Sandwiched between Trop Storm Mathew and a Servere Tropical depression
Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Sat 25 Sep 2010 03:02
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The weekends with us coming up to San Salvador for
our weekend of violin and getting final provisioning so we are ready to go when
the weather and tides line up. The challenge with the Bahia De Sol is that you
are dependent on the seas be calm enough for us to get out, and it all appaers
at this stage our early tides on the 28th and 29th maybe missed du to 9 to 10
foot seas at 8 seconds that is ugly.
This weekend the Sept/ Oct reputation of storms
seams to be coming true, on the Carribean side Trpical storm Mathew just crossed
in to Honderus and is heading across that country to Guatemala (as if they need
another rain storm). We are starting to see the fringes of it up here in San
Salvador as we came down into the basin that holds the city you could not see
the volcanoes the sky was black and thick, yet we were in sunlight for at least
another 15 minutes and we just dropped off Tracy and Sean and the music school
and headed for the hardware store. As Alex and I got out of the car the taps
opened but it was more like a river opened above us the rain was coming down as
heavy and in volume as much as I have ever seen it. It lasted 20 minutes but as
we pulled out the roads had turned into fast flow rivers cars were get stuck.
Our taxi driver tool the high roads the low freeways were floods / rivers, but
it all washed away in 30 minutes leaving people to dry out.
The rest of the afternoon it was overcast but
slight drizzle, giving us the chance to hit Radioshack for some much needed
goods and get our 3 montherly hair cust done, as we will be out of main
settlments for 2 months probably Golfito in southern Costa Rica been the
exception.
The other weather system effecting us is currently
off Costa Rica has little wind but significant moisture and it is coming down in
buckets with lightening. In many ways it is more server than the name tropical
storm. It will get us Sunday / Monday deliverying rain, and wind, and bring a
storm serge which is giving us the seas combined with a big swell coming up from
Easter Island which effects this central american coast at this time of
year.
So my daily routine has gone back to look at
weather charts and models 2 times a day and the discussion around the harbor has
moved to weather as we all start to zone in our departures, we have 2 boats
coming in from the moorings on Sunday to prepare and charge up, For us we have a
final battery charge, provision and then clean the bottom which I want to do
Monday so we are ready except the final stowing of the deck parts.
My laptop came back to 70% life it runs but the LCD
screen is very hard to see there is no light in the back, It works on the
external monitor which is what I will use until we get back to USA to have the
parts replaced. But in the mean time I am doing backups and getting the house
computer working the navigation something we wanted all along, and forced me to
set up the circuits to allow the navigation area to be powered on by it's self
for 110 v instead of the rest of the boat reducing power consumption
dramtically, this I completed this morning.
I am busy downloading audo books for the trip, some
good novels that run 6 to 10 hours and you can loose time with, this is one of
the big finds this year to cruising and even Tracy is switching over to this, I
have downloaded new ones for the boys as well.
Tomorrow is a day of exploring again and violin,
and probably avoiding the showers.
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