Published 04/11/2025
Up at 6:30, it was very windy last night I checked in the morning while Reneé was fishing wind speeds were up to 35 knots. There are white caps on the water here in Puerto Don Juan. I am really glad we skipped Punta Trinidad two days ago when we left Santa Rosalia and went straight to Puerto San Francisquito. It meant we were here last night and not going through this outside getting here today! Instead of going into the wind at 35 knots, we saw 5 knots or less. Much easier. We had planned to go north to Refugio today, but it is too windy. We will stay here until the weather predictions are more favorable.
We had breakfast and did our bible reading then some banking stuff. We hope the wind calms down and we can go ashore and take a hike.
I have attached a screenshot of Google Earth with something close to our route from Puerto Vallarta to Puerto Peñasco. Last night we were in Puerto Don Juan. This is a small bay (or cove) surrounded by rocks and hills. It is about 1/3 of a mile wide and almost a mile long. The yellow line in the close up is the measurement. The wind last night was pretty strong, probably more than 25 knots. As you are probably aware, the force of the wind is a square function, (that is the wind speed doubles, the force goes up by a factor of 4). So, our boat moved around quite a bit. Where we are has about an 8 foot tide swing, we anchored near high tide in about 40 feet of water, and at low tide we about 32 feet. This bay is almost all in that range. We have friends who rode out a hurricane here in 2023 along with 21 other boats, they sustained no damage.
Regarding the route shown in the picture, we did not stop at Punta Trinidad. We went straight from Santa Rosalia to Puerto San Francisquito (I am glad, because it meant that we got here a day earlier than we would have and had better protection from the wind. We also skipped Punta Chivato.
We are headed to Puerto Peñasco where our truck and a cargo trailer are parked. The plan is to load all of our personal stuff to the trailer then head back to Santa Rosalia and cross to San Carlos on the mainland (3rd picture showing the distance at about 90 miles). That is where we will get some repair work done and put the boat on the hard for the hurricane season. In the fall we hope to have a slip reserved in the Puerto Vallarta area, and will move the boat there and put it up for sale. As you look at these maps, consider that in our boat the top speed is about 7 knots, which really works out to about 6 knots average speed (about 7 mph). So the 90 mile crossing from Santa Rosalia to San Carlos will take about 13 hours. Since we don’t want to anchor in the dark we will probably leave in the middle of the night, as the marina at Santa Rosalia is well lit at night.
As I sit here writing, Reneé is on deck fishing, and the wind is blowing 25-35 knots right now.
https://vimeo.com/1071519916?share=copy#t=0
So, one of the things that happens is software gets updated on anything that uses a computer, even a stereo. So the other day we were listening to some music and all of a sudden the sound quit. I looked at settings and did not find anything obvious. I tried calling support, but it was a weekend. No luck. Yesterday we were on the water, not a good time to call for help. Today, I am sitting here working on the blog and waiting for the wind to die down. So, I called, turns out we were 3 revisions behind and one of them fixed this problem. About 20 minutes later the updates are done (I had to do the update from my phone while it was connected to the stereo, not directly from the stereo, if that had not worked then I would have needed to get a USB stick that was no bigger than 16 gb and access the back of the stereo to do the update). The stereo works again!
Wind speed is down to 15 knots at 1 pm.
So, a bit later wind speed dropped to about 1 knot! We got out the kayak and went out and joined Mike, Jenna and Joe. We discussed getting together again tonight, Jenna and Joe said no, they didn’t sleep well last night. Mike was up for it.
Then Reneé and I went to the other boat, Blue Wind, with Alexandra and Chris. I gave them the password for our Starlink so they could check the weather. Then back to the boat. We debated whether or not to put the kayak away. In the end we did. About 4 the wind was back to 20+ knots. Mike said he didn’t want to come over with the wind. So, it was just us.
We ran the generator and took showers, then dinner.
