Peaceful Night at Anchor

After settling down in the Bahia Los Frailes anchorage I wanted a more substantial meal that we had been eating so I cooked brown rice with the usual carrots and onion and in separate pots heated 2 cans of tuna and a can of corn. I then put plenty of Paul Newman sauce in the rice to give it some flavor and zip. It came out pretty well. Arnold and I then split the last half bar of chocolate for desert and at 8.30 we hit the sack for a full 10 hours. It was a quiet night with a light breeze and the usual canopy of stars over head. The anchorage was very good in that there was no rolling from surges refracted around the headland.

I emerged from the cabin at 7 AM to find a strong NW wind and the same stark landscape that had reminded me of the Western Australia while motoring the previous day. I had that comfortable feeling of aches and pains everywhere which reminded me that I had had done some serious exercising. I remarked to Arnold that there is nothing like sailing for an overall workout: ankles, legs, back, stomach, arms & shoulders, neck, and in particular hands with all of the heaving and pulling of ropes and anchor chains. Arnold was pretty tired too and suggested that we stay another day. That made sense because we would need this entire day for exploring the place and I had some minor jobs to do.

One of the minor jobs was to resite the dome light in the head that was frequently being turned on and off by a swinging cupboard door. On the cruise from Ensenada the light was struck hard enough to send it crashing to the floor (with no damage). Another job is to "put away" the running back stays. They are two blue ropes that pass from mid-mast to turning blocks at the rear of the boat then to cleats. They are a pain because we wind up with blue rope in the cockpit and the necessity to adjust the lines every time the boom is moved from one side to the other. Twice I have been hit in the open eye by one of these swinging ropes. This is all warranted if the boat is being sailed as a cutter, meaning that the staysail is regularly used off the inner forestay. But I have already documented my problems with using the staysail and therefore sail the boat as a sloop. "Putting away" the running back stays simply means routing them through snatch blocks just aft of the mast to the cockpit where they are held by jam cleats and the rest neatly bundled up out of the way.

I worked out some numbers on our cruise from Ensenada to the anchorage at Bahia Los Frailes. The leg took 8 days, from 17 to 25 February. The total distance was 685 miles (635 to Cabo San Lucas and 50 to Bahia Los Frailes). Our average speed over those 8 days was 3.57 knots.

The wind continued to howl during the day, typically 17-22 knots over the mast. We decided against trying to inflate and launch the Zodiac in those conditions. Arnold seemed to enjoy sitting in the cockpit looking at the goings on both ashore and at sea. We saw packs of rays leaping out of the water and landing with big slaps on the water with their winds. On the horizon I saw whales in action again. They seemed to leap half out of the water then tilt and come crashing down. Such useless effort. Must be sex involved.

I did stow away the running backstays but not in the way that they were when I purchased the boat. It did not make sense to run the lines at an angle from the mast, through a block on the cabin, then to the spray dodger area where they would make worse the clutter of ropes that already existed there. Low on the sides of the mast are rings that were probably put there for fixing the jockey pole that lies in the forecastle. I suspended the bundle of running backstay lines from there with a very neat result.

Arnold reminded me that we needed to stow the MPS spinnaker so we put the spinnaker on deck to get rid of any lingering dampness, cleared the forecastle, and left the starboard locker empty and open in an attempt to dry it out completely. After an hour we packed everything back up. We made good use of the long, sturdy, and waterproof bag that Brenda had made for the water maker by stowing it in the sail locker on top of the spinnaker and filled with all of our electrical cables, plugs, power boards, and appliances such as toaster and water jug.

I consulted the cruiser's guide about the weather and it appears that it is typical this time of year (winter) to get "northers" of 20-30 knots that can last for "a number of days". Arnold and I realizes that it would be madness to try to motor against those sorts of winds so we accepted the fact that we might be at this anchorage for a number of days. However, we did agree to launch the Zodiac the next day regardless of the wind.

In the late afternoon I did more work with the camcorder, familiarizing myself on its use and how to transfer the images to the computer. I expect to make much more use of the camcorder in the future and publish some of the shorter clips on this blog.

It is fortunate that I started cooking late because just as I was about to open two tins of chili beef we heard a voice and it was a guy on a kayak that Arnold had spoken with the previous day. He fishes and releases but he promised to bring us a fish. He had gone out that afternoon in that howling win and caught four. He showed us the lure that he uses when trolling and said that we should be able to catch fish off the boat using pieces of the fish that he had given to us as bait. I filleted the fish and fried up four beautiful pieces that Arnold said later was just the right amount for us.

After dinner I threw some scraps overboard and soon we had many long thin blue fish that I think are called gar fish in Australia swimming around the boat. In the light of the full moon we saw a school of large fish swimming at the surface and all around the boat was an incessant slap slap slap of the manta rays jumping out of the water and doing their things. I remarked to Arnold that I have never been in waters teeming with so much fish life.

We then watched "The Jackal" with Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, and Sidney Portier. It was Arnold's first view of it and about my fourth; but I enjoy it every time I watch it because it is a solid production with a great cast.

The wind had begun to moderate in the afternoon and by 10 PM there was but a gentle breeze and we would be serenaded at night by the sound of the surf. I would try to make contact in the morning with some of the cruising net weather reports on the HF radio. Our impression from the first two days in the Sea of Cortez is that the winds are fickle on a grand scale, with abrupt and big changes in wind speed and directions. The GRIB files that we had been receiving have not been accurate and maybe we had been expecting too much from them for this special area. Perhaps the cruising net weather reports will be more helpful. Sometime after that we would inflate the Zodiac and walk on dry land for the first time in 10 days.

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