I was wondering what today would bring...it brought our friends on Bravo! Bravo is also a 46' Peterson sailboat and Adam and Cindi are from Seattle. They will be doing the puddle jump across the Pacific next year as well. They left the BLA area with the same forecast that we had several days earlier...SE winds 14-17. After they arrived they told us by radio that the wind and seas built very quickly and at one point they saw 50 knots! I told you it's crazy out there. It's a combination of things. First, you're moving north in the Canel de Ballenas which becomes more and more narrow for several miles and the wind tends to really hoot through that decreasing gap. Also, well, forecasting up in the Northern Sea sort of sucks. They call it the land and sea affect, so many different land masses and the heating and cooling of the land and the water...well...forecasts are sometimes wildly wrong so you have to be able to handle whatever Mother Nature decides to dish out. Well, Bravo made it but they were pretty buggered when they anchored next to us so I doubt we'll be seeing them for cocktails this evening. I think they were also pretty surprised that about an hour after they anchored next to us a very hot wind from the west pipped up to over 30 knots and blew well into the night. These hot westerlies are pretty well known up here but man are they miserable. Like sitting in a huge blow dryer. The air is hot, the boat gets hot and all you can do is, well, drink water and sweat. OR, jump in the water. I have several ways of coping with the heat, at night especially. I take washclothes and wet them down and put them into zip lock baggies. Then I put them in the freezer and pull them out at night when I can't stand it any longer. I started with washclothes but now I'm up to hand towels. In the morning Don will ask me how I slept and I tell him last night was a 'two hand towel night' and he knows what I mean. To end this on an up note...we sat out last night in the hot wind and looked at the stars...it may have been the best star gazing we has ever done in our lives. Except for Bravo's masthead light, it is so dark so can see everything.