I set off from Bahia Tortugas about an hour ago and am heading toward Abreojos. It’ll be about a 20 hour sail if I can maintain a descent speed. I’m motor-sailing at the moment, but the wind is starting to get to the point where I’ll shut down the engine and sail. Slowly. The wind is behind me again so it’ll be jib only for now. Hopefully I’ll be at a reach when I make turn further south a little later.
I cooked a chicken and veggie soup yesterday in the pressure cooker. That’ll be dinner tonight, with rice. For lunch I made a ham sandwich.
Raven, with Jerry and Terry onboard, are sailing along side me now. They are heading to Abreojos as well. They just caught some sort of tuna! We should be pretty close the entire sail, but they motor to maintain 5 knots. We’ll split apart once I turn my motor off.
Soñadora left early this morning for a stop in San Roque. They should be there by sundown.
The wind finally picked up and the boat is humming along at 5.5 knots. The seas are comfortable, not a lot of swell and all from astern. I was in the cockpit playing the ukulele, about 7 miles offshore. Hadn’t seen any other boats in the water other than Raven since we left Turtle Bay. Raven’s about 3 miles ahead of me because they’ve been motoring all day.
Something out on the horizon caught my eye, a panga speeding across the water. I looked to my left toward the bow and about 100 feet in front of me was a panga with 2 fishermen, either setting a trap or picking it up. I jumped up, turned off the autopilot, and put the helm hard to port.
The pangueros waved as I sailed by. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what they were doing. Lucky wake up call. I thought I was far enough offshore to avoid these guys, but I guess not. I’ll keep a closer watch for the rest of the sail!
The sun is set and the moon is up, almost full, and the sky is clear. The wind is blowing a perfect 20-25 knots, the boat is doing around 6 knots over ground, and I just did what I think will be my last jybe of the night to a much more comfortable tack. Aiyana is pointed directly to my approach waypoint so that we avoid the reefs that Abreojos is famous for. Abreojos means “open your eyes” in spanish, a warning to sailors. If the wind holds, i’ll be at the anchorage around 0730 tomorrow.
Soñadora decided to continue on down to Abreojos with the rest of the gang instead of stopping. We just did a check-in with the 3 boats over VHF. Everyone is having a great sail!
The winds are still strong. I’m only an hour away from my turn into Abreojos and it’s still dark. Going to heave-to until the sun comes up and head in then. My friends are all bunched up at the entrance too, so going to keep a bit of distance. Lots of room to my lee, and only drifting at about 0.5 - 1 knot.
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