So we took the last couple of days to decompress and reset our mental attitudes. We have a rebuilt transmission that seems very strong when we put the boat into reverse and pulled on our snubber the torrent that churns forward as we force our engine to strain against the mighty Rocna is far stronger than it has ever been.

We also had to wait out a strong norther that was forecast to march through. Realizing that our snubber is 9 months old now, covered in growth and down to 2 strands in one place, I decided to cut that bit off and retie a fresh length of line just to aid in worry free sleep when the winds kicked up.

We got our norther on Thursday and our anemometer showed us sustained winds of 32 knots almost out of the due north.

It blew 25 for much of the day on Friday and we had no desire to go out in that leftover chop so we put off breaking in our transmission until today. We need to put an hour on the transmission to wear in the friction disks and then change the particulate filled fluid so we can put clean stuff in and go on our merry way.

Today was a lovely flat calm morning so I decided to pull up the hook and go for a putter. I figured we could drive around the inner harbor for an hour if the swell was up on the outside. Fortunately after pulling up the anchor we motored out of the inner harbor and found fairly smooth seas. We towed the dinghy so we decided to be conservative and stay in the lee of the land and not go test what those exposed seas were like. I really put everything through its paces. I found the engine to be putting out more power than I ever remember seeing. I pegged the throttle and got the loaded engine all the way up to it's loaded max RPM of 2800 and was shocked to see 6.4 knots of boat speed. I left it that way for 20 minutes and was amazed to see that our engine temp never exceeded 135 degrees.

After driving around in circles for about 40 minutes I headed back into the bahia, once in the bay I gave the throttle full bore again to really wear in those disks and across the smoother waters of the inner harbor hit a maximum speed of 6.7 knots. I was very impressed with this as its only about half a know from our theoretical maximum hull speed.

When we got back we set our anchor and started discussing plans to depart. I made us a nice lunch of chicken pad thai since the first playoff game didnt start until 2:30 PM.

Sadly our SSB radio is having an issue. We have beautiful SWR (meaning our antenna and ground are perfect) and we're putting out full power but there is no modulation. Evidently we cant be heard. This isnt important enough to keep us here so we'll work on it some more in the morning and if I can fix it, I will.

Currently the forecast calls for strong southerlies next week starting Monday or Tuesday. Currently we're treating this as a brand new cruise. We just got here with a small kitty and plans to try and go cruising for a couple months. The boat just got a new transmission and a full refit and we're ready to go see some new places and have some fun. Since the forecast isn't favorable for a direct run south to Mazatlan (400 miles so 4 days at sea) we're gonna see if we can duck out tomorrow afternoon and shoot for Isla Carmen. Its about 115 miles almost due south and has good southerly protection. From there we can try and sneak our way south during the southerlies and make our way closer and closer to our ultimate goal of the Riviera (Mazatlan)

Hopefully our next update will come from somewhere other than San Carlos and have lots of pictures of things other than food.