November 23 - 26, 2005

Turtle Bay-Abreojos-Bahia Santa Maria

We left Turtle Bay this morning at 9:00 AM.  There is some weather on the way, said to be arriving Saturday or Sunday, and we want to get south of it.  Originally we had all agreed to leave Tuesday night, but upon further evaluation of the charts and the course, Rob suggested that a morning departure would be better.

We're limping along at 4 knots, trying to go easy on our pump and the temporary fix Bryan and Alberto were able to rig.  There isn't much wind, unfortunately, but the seas are flat, and that's good for our nerves and for our dogs' peace of mind.  There are 8 sailboats out here today, which includes us and "Blackwood."  A boat behind us, "Veleda," just caught a tuna, but so far we have yet to catch anything.

Rob and Katrina, and Bryan and I, were all very anxious to get out of Turtle Bay.  We had been there for nine days, and they had been there for 15 days.  It started to lose it's charm around Day 4, when the Santa Ana's started blowing, and then continued to blow for the next five days.  Everything on the boat was dirty.  It was hard to sleep for the noise of the wind.  Additionally, the beaches in Turtle Bay are fairly dirty and the water smells pretty fishy - so much so that it even fouled up our water maker filters.  I guess you could say we were all a bit antsy to get out of there.  Besides, it really stinks when you have no control over the situation affecting you and your boat.  We couldn't do anything to fix the problem without parts available, so thank God we met Alberto.  Tory wouldn't have been able to deliver the part we needed until Friday or so, which was just too close to the bad weather for our comfort.  Needless to say, we all were ready to hit the road.  We'll spend some time on Thursday in Abreojos- maybe long enough to have Thanksgiving dinner with Rob and Kat, but probably not even a full 12 hours.  We all want to get to Bahia Santa Maria (Mag Bay) by Friday night.

November 26:  Our passage from Turtle Bay to Abreojos was a dream.  It was 24 hours of warmth and flat, calm seas.  There were eight sailboats making the passage from Turtle Bay, so we had lots of company.  We caught lots of fish (11 in total), but they were all mackeral and bonito, and not edible.  We pulled into Abreojos around 9:30 AM, and there weren't any other boats there.  We dropped our hook, as did Rob and Kat, and quickly determined it was a very rolly anchorage.  Still, we wanted to take the dogs to shore, so we put the dingy in the water.  The water is beautiful in Abreojos, very clean and clear.  Our dingy landing was a bit exciting, as a reef fringes the left side of the beach and there were big breakers on the right side.  I tried to convince Bryan that the dogs could go to the bathroom on the deck so we wouldn't have to beach it, to no avail.  Needless to say, we landed without too much drama and the dogs were very grateful.  Our departure from the beach, however, was a whole different story.  We thought we had timed it right, but alas, we took two big waves right over front of the dingy, and almost lost little Sadie-dog (again).  We were all soaked.  I had to bail water out of the dingy all the way back to the boat!  I'm  sure we were the day's entertainment for the panga fisherman on the beach.

                                              South of Turtle Bay                                            Abreojos

Upon hearing of our debacle, Kat and Rob decided they didn't really need to go to shore.  Instead, we decided to hoist anchor and head to Bahia Santa Maria.  We were all pretty exhausted from our overnighter and knew that the next leg would be a long one, but Abreojos was too rolly for any of us to get any rest.  Out of Abreojos, we were able to get in some sailing.  But about sundown, the rolly, following seas found us and things started getting uncomfortable.  Not only do the dogs hate those kinds of conditions, but our autopilot also starts acting up, and we end up hand-steering for hours at a time.  Not a big deal on a short passage, but a HUGE deal on an overnighter.  It was Thanksgiving day, so I wanted to prepare something nice and warm for dinner.  I managed to make beef with rice and corn, all the while wedging myself into the galley and trying to keep the pots from going airborne with every pitch and roll.  Bryan would call out to me "SWELL!" and I would lift the pot of boiling water off the stove with one hand and hold on to the pot of beef with the other.  Sounds like fun, doesn't it?!

Neither one of us got any quality sleep that night, so by Friday we were truly wiped out.  We got into Bahia Santa Maria around 5PM.  There were already five other boats on anchor, some of whom we recognized from Turtle Bay.  It was pretty breezy, but flat.  No swell.  Thank God.  We got the anchor set, then took the dogs to shore.  The beach in Santa Maria is shallow a long way out (especially at low tide), so when we landed the dingy, we pulled it ashore for the longest time without ever finding dry sand.  The dogs were so desperate when they jumped out of the dingy that they both ended up doing their business in about four inches of water!  Too funny.  We'd never seen them do that before.  Afterwards we came back and cleaned up the boat, took showers, and had something to eat.  We were exhausted.  Those overnighters really zap you if you can't get any sleep on your off-watch.  Thank goodness Bahia Santa Maria is calm, because we were able to get a great night's sleep.