Wings, Wild, Weck!
30 October 2013 | The Deep Blue Sea
Gene and Gloria
Wings, Wild, Weck Pincoya 10 35N 105 23W Weds, Oct 30, Evening Yesterday morning the gribs and metbob said it was time to turn north, so we hung a left, set up the whisker pole on the port side, put a second reef in the main and swung the boom over to stbd, and headed NE wing on wing. Winds and weather were reasonable yesterday and last night; we actually got to see some stars and winds were in the low twenties. Still wing on wing, today we have had a steady parade of squalls, with, 2 squalls to the mid 40's, and a number in the mid 30's, with heavy monsoon rain, and 3M seas. The waves come up behind Pincoya, a wall of water filling the view aft and appear close enough to touch. Then the stern rises up on the wave and the waves go underneath us giving us a first floor balcony view of the surrounding ocean. The stern tips down, and we slide into the next trough. The seas have gone from hills and valleys to ridges and canyons. The wind strips the top of the waves off into horizontal spume and spray while the rain pounds the wind waves flat. We had to pull the trolling generator out of the water as it was porpoising and threatening to rip off the stern rail. And willie the windvane got fired since it couldn't deal with the weatherhelm in over 40 kt winds. So we will be running the engine or generator tonight to supplement wind generator power. We have changed our destination to Zihuatenejo based on recommendations from John and Pat Rains, who have authored a cruising guide to mexico and have been kind enough to email us some info. We are just under 500 nm from there, which look to be very interesting miles indeed, as the itcz, monsoon trof, is up about 15N currently. We'll have another couple days of this weather, but hopefully today was the worst. We'll know more tomorrow after a long night tonight. Back to rockin and rollin, tending the course, and thinking about getting to land!