02/08/2010, making water and taking showers
It feels great to be back in the underway grove again. We are making water to fill our tanks and the whole crew just took a shower without any limitations on water usage. With a 50 gallon per hour watermaker and 100 gallons of water tankage, it doesn't take long to top off the tanks and have them overflowing into the bilge! We didn't run our watermaker while at anchor in the San Blas estuary. I guess we could have, we just would have had to rinse out our prefilters after each use due to the large amount of sediment in the water, but we simply brought in our two 5 gallon water jugs each time we went ashore and that kept us in plenty of water.
Amy and Jason are taking their turns standing watch and we are turning off the autopilot and making them hand steer. You never know when the auto pilot will fail (like everything else on a boat) so having them be know how to hold a course could be very important. It's great to look overboard and see crystal blue water again rather than the estuary brown.
We just got a VHF call from our friends on Just-A-Minute and set up dinner tonight aboard their boat! Life is back to normal again and alls well!
Posted at 1300hrs Mountain Time
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Comments [3]
02/08/2010, enroute to La Cruz
Last night wasn't the best night sleep, but then again after 45 days of sleeping in a flat calm lake, anything else was going to not live-up to an estuary anchorage. We pulled anchor this morning at 0630hrs and are currently motoring at 5.5kts towards La Cruz with only 4kts of wind and slight swelly seas. Our main is up as a vertical stabilizer, but with the swell coming in on our beam, it's still a bit rolly. The fishing gear is deployed and we did have a monster strike this morning but what ever it was, didn't want to stay for dinner and spit the hook. But the good news is that the scream of FISH ON was a good way to get Jason out of bed at 0700hrs, I'll have to remember that trick!
Lori and I were just sitting up in the cockpit watching the sun rise and talking about the great friends we made in San Blas and how we wished we would have tried to talk Smoke-N-Blues and Delfis into coming south with us. Not only did we resign our honorary position of Mayor of San Blas yesterday afternoon, but I also passed on my role of Amigo Net Manager back to Les on SV Gemini. I did leave the keys to the city with Russ on Smoke-N-Blues, so if anyone is heading to San Blas he's ready to put out the welcome wagon, just don't get anyone made at you for helping the cruisers Russ!
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02/07/2010, but we already miss San Blas
I've updated the tracking map to show our current location at anchor in Chacala, some 21 miles South of San Blas. It was a nice motor sail this afternoon and we saw breaching whales, a gorgeous sunset over open ocean, and arrived in Chacala about the same time as our friends on SV Bamboo. Chacala has a reputation for being a rolly anchorage and so far is living up to it's reputation in style! We could put out a stern anchor to try and hold our bow into the swell, but when I look around at the other boats with bow and stern anchors they seem to be moving around just as much as we are and since we are leaving for La Cruz at dawn, I'll just save myself the extra headache and work of setting and retrieving a second anchor. After 45 days in the San Blas estuary, we have been spoiled with the flat calm anchoring conditions, so Chacala is a good reintroduction to the world of rolly anchorages.
The see greeted us back with calm conditions and a perfect (if not just a little too light) 10kts of when 60degrees off our bow as we exited the estuary and raised our sails, but as cruising luck would have it, we noticed that our alternator seemed to be cutting in and out! I emptied out the sail locker and took a quick look see, but soon decided that today, wasn't the day for an alternator project, so simply piled things back in the locker and decided to ignore it until we reach La Cruz and have a little time to relax. Having the Honda generator to keep the batteries nicely topped up afforded me this luxury; did I mention how much I love that little Honda 2000? Well, I'm sure I did, but in the event you happened to miss that post, let me heap a little more much deserved praise on the $900 Honda 2000EU. There seem to be three types of cruising boats out here: 1) boats that have been outfitted with a spare no expense budget that have a $10,000 AC genset to provide all the 120V power they could ever need or want 2) budget reality boats that went with the affordable Honda generator option for their 120v charging and power needs and then 3) boats that want a Honda generator! Ok, enough about generators, now back to the story, but if you are going cruising, I'd give some SERIOUS thought to finding room on your deck and in your budget for a Honda generator! Let me put it another way. You find lots of different cruising gear and toys at the various cruiser swap meets that take place in almost every marina. It's the dumping ground for the gear that seemed like a good idea, but couldn't justify the space it was taking aboard. Never have I seen a Honda generator for sale at a cruisers swap! Maybe one could become available by someone selling off some of their gear as they wind down their cruise, but I've never actually heard of a cruiser looking to get rid of their Honda, to the contrary, it's quite common to hear people asking if there is anyone out there in the fleet that has a Honda generator for sale, of course all they hear back is silence!
With that out of my system, we plan to raise anchor at dawn and make the roughly 40nm trip to La Cruz and are really looking forward to seeing many of our friends. Just a Minute I'm sure won't believe we actually left San Blas until they can pinch us and I'm sure our ultimate departure cost some people a few bucks that bet against us ever leaving!
Lori just announced that dinner is ready and if I don't get in there and start flinging elbows with the crew, I'll be eating cold cereal for dinner, so hopefully, my next post will be made underway as we are getting close to La Cruz.
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