Well so much for the plans of mice and men. Overnight winds were Horrible! The boat rocked and rolled all night, things fell off shelves, and stuff slid across the floor. Oh, and yeah not much sleep was had by either of us. On the other hand, once again our anchor and chain kept the boat right where we left it. In the morning we got up as planned at 5:30, then promptly reset the alarm for 6:30 (hopping for a bit more light). When we got up, we checked the tide schedule and the weather and decided that today would be a good day to opt out and go to Santispac (a much more protected anchorage). We wanted high tide, as the channel into Bahia Concepcion is somewhat shallow (in some places less than 20 feet). So, when we found that high tide had been 20 minutes before we looked, we got moving and motored in. Watching the depth and windspeed. Highest wind speed we saw was just over 40 knots, and shallowest water was about 19 feet. We dropped anchor in 30 feet of water at about 9 am, had breakfast and went to bed.
We got up about 12:30, and had lunch and Renee’ is working on zippers and snaps on deck and I am finishing up the notes for the blog.
I have been watching our batteries and solar system for a bit, it is somewhat hard to tell, as we have either run the motor or been on shore power or run the engine and the generator. In any case, today we ran the motor for a couple of hours, we started the morning with the batteries at about 65%, our refrigeration and takes a bunch of current. (A freezer, refrigerator, and a drink cooler). In the middle of the day we are getting about 15 – 20 amps out of the panels, but only about 8-10 (or less) of those amps are getting into the battery. This means that when we anchored this morning with the battery at 71%, and turned off the engine, with nothing going except the refrigeration, we are only at 79% by 2:30, and right now, we are pulling 7 amps out of the battery. We will be running the generator tonight to top off the battery. This means we can’t leave the boat on a mooring ball or at anchor for the time we go to the states for Christmas or skiing in February. Perhaps if we emptied the freezer and the drink cooler and only had the refrigerator going.
Another downside to Santispac over Santa Domingo, there is no cell reception and we have heard that there is no WiFi ashore here either. So, we can check the weather and do texting and get email via the satellite, I just checked the weather and it looks like we will be here at anchor tomorrow as well, then headed south on Saturday morning.
Our next planned stop is Caletta San Juanico about 50ish miles south. Again, partially protected from the north winds. We were planning on being there a couple of days to do some hiking. We will see how that works out. From there south to Bahia Salinas which is on Isla Carmen and is very protected from the north. Next planned stop after that is Bahia Agua Verde and dropping off the school supplies. We have come south about 340 miles straight line from Puerto Peñasco, and it is 520 miles straight line from Puerto Peñasco to La Paz. So, only about 180 miles to go, of course we don’t do straight lines very well, so more like 250 miles or so to go.
Dinner was pulled pork sandwiches, Renee’ did the pork in the pressure cooker, used a little orange and a couple of jalapeños in the process, we could taste the orange, but not the peppers (she took the seeds out, so we were just expecting some flavor, not heat). We ran the generator for a few hours to charge the battery back up, and watched a movie, “A Fistful of Dollars” with Clint Eastwood.
