… the wind picked up and grew and grew and grew…
This sail began at a beautiful 12-15 knots of wind. I was thinking how this 2 nighter looked promising for the wind vane to take us to Magdalena bay. This was not the case, and it may have been the worst small storms yet. Wind was forecasted a North/North West wind but in reality we were hit by an Easterly wind which over the night increased to 35 knots. What made it worse was that the waves were 8-10ft and hitting us broadside every 6-7 seconds. We were beating into the wind at 30-33 with gusts of 35knots. We had two waves hitting us so hard the cockpit had a foot of water in it. All I could think about was the avacodo pit that I had cleaned up earlier from the floor grate. If I hadn’t, this could have plugged one of the drain holes. But the floors were clean and drains free, so the water emptied in no time. BUT I was drenched as water poured into my foul weather suit, through my sleeves. At one point I was looking for anchorages close to us or turning the boat around to go back to Asoncion. We would have blewn back in no time. But instead we decided to just go off the wind on a beam reach and letting Sarantium surf the waves. With half the main sail and the small staysail up we we were still moving at 4 knots. This kind of sailing makes you extremely fatigued quickly. Although the hydrovane works beautifully, these types of conditions are not ideal for the vane. In my experience, it wanders too much, and since Sarantium needed to go down and surf the waves, not hitting them sideways, it was crucial to keep a precise heading. We tried to have a sleeping schedule, however the main sail needed to be reefed a few times, and it’s a lot easier with two people. The wind was starting to ease off around 0400, and we could relax and grab some food. Around 0600 we had raised the mainsail again to full. We had decent wind in the morning, but wind slowly died and around noon we were motoring for an hour until the winds picked up again, but not to what it had the night before. We had a very pleasant sail keeping around 4-6 knots through the eve and throughout the night. We arrived at the entrance for Magdalena Bay at sunrise and was able to sail right in, sunrise on starboard and mountains and Mexican fishermen on port side. We anchored beside a Vancouver couple in a junk rig that we have met a few times along the way, and soon after, Oatmeal Savage, Family from Powell River, pulled in and anchored beside us. It’s bed time…
Sailaway Sarantium 