1300, 2 Feb 10, Anchored in the Barra de Navidad Lagoon
What an idyllic spot to be! Although it is a muddy shallow bottom and a 10-12 minute boat ride to the town it is a wonderful anchorage, well protected and not too hot, thanks to the land and sea breezes we have every day without fail. There are also a lot of our cruising mates here. Bill and Janet (Optical Illusion) arrived from Santiago Bay soon after we did as did Don and Lynn (Prairie Seashell) who we hadn’t seen in 2 years. To our relief Sunday arrived a few days ago. We hadn’t heard from them in a few weeks and we knew they had had to weather out the gales in the Sea of Cortez that had delayed us on our way down.
We have also met more boats from Victoria and Vancouver Island (Angus and Rolande – Periclees), Goff and Linda (Curare), Joe and Deb (Pacific Jade) and (Deb and Lynn - Dolphin Tales, who we had met aboard Sea Turtle IV in Victoria just before they left). Out of 20 boats in the lagoon almost half are Canadian.
It has been raining on and off most of the day, a very rare occasion and the first rain we have experienced this far south at this time of year. It caught us by surprise in the middle of the night having lightly doused Fran’s side f the bed (she is closest to the hatch). We are looking forward to another day of rain. It certainly is different to be hunkered down with nothing else to do but read, watch movies, play card games with the neighbours or doing some indoor projects. It was also quite surprising to see the number of boats that wanted a visit from the French Baker who sells his wares by skiff from boat to boat. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a pastry of some kind today (comfort food?); strange phenomenon. Unfortunately for Fran he was sold out of chocolate croissants but her disappointment was short-lived. She bounced back, declared this a soup day and her creative brain went into overdrive in making a superb pumpkin soup.
Nothing much has changed here in Barra over the past 3 years. The Sands Hotel still provides the cruisers with a dinghy landing, a convenient bar, WIFI and a pool to use with your 20 peso daily fee. Market day is still on Wednesday and the same gadget stands and tourist treasure dealers still offer the same junk for sale year after year. The DVD sellers always do a brisk business at 20 pesos each or 3 for 50 pesos. Avatar is already on the stands here. Fran’s hairdresser is still there but only provided a pedicure this year for both of us. Yes, even J-G got one. It was long overdue with all of the calluses formed over the past few months of wearing sandals. Our lavanderia is still there and still does our week’s laundry for less than $10.
The morning net covers most of the anchorage areas along this part of the coast including Tenecatita, Malque, Barra (lagoon and the marina) and anyone who can hear the net in Santiago Bay and Las Hadas in Mazanillo bay. It is always very informative and we have shared in the net controller duties on various occasions
On the weekend we helped Phil (Mannasea) prep the local school in Colimilla for painting. Phil has taken this as a project this year and we had promised to help him out. Although we are a month late we will be able to get the outside of the school done this year. The interior will be next season’s task. While the boys were scrapping Fran was painting the figures on the boys and girls washrooms. This weekend she will fancy up the kindergarten’s outhouse with painted flowers.
The solar panels have been a bit of a letdown. Although they put out 4-5 amps during the day they have just been maintaining what the boat draws during the day. At night the batteries drain slowly requiring an alternative charging method to bring them back to normal and today, with a cloudy day, they aren’t much use. Fortunately we brought down a 2000w generator this year and we have been running it a few hours a day charging the batteries back to full charge. Last year we had to run the main engine a more expensive proposition than the small amount of gas we now burn. We are still hampered by the lack of a suitable water-maker to satisfy our domestic water requirements. We can average 7-10 days on the 120 gallons in the tanks we have on board and then we have to drive to a water source for a refill or dinghy in jugs of water from ashore. By Thursday we will have to go to the fuel dock for a refill. The water-maker we have is only capable of producing 1.7 gals/hr so we only use it to make our drinking water and that is done outside the anchorages where the quality of the raw sea water is not suitable.
Thursday, 4 Feb 2010
WOW!!!! We have just lived through the wettest and wildest few days of our entire time in Mexico. We have had over 6 inches of rain over the past few days, winds to hurricane force, albeit a very short burst, and very unsettled weather.
It started 2 nights ago as we were playing cards on Sunday. We have only seen a thunderstorm on 2 other occasions; one was in Mazatlan only a few weeks ago and the other many years ago when we were in a timeshare. This one lasted the better part of 4 hours with a superb (and scary) show of lightning. We got back aboard by about 10 with the storm in full swing, lightning all around but none close to the anchorage. Fran went to bed but J-G stayed up just in case things got worse – and they certainly did. At about 23:30 a violent gust of wind which peaked at about 70 kts hit the anchorage with full force. The boat heeled over about 30 degrees and the air was white with a spray. Thank God the anchor held. We may have dragged a bit but everyone did, some more than others. Several boats were moving after everything settled down, having dragged enough that they needed to re-anchor. By 2 AM the wind had abated completely but it continued to rain for the next 24 hours. We have had over 6 inches of rain. Today we are back to nice sunny weather but all the boats look like Chinese laundries with all of their wet things hanging out to dry.
This is an El Nino year and things can be expected to be very different. Hopefully we won’t see any more of this type of weather.
We plan to be here for another few days and do some painting at the school over the weekend then head south to Manzanillo.
No comments:
Post a Comment