Day 1 - La Paz to Caleta Lobos

Today we made a start  by motoring 2.5 hours from the marina, up the long La Paz channel, past the harbor at Pichilingue, to Caleta Lobo, described as "a small, cozy anchorage isolated from the hustle and bustle and bright lights of nearby La Paz."  In fact we are only 10 miles from La Paz but you wouldn't guess it from this anchorage.  We're next to a guano island with the associated bird calls and can hear the sea lions barking at tiny Roca Lobos, maybe a half mile away.  The flashing light at Roca Lobos and the glow of the lights of another yacht anchored a few hundred meters away completes the picture.

We motored out of the slip at 11.15 AM at slack tide and with a gentle northerly wind of 3.5 knots.  A passing group of sailors offered to cast our lines and just as well that I agreed.  Having idled the engine for 20 minutes with no problem I got a fault alarm as soon as I engaged the gear to power out of the slip.  I asked the person holding the stern line to hold on so that the boat could be pulled back in.  I got my glasses and saw my old friend the battery failure symbol being displayed.  After passing this information to the others I asked to be cast off and we'd go with what we had.  I silenced the alarm and before we had cleared the marina the fault symbol disappeared and we had a normal run from then on.  The meter read 13.5 - 13.7 volts during the trip.

In the gentle headwind and calm conditions of the La Paz channel I steadily nudged up the revolutions and got a maximum of 3125 rpm for a sustained 30 seconds.  The manual states that the maximum rpm should be in the range of 2800-3200.  This was an important result because to me it indicated that the propeller had been correctly pitched to match the engine.  I passed this information to Mark in Port Townsend and hope that he will confirm this opinion of mine.  Unfortunately I did not want to leave the helm to check our top speed at the chart plotter but I will get this information when we are in more open water.

The wind picked up to about 15 knots apparant from the north and pretty well on the nose.  Soon Brenda and I were wearing coats and beanies to protect ourselve from the chill.  Otherwise it was a pleasant ride under 80 percent cloud cover.

We dropped anchor in 4.2 meters of water, with good protection from all sides except S and SW.  By 7.30 PM the wind had died down to 6 kt still from the north and we expected to have a very comfortable night.

Dave's navigation software has proven to be outstanding so far.  The presentation was much clearer than that of the Raymarine chart plotter, with its reliance on sketchy chart data.  I set up the anchor alarm and once again it proved to be far superior to that of Raymarine.  I was able to center the anchor alarm circle over the anchor, rather than the location of the boat, which forces me to double the alarm radius to deal with the possibility of the boat swinging to the opposite point of the circle.  The zone is clearly displayed so that I can see its relationship to the surrounding terrain.

It was Australia day, as Bob Carrol had reminded us with his best wishes.  We celebrated the day by opening a bottle of  and excellent Touriga Nationale red from Chris and Jim's Condingup Vinyard in Western Australia.