Anchored in Chamela ,Happy New Year With Rain...and More Rain, big waves - 2013

January 2013 - Anchored in Chamela
It rained all day and night for three days straight!

 On the third day it blew, had thunder and lightning and the swells were coming through the anchorage from the South and the anchorage is not protected from the South. A couple of boats tried to leave but came back. At one point I thought the swells were going to start breaking through the anchorage as they got real big and steep as they came rolling through, but thankfully none did. Being a couple hundred yards from the pounding beach was a little unnerving, but then being out in the sea was not the place either.

We did hear from s\v Solar Wind a new sailboat that arrived here at Chamela (however we first met them in Chacala) of a Hunter that had its rudder sheared off outside of Tenacatita which is about 30 nm south of us. They were in 12 foot seas and the rest is the weather I said. The buddy boat could not get a line to them so the cruisers in Tenacatita chipped in and hired a panga to go out and ferry a line. After much trouble the line got attached. The couple on board had their feet cut up from broken glass in the galley but otherwise was OK. The boat would spin wildly out of control and in 12 ft seas that is definitely not good. Guess that's why we personally do not like spade rudders or bolt on keels.

Back in Chamela , we had to keep pumping out the Achilles LSI-310E dinghy that was on the davits because the plug I lost was filled with emergency goop to stop water from entering, also it stopped water from leaving. That meant it did not drain out the water. The rain water would start to slosh around in the dinghy making for a dangerous situation with the weight. We lowered the dinghy after deciding that we were going to catch cold and could not keep up the pumping all night. It was about every 45 min we needed to re-pump. Debbie then climbed into the dinghy (complete with her kayak life vest for safety!!) and let go of the Kato Marine Island Davit  blocks, careful not to get caught up in a big swell. She scrambled out of the dinghy using the stern steps and we let it hang off the stern.

Today, Thursday 1/3/2013 the dinghy was full enough to take a bath in. We did get a lot of good rain water for dishes etc. Even while it was down pouring and that was for about eight hours straight we could just scoop up water off the side decks and use it. That made us think that on our night passages or longer than a day passage we will tie down the dinghy on the fore deck instead of leaving it on the davits. When it is on the davits there is no easy way to get it off and un-hooked from the davit blocks in case of bad weather or some other emergency.

At the end of the storm there was a lightning show up in the clouds in the far-off distance, it was quite something!

Surprisingly we had few leaks on the boat.

Today the swells were still too big to go ashore. There were two couples that braved it and one was in a dinghy and made it and two were in kayaks and one ate it. We will go for it tomorrow when the swell dies some more. So that will be four days on the boat and three of which were inside at all times. Debbie did row us over to a 40 ft or so sail boat and we asked about dinghy landing in the surf, they were quite helpful.

It is nice hearing the waves break on the beach and now the stars are lighting up the sky.

It is also of note that we found ourselves spoiled with all our solar power. On the second day we had to run the engine to make water and charge the batteries so we could watch a movie and other necessary things, joke intended. We ran it for about 45 min. The next day, we ran the engine for about 45 min and had to watch the amps usage, bummer. It was far easier to run the engine than hauling out the Honda EU2000i genset for a first time use. Course we did not know it was going to rain so long. The grib files said rain but we just never figured this much!

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