Taking Care of Business
10 May 2008 | At anchor at Punta Pequena at San Juanico Village
Melissa
It's 2:30pm, and the wind is howling through the anchorage. We can only imagine what it must be like outside of the protection this bay provides. Again, today wasn't a good day to travel. We took advantage of our time not traveling today to get some things done. Cory installed a new spade terminal for our signal wire on our starter solenoid. That seemed to have fixed our issue, because we were able to hear the solenoid engage upon pressing the engine starter. Hopefully that will take care of our engine starter problem at least until we get to San Diego. Also, we had quite a bit of saltwater wash over our decks on our trip. One of our portal leaks a little. Go figure it's the portal above our TV. So, our TV LCD display does not work any more because some salt water must've gotten on the TV. We opened up the TV today and cleaned it with electronics cleaner. Unfortunately, that didn't help, so we'll hopefully be able to get it fixed when we get home. Really, we should have never bought a TV for the boat, but I guess you live and learn on those things..
We went ashore for a late breakfast this morning with the gang. We wanted to talk over the weather situation nd also use the internet at the little cafe in town. We had a delicious breakfast. I think I overdid it, but Cory had seconds. We all got our internet "fix." The cafe was having problems with their internet connectivity, so Cory took a look at their set-up, and fixed their connection. Also, Cory encrypted the cafe's internet connection with a password and taught the shop owners how to change the password. The shop owners we so happy they gave us a free breakfast. Of course, they were curious of Cory's going rate. Once they learned what his rate used to be, they were happy to have gotten his services for the cost of a breakfast.
Our next jump is 70 miles to Abreojos. Due to the wind direction, our speed on the next jump will probably be much slower than the others. We took a look at the weather, and it appears we will try to travel tomorrow leaving at 3am up to Abreojos. We need to be in the anchorage before dark, and the wind is supposed to pick up significantly in the afternoon. Abreojos is notorious for having 5-10 knot stronger winds than average of the area, so it's going to be another exhausting travel day. The winds will not be ideal to travel in tomorrow, but we think we can safely make it to the next stop. Abreojos means "open your eyes." This anchorage has a lot of obstacles to get to the safe, protected bay. There are multiple reefs and submerged rocks and dangers in the water on approach to the anchorage. It will be important for us to watch very closely on our approach. Our plan is to hopefully be at anchor at around 5pm tomorrow. We'll probably have to stay in Abreojos two or three nights. The forecast now does not show the wind favorable for traveling again until Wednesday with Monday and Tuesday being very heavy weather days.
Well, that's it for now. We've got to fuel our boat from our jerry cans, put up our dingy, and get some rest. Tomorrow morning will come quickly.