Author: Neil Scheuerlein

We got up this morning and made a slow start. We spoke to the one other boat that we had seen anchored near us both in Puerto Santo Thomas and in Punta Colonett. Their boat is the “Lost Pearl” they said that they would be staying there an extra night. So, we might see them again, or we might not.

In any case, we headed south to Isla San Martin, this is a small round island that is the remains of a volcano. We planned to anchor in the small fishing bay, but the wind was coming from due north right into the bay, so we went to the alternate anchorage, the south side of the island. Not quite as protected, but then again, not in the wind.

We anchored in about 25 feet of water. On the way here, we sailed wing-on-wing (main sail out to stbd, Jib out to port, with the wind very close to directly behind us). We made about 5.5 to 6.0 knots this way for a couple of hours. I used the preventer on the mainsail and it was a very quiet ride. I tried to upload a picture of this, but alas the internet signal here is not up to the task.

Renee’ started her fishing career. At least she got the lure out in the water for an hour or two, but did not catch anything. I have a picture of this event, but again, no joy in uploading it.

Tomorrow we plan to either kayak or dinghy ashore and go for a short hike, then back to the boat and sail to Bahia San Quintin/Bahia Santa Maria. It is a short 10 miles to the next anchorage, we plan to spend a couple of days there. There is a small village and we expect to find a store and maybe get some more fruit.

This is the picture that failed to upload earlier of Wing-on-Wing. I tried reducing the resolution so the picture may not be as sharp as the others. The small black lines going out to the end of the boom are the preventers.

Renee’ fishing for the first time off our boat. Alas, no dinner from the sea tonight.

We are anchored at Punta Colnett. We expect to have a bit of a rolly night.

So, we have limited internet and text messaging. The Iridium GO! is working well in the spot on the deck inside the dodger, but, the battery is only good for a day or so. I found a new spot to put it that is inside the salon and near a window, we will see how it does as the boat swings around the anchor. I have been in communication with the Electronics Guy in San Diego (Shea Weston, Pacific Offshore Outfitters) we have been able to exchange a few pictures of my external antenna connection and verified that it is missing a part, a male pin inside the outer round part of the plug. I even found the pin on the nav station desk. It is probably about 1/8” long, and very small diameter and folded in half. So, until I can figure out a way to get the new part and get it installed, we will have to find a way to keep the Go charged and getting a signal.

Today was fairly uneventful, we made about 60 gallons of drinking water, which means we ran the generator and the water maker for 3 hours or so. We are now at 70=80% in our water tank. The water tastes very good. We also used the preventer on the port side for the first time today. This was a great idea by our friend Duane Ericson. This is a line that goes from the end of the boom to the bow, then through some blocks and eyes back into the cockpit that allows us to hold the boom out, so that when the wind is from directly behind the boom stays where we want it, rather than flopping from side to side.

Tomorrow we are planning on going to Isla San Martin, or maybe Bahia San Quentin / Bahia Santa Maria we will play it by ear. If we go to the Bahia, there is a small village at the end of a lagoon, so we would take the dinghy to town, me might stay here a couple of days, as the Isla could be a day trip if there is not a good anchorage there to spend the night. Renee’ has pointed out that there is a good hike on this island. We will see.

Renee’ is wearing a jacket, as it is still somewhat cold (mid 60’s). That is Punta Colonett in the background.

Another view of Punta Colonett.

I thought that I had some pictures of the preventer in action, but I did not, so it will have to wait for another opportunity.

So, we are back in Puerto Santo Thomas. We will only stay one night this time. We are anchored very close to where we anchored last time.

Overall a fairly quiet day. Not much wind until we arrived here and we have about 20 knots as the sunsets.

We made water today, mainly because the last time we made water, I forgot to stop the fresh water flush (we have to do that for 10 minutes every 5 days or after every time we make water). I let it run for a couple of hours, and we were down to about 30% tank level when we arrived in Ensenada. So, we ran the generator and made water for about 3 hours today and made about 60 gallons of fresh water. On the plus side, the water is very high quality, normal city water is something less than 500 ppm (parts per million) TDS (total dissolved solids), our water maker puts out something on the order of 75 ppm. At this point most of what is in our water tank was made by our water maker and it tastes pretty good.

We do have a Seagull Water Filter that I could put the cartridge in which would be a 0.4 micron filter, which only goes to the cold water faucets (galley, and both head sinks), which would make the water even better. Reasons I have not put the cartridge in, they are expensive, (about $150 each), don’t last long (about 500 gallons) and the water we have had in our tanks has not been real clean until now. In fact, we have plugged our faucet strainers a couple of times. Which is a wire mesh the same as your kitchen faucet/bathroom faucet at home. The Seagull is similar to a Brita water filter, for drinking water.

I just downloaded our weather route for tomorrow, and found that the external antenna was not plugged in real well. This is probably the single worst part of this device. The Iridium GO! works well overall, but this plug is a proprietary plug, and is really bad. It does not stay plugged in and I think it is bent as well. The cable is shielded and a small diameter, it makes a 90 degree turn to go into the side of the Iridium GO! and it has a very small wire inside of the plug that has to go into the socket of the device. I have added a rubber band to hold it in place, we will see how well that works.

It appears we are in for another rolly night here. We should have expected it, after all that is what we had for our previous two nights here. We will get up at 6 am and get underway by 8 am or so. We have about 40 miles to go to Punta Colnett.

Have I mentioned how bad the external antenna is for the Iridium GO!?

Wow, it is horrible! This is of course a draft, and won’t be published until we have cell service, hopefully tomorrow.

This is the plug that provides the external antenna to the Iridium GO!

This is the socket on the Iridium GO!

This is the screen shot of the Anchor App that I referred to. The heavy marks in the middle are our tracks for two days of anchoring in Puerto Santo Thomas, the marks to the left side are our tracks for the third day here. When I took the screen shot, I moved the anchor on the app, which changed where the circle was, which is the alarm point. This shows how close we are anchored to where we were the first two days.

So, came back and decide to use the village marina in stead of going back to Marina Coral. First and last time to do that. The village marina is down town (good for going to the stores and getting parts). Right next to the Cruise ship dock, not so good, security is weaker than Marina Coral, the guard at the front gate was really about tourists from the cruise ships. The gates to the docks are not locked, etc. The power at the docks is 220, 50 Hz, and 50 amps. So pretty much useless to us, voltage and frequency are not compatible with our boat. So, the price of the slip is about the same as Marina Coral, but the amenities are not the same, at Marina Coral, they also have a hot tub.

On the other hand, I posted on Facebook in the Ensenada cruisers page that I needed a rigger, the rigger here in the Village marina responded on Facebook, and gave me his phone number and met us and helped tie up as we got into our slip. He immediately went to work on our broken furling line, and had it fixed/replaced in under an hour. He also gave us directions to a marine parts store that I did not know existed in Ensenada, (a much smaller version of West Marine) that was a half hour walk away from the marina. (It would have been a bus ride or Uber from Marina Coral). They had some of the hardware we needed, and directed us to a place about two blocks away that had hoses and belts that were able to fix our gas hose (between the propane tank and the regulator), at no charge.

First thing this morning, I got a call back from the PredictWind support person (Craig Smith in New Zealand) about my inability to download some files from PredictWind over the satellite connection. I assumed that I was doing something wrong, and he started with an obvious question and we started into the log in process, we corrected my mistake in about a minute and everything is working now.

All in all a great day.

Tomorrow we will go back to Puerto Santo Thomas, a repeat trip, but otherwise we would have a 60+ mile day, to Punta Colnett, and we would rather go slow.

While we were walking back to the boat we saw a hardcore RV and figured it was worth a picture.

We anchored here pretty near the location recommended by “Charlies Charts” in a line with the rock off shore and the point in about 25 feet of water. There are a bunch of small fishing boats on mooring here, and a couple of boat ramps. The nearby hills block the cell phone reception, so no internet here, even with a cell phone amplifier. The satellite connection still works, and I chatted with Kyle and Shea (electronics guy in San Diego).

As we have no internet, this is being written as a draft, and won’t be published until sometime tomorrow. This is a little cove, with a fishing village and large steep hills around it. We had one other boat at anchor with us last night, a powered catamaran, I did not see the name, and our only communication was this morning as they were leaving Renee’ exchanged “good morning” with them.

When we arrived yesterday, our battery bank was at 100%, this morning we are down to 73.7%. What we had on last night was lights (inside) and the radio (Sirius), until we went to bed, the anchor light all night, and the refrigerators and freezer. Since we plan to spend the night here again tonight, we will run the generator later in the day, run a load of clothes, heat the water, and charge the battery the rest of the way after the solar does what it can. I would like to get to the point of running the generator every other day, but we will see if I can make that happen. Part of the question is making water, as we have to run the generator to do that, and we don’t want to make water while we are near shore.

One of the purchases we made while we were in port last week was a YETI cooler. We got a small one 20 quarts, it is really well made (better be for the price!) it has a rubber bottom, so it does not slide on the floor, non skit on the top so what you put there stays there, and the ice lasts a really long time. We also bought two of the YETI blue ice blocks for it, this allows us to have frozen food (and one ice block) in the freezer, and refrigerated food in the fridge, beer and condiments in the beer cooler and fruit and veggies in the YETI. For a sailboat, we have an awful lot of cooler space.

Clean solar panels put out about 19 amps, vs dirty 16.5 amps. Dirty is to say covered in salt and a couple of patches of bird poop. The panels are supposed to be 470 watts, which I am sure is if they are correctly aligned to the sun, and new. Ours are fixed on top of our arch, and probably 10 years (or so) old. I will check the current output later in the day when the sun is higher, it is about 09:45 am (today was the day we moved the clocks back). At 470 watts, we should be getting about 36 amps at 13 volts.
11:45 22 amps, 13:15 19.5 amps. Batteries at 82.9%. Very sunny day. Obviously not optimal angle to the sun.

We started out the morning of Nov. 4, headed south, promptly broke the main furling line and decide to go back to Ensenada to get it fixed, and to get some spare fasteners.

Rocks in front of Puerto Santo Thomas 11/2/19

Leaving Puerto Santo Thomas 11/4/19