FW: Passage Huatelco(Mexcico) to Bahia de Sol (El Salvador) Part 7 Down the Guatemalan coast
Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Sat 3 Apr 2010 10:17
Passage length 465 NM
Distance to go:89 nM
Location:(13:37.880N 90:24.944W)
Speed: 7.4 knots
Motor Sailing
It's 3 am and I have just taken over from Gary, as I came up into the
cockpit you could smell the scent of smoking / burning wood, the wind is 5
knots off the land, so can only assume these are from villages on shore. It
is amazing how much you do pick up in the air every night shift I have
picked up different scents indicating different things, when I was reading
Capptain Cook's accounts this was one of the first things his men would get
a couple of days out.
We still running down the Guatemalan coast about 8 miles off the coast, with
less than 100 miles to go, we should move into El Salvador waters in 22
miles, completing the short Pacific coast (123 miles) of Guatemala, most
cruisers do not stop their boat in Guatemala as the port costs and marina
costs are very high and there is only on real port, eg it would cost about
$USD 200 for a 2 day stay. Admittedly we have one of our fleet dropping in
there "Sunsation" to see friends and they were planning to enter port at day
light. Since when we get to El Salvador we get a 3 month visa for 4
countries including Guatemala most people leave their boat in El Salvador
and travel back over land to explore, which is what we plan to do.
Again it is a clear night, full moon, and stars, the water has calmed down
we still have a SW swell at 4 feet, (which will make our next major
challenge the crossing of the bar this afternoon interesting), I just poked
my head out of the cockpit to access the scene and sure enough this
phosphorous streaks are shooting through the water and breaking the surf
just off the boy, yes our dolphin friends are with us, we have seen a lot of
them since leaving Mexico.
We had a sched Fleet Net call last evening at 7pm and the other boats were
positioned approx 70 miles behind us, we had made good ground over the last
7 hours, they are approx 12 hours behind us, and will come in on Sunday
morning we suspect, we are targeted for 4 pm off the lagoon entrance where
we will meet a pilot to take us in, this is nearly ideal as full tide is
1800 so we will be still on the rising tide.
For the thought of the day, I got an email yesterday from a workmate wishing
us all the best and enjoying the blog, but his comment was "enjoy the stress
free life of cruising", since he is not a sailor to my knowledge I assume he
only knows what he sees in magazines and stories. The cruising life is a
lifestyle change and certainly is no stress free holiday, yes I have gone
away from 200 emails a day, and 10 + meetings a day, and business decisions
all over the place, to a new adventure lifestyle with different stress and
decisions. My email is about 5 to 10 emails a day, with 3 of these been
weather update files, I try to write a blog each day (easier when on passage
as we have time) and we have lots of planning and decisions to make, and we
keep a log of conditions and any issues.
The decisions I deliberate over now are life and safety related, relative to
coarse to do compared with the current knowledge I have on weather. On
weather I use grib files of the latest weather from weather models, mapped
onto my navigation software, and I am able to look through the next 48
hours, determining the wind direction, strength and related swell height and
direction, and the overall picture with atmospheric pressure. I then
determine the forecast for my route for the next 12 hours, and beyond,
relative to safety, and comfort. This is then compared with navigation
planning the route we taking, what headlands, obstacles we are going to have
to avoid, setting way points and often speed we should go at so we arrive at
the destination in the best conditions. This process is a continuous one,
and I run through it every 6 hours and monitor in between, relative to
progress and local conditions, do they match the prediction for weather. I
also try to get an external opinion, by getting an email with a broad
forecast from a weather expert for the broad area (100s of miles) that he is
covering, or through Single Side Band cruising nets I listen to an expert,
this then needs to be related back to your situation and what conditions you
have locally, and the model information you have which is particular to your
location. We also listen to Nets to here other boats check in and get their
conditions this helps us confirm conditions ahead or around us compared to
the current knowledge we have. I also discuss this with Tracy and now Gary
so we all are aware and we plan accordingly.
A situation like last week when we were coming into Pueta Angel after 2
days at see on the passage from Acapulco, we had currents and wind against
us, but we were trying to plan to make the entrance to harbor in day light
(best policy is to arrive at new harbors in daylight), well we missed it by
an hour and it was dark when we arrived (the currents against us were
stronger than expected). So now Tracy and I were looking at 3 sets of
information about the coast, the pilot cruising guide notes, the coastal
charts and the electronic charts, and trying to determine a mapping to coast
we were seeing, (we have found a lot of charts of the coast are 40 to 50
years old or even older, and often out by 3/4 mile (which is a big different
when the harbor entrance is less than 200 feet wide). This was stressful as
the entrance to this harbor had many reefs and we needed to locate them and
map, and determine a short but safe entrance, and we had to locate the
harbor entrance, as it vanishes into darkness of the cliffs and all the bays
look the same. We use the radar to help as this provides the real coast
line, but also needs to be related to the charts, to provide a correction
factor. We found the entrance and lights of navigation in amongst the 100s
of lights of the town, once agreed then we make our entrance using radar to
hope pick up rocks and edges of the harbor, and harbor notes to help decide
how to approach, (it is black no moon) and there are pangas everywhere,
Tracy and I are communicating all the time, and the kids are making comment
as well. Not a stress free environment and the stress mounts as we get
deeper into harbor, and then determine where to anchor and then you go
through the anchoring process (again while we have done this 100s of times
there are lots of hand signals as voice will not travel to bow ) and we get
settled. The big thing is the decisions and actions we are taking here
effect our family safety and the boat safety and if you make a mistake
corrective action is doubtful.
This is different to work where decisions are business and you can monitor
and correct without been washed up on the beach. We find anchoring, or
entering a marina the most stressful times, but from this example you will
see that Cruising is a lifestyle change, not a switch off of decisions, it
is change in what decisions you are making. It is incredibly rewarding to
get to a destination and anchor having navigated it is real sense of
immediate achievement which you often have to wait months for in business.
Tom Watson (former IBM CEO) stated in his biography (he was a sailor and
went cruising across the Pacific after leaving IBM) that navigating and
arriving at a destination is much more rewarding than running a company, as
it is an immediate sense of achievement against the elements with the
resources you have.
So yes we are enjoying the change in lifestyle, the challengers it brings
(like this passage which has seen many people get into trouble on this
passage in the past), the gratification of achievement and the enjoyment of
sharing the experiences immediately with my family is just so rewarding.
I would not trade this time for anything, especially the time with boys
watching them grow, Sean spots boats and helps in this process now, he has
good eyes and understands many of the dangers as this is his life, when a
boat is spotted on a passage he calls out, he goes to radar and electronic
AIS to see if we can confirm on there, he is constantly asking questions and
this education is huge as I can answer them or we work through the question
together! Very rewarding!