Ok here's the poop! We heard there was a damn big blow (referred to as a norther) coming so we decided to leave San Juanico for a smaller hidey hole (being Ballandra). We'd been there last spring and sat out a windy spot ok so we figured it should do us well.

We got to Ballandra on Monday, 2 days before the winds were supposed to start. We went ashore on Tuesday (breaking the law as we didn't have park passes) and quickly walked the beach and stopped to talk to another on the beach (Katherine from Loose Pointer, the other boat in the anchorage). The picture is of the fishing shack on the beach there. We went back to the boat and hunkered down for the rest of the day, checking in with all the weather gurus Don on Amigo/Southbound single side band net and Gary on the beach on Sonrisa ham net as well as the Escondido VHF net. Everyone was calling for 30 + winds and seas of 10 ft plus at insanely short second intervals (like 5- 9 seconds). North of 27 degrees in the northern part of the Sea and all the way to San Felipe and the Colorado River was calling for gale with winds to 60 knots. Ok so we were suitably nervous about this storm. And here it comes.....

Wednesday. the winds start at about 5 am and just keep coming all day. From where we are you can see out into the Sea and the waves are just getting crazy. Now as everything is building (no letting up at all) we are starting to swing back and forth and rise up and down with the huge swells coming into the bay. I'm too nervous to watch all the activity from the cockpit so I start cleaning the boat. The boat should be pretty darn clean by the time this blow is over! At high tide, the waves started rolling in and breaking on the reef and all the way around the cove. Now we're getting worried that the wind will push us too far at the wrong time and catch a swell and wrap us around into the shallows near the rocky beach. What crap! And so anchor watch begins.....all day and all night long. Jim got his first happy birthday wishes at 12:01 since we were up. Let's just say 2 hour watches suck!

Thursday, yep it's still blowing and we're still swinging violently and the other boat drags. Their anchor reset but were really close to the beach and ended up pulling forward and dropped a second anchor before nightfall. So as bad as we were getting we did the same, hoping to make us stop swinging so bad and get us away from the rocks (where of course the wind wanted to push us).

Friday, winds are dying down but still get gusty. The seas look less hostile too. We actually get to sleep like normal people but in the salon so not quite as comfortable.

Saturday, after hearing the weather reports we decide with only 2 gallons of drinking water left, we're running to Escondido (14 miles away). As Jim begins pulling anchors, we unfortunately have one less anchor than we tossed out. The secondary (a nice 40lb danforth) was just on rode and chaffed itself through. Darn it! Seas were a bit rough and the wind died down so much we actually had to motor for a while. Longest motoring we've done to date (a couple of hours).

So we have survived a big blowing norther here in the Sea of Cortez! All the locals have said that the winds were almost as bad as if it was a hurricane, outside of a hurricane. And the temperatures were and still are freaking cold. We got a temp reading out of Escondido of 42 degrees. On one of the mornings out there, I put our temperature gauge outside in the cockpit and it dropped from a warm fuzzy temperature (not) of 57 degrees in the cabin to 50 degrees in under 5 minutes. Ok now that is just too damn cold!