Afternoon Adventures

Add two more anchored boats and you have how the anchorage looked during our blow

We’re hanging out in the Santa Rosalia area, enjoying the town and the internet. After we leave here we understand there’s one pay-(a lot)-as-you-go internet café in Bay of LA and that’s it. And considering I have a couple of research-heavy stories in the works, being in Santa Rosalia (or out at Isla Marcos where we can swim, fish and get Banda Anchas 3G service) is pretty much the best option as long as nothing too untoward is brewing in the south.

The problem with Santa Rosalia is it has a small, crowded, busy and very old (as in 140-years-old) harbour that has a bottom consistency of Jell-o. And not just your standard Jell-o; it’s more like that nasty Jell-o salad stuff, with chunks. So sometimes you hook a chunk (which could be anything from the wreck of a 19th century schooner to an old car) and sometimes your anchor simply drifts around in the Jell-o.

If all goes well, the boats at anchor (which are all crowded in a back corner) all drift around together and no one's the worse for it. But yesterday our flat calm, slight overcast day brought an afternoon blow that added some excitement to the place.

Big winds typically come at night; when people are home. But yesterday’s breeze picked up when half the folks were off their boats. And as the wind hit and we all pulled back into the sludge, some of us moved, and some of us didn’t. The first boat to start the slow drift was just upwind of us. We watched Francis Lee (whose owner Jesse was on shore) head straight between our bows, threatening to make us a trimaran.

As Francis Lee closed on us, we slipped out rode, until we were within a boat length of Third Day. But Third Day had nowhere to go because although Lori was aboard she couldn’t get the windless to work (and she also had a solid wall behind her). Meanwhile Hotspur was also on the move and was closing in on Third Day's port side. But Jim was aboard with 10-year-old Carolyne (who got a crash course in driving the boat in high winds and became a hero for the day).

Fortunately it’s a small town and Jesse got back to Frances Lee before she made any structural modifications to our hull. He picked up his anchor and moved. Jim picked up his and moved. Then for good measure we picked up ours to give Third Day a little space. While moving though we got garbage caught on our prop (the harbour is full of stuff…) and lost propulsion, which forced us to anchor a bit sooner than planned.

The fact it was daylight and the wind never got above 30 knots was our saving grace. That and the fact no one dragged quickly. The lesson though is this is not the place to be in bad weather. It’s a terrible harbour. Nice town, good internet, but a terrible harbour.

The aftermath

Made it into the marina after Ev cleared the prop. We were greeted by dozens of people to take our lines - everyone had a story. One boat that had been anchored near us told us he wondered where we had gone - then realized he dragged more than a 1/4 mile. Another ended up with parted dock lines and became wedged under the pier. There is no power or water in town. Every boat we've met has some damage. We seem to have gotten off easy compared to stripped windlesses, shredded sails, broken wind generators and damage from dragging into each other. The local weather forcaster has been here 11 years and has never seen weather like this.

We're starting to clean up and beginning to get our heads around going through a 100 mile an hour storm. We're preparing for part two. The jet stream has dropped lower and sped up, we were told, which means the chance of further tropical disturbance is high.

The good news is the marina has at least a half dozen kids in it. Maia is off to find them.

Well, Holy Crap!!

Thunder, lightening, driving rain, 88knots (101 mile per hour winds) and six foot breaking seas. That's what we just had in the La Cruz anchorage. No water spouts though--so that's good.
We're wired but ok. Our anchor held and as luck would have it we were windward of the fleet (except two 70 foot steel fishing boats that missed dragging onto us by a few meters while Evan steered out of the way...) The anchorage is unrecognizable right now. We don't know where many of the boats are. From what we've heard on the radio it sounds like a few are in the shoals. A few made it into the marina, a few motored out into open water. Very few had anchors that held.
Our options became limited with the discovery that we have a length of blue poly line wrapped around our prop. It's still far too dangerous to free it and if we start motoring to somewhere else we could loose our engine. We have chafe in one section of our anchor rode caused by when our bow roller self-destructed so at first light, or as soon as the seas have eased to make it safe, we (being Evan) will go into the water to free it. Storm anchor is on deck ready to heave over.
El Nino, you're killing me, baby...
The jet stream is way down here. I'm shaky on the details but these storms are utterly unpredictable right now and can come back up with no warning.
May be a very long night...
This may be why rum was invented.
7:30 am
We had a low sleep night. Perfect after a five-day passage. The anchorage is eerie. Before the storm we had boats all around us. Now the nearest is as though it's in a different anchorage and where there were 50 or more yesterday, today there is 25. They're spread across the bay in clusters. Discovering things like shreaded sails, lost dinghies, damaged decks. The radio keeps chirping with calls from the beach--people finding things; dinghies, surf boards, gas cans, oars and wanting to get them back to their owners before the stuff is lost to the tides.

Bumping and Banging

Sailing successfully is all about having the right skills. We’d like to think it’s about having the right boat and the best equipment – and often those will get you through. But in the toughest moments it comes down to knowing how to do things right. All that boring basic seamanship stuff.

This came up for us over and over this week.

We’re the first to admit our skills are a bit rusty – but we do have them. When we sail, we check the weather report and have all the sails set to go before heading out. When we anchor, we always anchor with an eye to who’s around us and as though it’s going to blow.

For example - rust at the end of the rainbow is best avoided.

This came in handy in Nanaimo. It was Sea Festival weekend and hundreds of boats were jam-packed in the small basin – hoping to see the fireworks.

Then came the lightening squall.

We sat steady through the chaos of boats piling up on each other. But then, one big power boat tried to smash our dreams. He was on the bow – doing something with the anchor, while she stood on the bridge deck flapping her arms.

We were directly down wind.

It took the shouted advice of the boats around them (I sort of just screamed ‘don’t you dare hit us!!’ rather than offering direction) for her to sort out to turn on the engine and steer the boat.

They really ought to have known how to control a dragging boat.

Our basic rule is there are no plumbers (or mechanics, or electricians) at sea. And we need to know how to take care of our boat and ourselves. I probably rely on Evan far too much for all these things – but we are pretty good at trouble shooting together – which is why we now know the water tank we thought was leaking (think huge repair job) was actually a leaking hose clamp (leak is now checked off on the to-do list).

This week also included the repair of a lost alternator bolt while we were underway (Ev found the bold but not the nut and had to retap the bolt to fit a metric nut). A sheared a bolt on the outboard engine bracket. A *really, really* clogged holding tank and a bit of computer grumpiness.

And while it seems like we had a sucky week of repair after repair – this is pretty much expected on a newly launched boat.

At least I keep telling myself that.