Author: Pam
The wind at the anchorage continued to blow like crazy throughout the night and morning hitting wind speeds of 40 knots. Our anchor snubber worked well and we never slipped our anchor at all, but this did not stop Scott from getting up throughout the night to check on the anchor.
John our new friend from Western Grace showed up in his speedy dinghy to finish repairs to our steering system. We continued to learn that most problems can be fixed with some imagination and a lot of persistence. It is strange to think that just over a month ago we were busy at work, attending meetings, and today we were curled up in the engine room, covered in grease, fixing problems that most people would solve with the help of a local mechanic. We have much to lean about self sufficiency in the cruising life, but we have the right spirit and some great examples to learn from. Before John had left the boat he repaired the compass light (that was never wired), completely fixed our steering problem, and made preliminary assessments of our overheating problem. If we had left the prior day, when all we wanted to do was leave, we never would have met John and leaned these valuable morsels of information and lessons in the cruising life, and we would have left with a poorly functioning wheel.
Once John was clear of the boat we set out to attempt our fourth departure. We would now sail 400 miles straight to Cabo and skip the second Baja Ha-Ha stop at Bahia Santa Maria.
The wind had not calmed down, we had a sailboat anchored directly over our anchor, the dock was looming, off of our port side and we had rocks aft of the boat, and the dust was still flying and coating everything. We certainly didn’t have ideal conditions for leaving. We managed to escape the anchorage, not without receiving a VHF call from Western Grace warning us of the rocks on our starboard side. We corrected course to allow for a wide margin, and motored out of the bay. Nothing could have felt better than unfurling our jib in 25 knots of wind and streaking off at 7 knots. See you later Tuttle Bay! We never did see any turtles.
Once at sea Scott went below to assess the engine and found the hose to the radiator had come loose, after searching high and low for a hose clamp, the hose was repaired. We had no idea if our engine would continue to function to Cabo, but at least we were sailing. After running our engine for about an hour we were able to use our auto pilot that we decided to name Trooper, for the grueling work it had performed while our steering was not functioning properly. Trooper was greatly relieved!
Another notable event was the discovery of the part under the engine that we suspected was lost by Missael and Armando. This part cost us a whole extra day in Turtle Bay, but had they not lost it, we would never have met John and our steering would still be broken. Strange how things work out!
Who won the election???
As we continued to sail throughout the day, we could only run our engine for about an hour at a time, so as to prevent any overheating. This created a delicate balance of engine use, and battery life. We could only generate limited power before we would need to use the engine again to create more power. If we miscalculated we could run down our starting battery and again be without an engine.
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