Two Days in Tenacatita

Our friends are back and wake us up this morning! The dolphins.  Circling the boat in search of fish. There are three of them. They surface, blow then dive again all around the boat. 

The morning weather at 8:30am is calm with waters flat and not a breath of air. The only sounds are the fishing dolphins as they come up to breach and this wakes us up.. what a way to wake up! 

Today we will decide if the weather will be calm enough to motor back over to La Manzanilla to dingy ashore to watch the 49er game… we have been boat bound the last two days:

Jan 17 –

The first day there was 20 ft visibility to the clear sandy bottom we are anchored in! Amazing, not a rock in sight, just clear sand and a few fish. We thought it might be good to clean the bottom of the boat.  John jumps in the water and begins the arduous job of scrubbing the boat line, when we see this “bloom” of junky stuff floating by…clouds of debris that looks like someone dumped their head, but no, on closer inspection, we see hundreds of little button sized, blue centered jelly fish floating by on the surface.  Along, with the string and strands of the “pearl” jellyfish call Medullas. We‘ve heard about these and they can leave quite a sting and get stuck everywhere, if you know what I mean!  So, John gets out of the water and also, gets out of the scrubbing job!  I decide to stay on boat, no water for me that day!

Jan 19 - 

The next day we motor the few miles back over to the town of La Manzanilla to ready for the football game at the sports bar.  The winds are mild but increasing as we get to the anchorage just off the beach.  We begin the two-anchor process…bow down, then stern anchor…then we sit and wait to see how the boat responds into the wind.  A prudent Captain never leaves the boat until he’s sure the anchors are set.  So we wait but the winds continue to increase, now 15 to 20 knot gusts we feel nervous about leaving the boat.  The boat motion is like a hobbyhorse, up and down with white-capped swells hitting on the nose.  We both feel if this weather continues into the night we will not have a good time! We wait for the winds to die down, but by 4:00pm, the winds are still strong…so we make the joint decision to pick up anchor and move BACK to Tenacatita, again, across the bay to our safe and snug sandy bottom… 

…But wait, the anchor is stuck on a rock! I’m using the windlass to pull up the anchor, but during the bouncing up and down with the wind and the swells on the bow, the boat takes a dip and then pulls up and out pays all the chain from the windlass as the clutch disengages and the stuck anchor pulls hard!  A panic time for me as I reel the chain back in, but the chain is stuck on a rock… John steers the boat over the anchor and it frees, but the windlass has a hard time, because it’s now loose …so, we help by hand to get the anchor pulled up through the windlass (will have to address that later) but during this ordeal, the wind, chop, anchor stuck and boat slamming up and down was not fun!

 We motor BACK to our safe, snug, sandy bottom anchorage in Tenacatita.  Aahh…by 6:00pm the winds have died down and all is calm….AND probably in La Manzanilla it’s calm, too.  We both feel kind of silly that we motored over there and then motored back and all in one day and for why? 

But, that gets to my real story about the joint decisions we make as a “team” on this adventure. Every day a decision is made and has to be viewed by both parties.  We agree or disagree, make judgments and go with it.  We are the crew, the team, the ones who make the decisions and have to live with it.  We decided it was better to move back to a safer anchorage...done.

Also, there is the “somebody” …you know, as in “somebody left the milk out”…well, who could that be??  Not me, must be “somebody”.

And “Nobody”  also lives with us…as in “nobody cares”… it’s a crowded boat!

 But, so far it’s working out!