Well! That was quite a night. We checked our weather programs yesterday, and were expecting a fairly quiet night at anchor. Yeah… about that. Wind speed got up over 30 knots sustained, and waves in the anchorage (which is part of the Sea of Cortez, so typically smaller than ocean waves) were 4 to 6 feet, breaking on the bow of the boat. One of our buddy boats, Lost Pearl drug their anchor a couple of times. By the time he was done dragging, he had out about 300 feet of chain, and the rear of his boat was almost in the surf zone. He said his next option was to cut his chain, leave the anchor and chain and go to La Paz in the dark. All of our books on all of our boats, caution against going into La Paz in the dark. But it would be better than putting his boat on the beach.
I texted a question about this to PredictWind, as they are a paid weather source for us, and the response was enlightening as to how to get a better understanding of what they are telling us with the app and information. BUT, when I reviewed the info that I had downloaded last night, and compared it to what we experienced, there was nothing in the predictions that suggested anything like this. Nor was there anything that suggested that there was any uncertainty in those predictions.
At this point all three of our buddy boats are out on their way to La Paz (Lost Pearl, Merry Lee, and Kirah) as of 8:30, I got a report from them that wind speed out there is over 20 knots already. We will probably be getting underway to follow them shortly.
We got underway fairly early, and motored to La Paz. Along the way, Renee’ made some phone calls and got us a reservation at Marina Cortez on C dock. Some good some bad about that:
- Yes it has water
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Yes it is a floating dock
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No it does not have power
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Yes it is about a 1/2 mile to walk from the boat along the dock to the gate (no, I am not kidding, I measured it with Google Earth at 2,100 feet!).
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Yes the bathrooms are about a block away from the gate
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Yes the bathrooms are on the second floor, and to get to the stairs you have to walk the full length of the building.
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But the best part…. the price! $200 US per week. Consider the marina we stayed at in San Jose Del Cabo was $1700 per month, the bathrooms were marginally closer, but still quite a walk.
We went for a walk around town this afternoon, Ok, not really around town just down the beach street. Found a microbrewery/pub that sold Baja Brewing company beer. Very good! We are going to look for it in the local grocery stores/liquor stores.
We have about had it for today, I will catch up on my posts for this blog and go to bed.
