for a couple days. It has changed a great deal since we were here 14 or so years ago. We will write about what we have been up to here in our next blog entry.
Can you still rent quads and play in the sand near the Light House? Chris
ReplyDeleteHi Chris,
DeleteThere were still ATV rentals in town and I assume they headed out to the dunes and the lighthouse. We did this when we were here about 14 years ago, but did not do it this time.
-Steve