Sailing on Starshine

Today is Monday March 16, 2015. We are at the dock in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. We will be here through the weekend at least. We left Tenicatita Bay and spend three days in Chamela.

In Chamela we launched the dinghy for a trip ashore. Our friends on No Ties joined us in their own dinghy. The surf was probably the biggest we have landed in (maybe 3 feet?). We did some provisioning after a hearty breakfast at the Scuba Jazz Café. A Frenchman runs the place that’s a combo dive shop and restaurant. We successfully launched the dinghy without getting us or the groceries wet. There was much discussion on the radio about weather and when to round Cabo Corrientes. We decided to leave at midnight on Thursday March 12. After talking with our friends on No Ties (who chose to leave at 2200 hours) we agreed to leave together at 2300 hours. The wind was less than 10 knots and the waves were only 2-4 feet. The local wind effect at Cabo Corrientes can double the predicted wind. Our trip went well and we arrived in La Cruz at 1230 the next day (just after noon).

We experienced a hiccup with our communications suite. My Mexican cell phone decided to stop receiving data. I went to “plan B” our SSB radio. The computer wouldn’t talk to the radio, so I began to trouble shoot. Our Pactor modem is an old style device that allows you to send emails via marine HF radio. It works a lot like a sound card on a desktop computer. It is very old technology, but it works (most of the time). Its speed is 4800 baud, a snail pace at modern standards. But it works great for weather forecasts and text emails. It does not do attachments or photos. Anyway, I began to look into why it wasn’t working and found ALL the lights on the display were flashing. Not a good symptom. We decided to go with the weather data we had, which was only 12 hours old. More on the Pactor modem later.

We arrived in La Cruz and got a spot in the anchorage. The wind blew pretty strong in the late afternoon on Friday. We decided that it was too much work to launch the dinghy for one trip ashore when we’d be in the marina the following day. We decided to come into the marina a day early. We got a slip one spot over from where we were in January.

In the “Small World” department I got a knock on the hull this morning from my friend Arnstein of Mustad Marine fame. Arnstein is a Delivery Captain and was enroute from the British Virgin Islands to Cabo San Lucas (a trip of about 5 weeks) on a 50 foot sailboat. He and his single crew arrived at 2330 last night. They had plans to sleep, shower, eat, and refuel before leaving at noon today. We went to breakfast and they promptly left their slip (on our dock) at 1203 hours. It was good to see Arnstein, if only for a couple of hours.

Back to the Pactor modem. I phoned Farallon Electronics back in Sausalito regarding our symptoms on our modem. Gary Wood quickly diagnosed the problem as dried out capacitors, an expected problem from our 12 year old modem. Now I’ve got to figure out how to get the part mailed back to the US, then back to us in Mexico.

Tomorrow is a trip to COSTCO to stock up on supplies. Yeah!