End of December
- 2012 La Cruz
We decided to go straight to Bahia de Chamela (Perula Bay) Unless the weather turns bad on the way around Cabo Corientes (Cape of Currents) we will not stop at Punta Ipala for a rest. We were thinking of this stop for an overnighter to rest up but we think it is easier to go straight through to Chamela It is where we want to be and spend some time, possibly a few weeks at anchor there. The passage is an over-nighter with a 20 hour passage time. The weather window looks good for leaving La Cruz Anchorage Banderas Bay tonight at 8pm to round the Cabo Corientes at 2 am.
Now this all depends on the auto pilot working well also, let's hope those problems are behind us.
After rounding the Cape we will be heading South East and will be changing yet another time zone. We will be heading towards Florida :) The water will be 80 deg and the days nice and warm. At this time it is 10:00am and the temperature is 73 deg and the water temperature is 75 deg here at the anchorage at La Cruz.
It seems like every other activity in that it takes a few days to get settled in the new anchorage and then start to truly relax all day. We are hoping to now start to expand our anchoring to two or three weeks at a time before moving on. Get more hammock time so to speak:)
There is a boat here in the anchor near us that is running its generator. A nice looking 42-45 footer. Looks well equipped but for solar. None. We have not needed to run our Honda EU2000i generator.. well never, not ever, not yet. Our 485 watts of solar keeps us clean and full of amps. We use our SSB and watch movies and play the stereo and keep ice cream in our freezer. During the day our batteries are at full charge. After the night on the hook we are usually at 80 percent. That is with the Garmin Chart plotter 740 on and the repeater on all night for an anchor alarm. My See-Pap breathing machine running all night and our incandescent anchor light and more. So the solar has been real nice.
The solar used to heat our hot water but since changing from wet cells to AGM batteries it does not. The wet cells were a total of 440 AMP and the AGM are a total of 520 AMPS. Could be the difference? We will need contact Blue Sky to see why :)
So we are putting out our solar shower today for a try see. We do dishes with heating hot water on the stove. Before we took a shower by washing on the swim step and the rinsing off with the stern shower but we have the dingy secured for a passage and so do not want to mess with the steps.
It is hard to tell if we could have not cut off the 6 or so inches (forgot how much) from the davits. The dingy would sit higher and give us better access to the steps but would more weight up high and give less visibility to stern. Suppose it would be fine though. Guess we will never know and it seems to do great the way the dingy sits now.
We thought we were doing so well at getting weight more forward. Slowly consolidating the gear in like-minded places and more forward. The stern was looking good at the water line. We stopped and got fuel in La Cruz, it changed all that. We have an 80 gal fuel tank and put in 48 gal of diesel fuel. Down went the stern! Like having all the fuel but now the stern sits low again. It so far has not really caused any weather helm but you can notice a slight tip on the bed. Still sleep fine like a rocking baby. Not enough to alter the mattress:.
When we have hot water the shower in the head works great!
Ok it is becoming a morning routine. We have a Shurhold shammy mop. We never used it before leaving the US. I saw in Cabo San Lucas the mop being used a lot by the sport fishing clean-up crews. Our boat is nice but all the projects kept us from keeping the outside decks and hull cleaned up nice. It was not until Puerto Vallarta, Mexico that we cleaned the black marks off the hull. Well we are starting to get the boat top-sides cleaned up nice. Each morning there is dew and I get up in time which is not too hard now as we live from sunset to sunrise. I get the shammy mop out and wipe down the decks. I do the cap rail and all the top sides. Then every other day I do the solar panels and bimini and dodger etc. Then I go inside and mop from the head to the cockpit. Then go over the cockpit and cockpit grate. The boat has been looking and feeling real spiffy! Of course it stays a lot cleaner here and especially at anchor. So the shammy mop is another nice tool to have here. While doing this I check the anchor rode and rigging etc.
On that note so are the blow up fenders. They have worked excellent and stow away great. Another nice tool to have!
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