Long Leg Over
08 November 2010 | Turtle Bay
Fred Delaney
We arrived in Turtle Bay this morning at 0800 after 46 hours of motor sailing and sailing. Had the spinnaker up in the afternoon of the second day but took it down at nightfall. Uneventful night until we went through the channel between Isla Benitos and Cedros Island where we found the biggest kelp islands ever. We were motoring along when we hit the first kelp with a thud but were able to get free in a few minutes. We killed the engine and sailed slowly as we didn't want to get into Turtle Bay in the dark so were sailing along about 4 knots. I was down in the forward bunk when I heard us go right into the kelp. I got up and Al and Penny didn't realize we had sailed onto this kelp island until they looked at the knot meter and it said 0.0. Flashlights went on and there was nothing but thick, thick kelp surrounding the boat. We weren't sure how or if we were going to get off and we didn't want to start the engine so we just waited as we could see that every once in a while we would be moving. Well about an hour later we got out of it and sailed away but were dragging several tons of the stuff with us. Al got on the swim step with the boat hook and he and Penny would haul a big chunk up and break it free as I steered the boat. We got most of it off and sailed the rest of the way until about 4 hours out when we turned on the engine as the wind was dying. We have a picture of the kelp so this is not just a sea story. Will post the pictures when we get to Los Cabos and a WiFi connection.
Nice in Turtle Bay, warm with a little breeze. We had breakfast at the hotel Veracruz restaurant after our showers and then walked around town and picked up some cokes, a papaya and some tortillas. Dinner out tonight at Enricque Jr's. Fuel barge just left and we took on 200 liters of fuel or 53 gallons at 10 pesos per liter. Looks like we burned about 1 gallon per hour so we have good fuel economy.
More later.
Fred