We left El Salvador six days ago. Since it has been awhile since I wrote here, I will catch up on what has been going on.
Our last two weeks or so at Bahia del Sol were really nice. Once we got our water pump and got it installed, it was just a matter of waiting for the proper weather window. We had plenty of time to get the boat in shape, and we were more prepared for being underway than we ever have been before. While we were waiting to leave, I went to Santos's home and spent the morning with his mother, learning to clean and cook some different kinds of fish. All of the fish were kinds that normally aren't considered that good tasting, but I have now learned to make really good tasting fish out of them. And when we pulled out, the staff at the hotel got on the radio to say good bye and to wish us luck. It was hard to say goodbye to our Salvadoran friends - especially Santos and Rogelio. We will really miss them.
We had no trouble at all getting out of the estuary - and it can be tricky. But we had a really nice day to do it. On fact, most of our trip has been wonderful for actual sailing, not just drifting along or using the motor. We have learned more effective sail handling, including when to use the staysail to really push things along. Because we luckily chose our weather window well, we missed any of the really bad local wind conditions that can develop around here without much warning. We did have some winds in the 15 to 25 knot range, but things mostly stayed in the high teens and we were able to keep things going. We did haul some serious ass - it is great and really exhilarating to fly across the water at 6 and 7 knots. I only had one bad night, and there was really no reason for me to be scared. I have discovered that things are really different when they happen at night versus when they happen in daylight. I was starting to get scared, because the wind was picking up, and I knew we would have to reef the sails. That is no big deal for us, but when it happens on my watch (2 am on til morning) I have to get mike up to help me. I can't reef by myself yet. I hate to wake him up - he always misses out on sleep while I get plenty under normal circumstances. I feel so guilty when he has gone to bed at two and I am waking him up at 3:30 because things are changing and I am not sure what to do. Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I can handle. I can trim the sails for optimal performance, I can make course changes when necessary, and I can take bearings off other boats to determine if they are on a collision course or not and if we have to take evasive action. I am able also to unreef the sails by myself if things calm down and reefs aren't necessary. I have more trouble with less wind conditions that with higher wind, actually. There are more options for handling higher winds than lower winds, except of course that winds can become too high, whereas you will only die of boredom with no winds. With really light or no winds, you lose your ability to steer the boat. Which is always a bummer.
Anyway, as I am writing this we are off the coast of southern Costa Rica, heading for Panama. Our first stop is to be a little island called Isla Parida. We will anchor there for as long as we enjoy doing so, then we will continue south to other parts of Panama. This will be the longest trip we have taken so far.
It was sort of strange to start sailing again when we realized that we hadn't sailed for 11 months! We traveled a lot, but the boat sat there. We had some relearning to do, but other than being a bit sick for the first two days (not really bad, I just felt sort of crappy)and being covered with bruises from being clumsy and not having my sealegs completely back, things have gone really well. I have learned a lot more about navigation, and have also come to realize that I (we, actually) are waaay to dependent on our electronic navigation system. I am determined that we learn to use sextants and that I get better at interpreting my compass data. Probably by the time we get really good at all this we will be too old to do it any more. But this stuff will be terribly important if we are serious about crossing the Pacific next year. (By the way, my helming is getting better and better and I am actually starting to enjoy it.) One thing I have discovered is that if I am thinking about something and trying to figure it out, I do better when I pretend I am trying to explain it to someone else. Some of this navigation and charting stuff just does not seem intuitive to me. For example, longitude lines run vertically up and down the globe, and latitude lines run horizontally. That should mean the longitude measures north and south, and it so labels, but it really measures your east/west progress. I have a really hard time with that one. And then there is the whole things with degrees of direction, just like in geometry. (Which, by the way, I did poorly in.) For example, east is 90 degrees on the compass and south is 180 degrees. You have to look at the degree your boat is heading (or where you would like to be heading) and then consider the degree of the wind, in two different ways. You consider the wind strictly in relation to the direction of your boat and the direction the wind is coming from. Only then can you really determine a proper course, and often as not you will have to choose something as close to what you want as you can get, because the wind will prevent you from being able to do what you really want to. I stand there, watching the wind gauge, waiting for the tiniest little change so I can send the boat one more degree in the direction I really want to go. I push it and push it, but if I go too far, the boat will end up stalled and that can be a huge hassle. Luckily for us, our boat does really well going into the wind.
Well, since this is going out via SSB, I need to end it now and not ramble on and on. I will try to write another post while underway, I can do that as long as the seas are relatively calm. And who knows when that will be?
"It isn't polite to get into strange beds naked." (Jean Riley)
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