Wind, wind and more wind.

Ominous looking clouds

It's Tuesday night and we are sitting at anchor in front of the Village of Bahia de los Angeles. An elephante is currently blowing 90+ degrees on us at about 20-25 knots, it's like being trapped in a furnance. The elephantes are cool air that come over the land from the Pacific side, crossing the desert, where it is super heated and arrives here just about the time the sun goes down. They usually blow for a few hours and then die down, they can get quite violent, heard of them approaching 80-90knots. We are anchored pretty close to the beach, so there is no room for waves to build up, so we're not bouncing around at all.

A couple night ago we had headed up to the La Gringa anchorage to attend the monthly Full Moon Party and at some point during the afternoon a Chubasco blew up.  A Chubasco is caused by a local thunderhead somewhere close by, they arrive suddenly, usually with only a few minutes warning. They can blow anywhere from 25-90knots and usually last anywhere from 1 to several hours. We usually don't get any rain with them, the rain is usually coming down somewhere else. We had been on the beach listening to a presentation on cruising in Central America hosted by someone who'd spent a considerable amount of time down there, when someone yelled 'here comes the wind!' and you could see it moving towards us across the water, we all hoped in our dinghies and hightailed back to our boats. This one was coming from a southerly direction over several miles of open water, which kicked up some pretty big waves and put us on a lee shore. There were about 25 other boats in the anchorage with us and a few anchored in between us and the where the wind was coming from, and we were anchored too close to the beach, so Jim decides we better get out of there. Jim's pulling up the anchor and I'm trying to keep the boat pointed into the wind, getting tossed back a forth across the cockpit by our over-sized tiller. We finally get the anchor up and start crashing through the waves, taking everyone of them over the bow. The front hatch didn't seal properly and so we had water pouring through like a water fall directly onto the bed, the cat was yowling at us to do something about it. He didn't like all that water coming into where he likes to sleep, and since that's where we like to sleep, I was also thinking this really sucks. We only had a few miles to go to get to a protected anchorage and by the time we were getting close to Isla Ventana the wind and waves were already starting to calm down. We pulled into the small anchorage at Ventana and dropped the hook in perfectly calm water and watched an amazingly beautiful sunset.

We probably would of been fine if we had stayed, the wind only ended up lasting for less than an hour but you never know how it's going to turn out or how violent they are going to get, if it had been any more then the 30-40 knots we may not have been able to motor our way out of there had we waited for it to get worse. Our 100lbs anchor has never drug, we usually ride these things out, but not knowing about the anchoring systems of the other boats and because we were so close to shore it's probably a good thing we did leave. Although I think if we had stayed we wouldn't of had to spend the next day rinsing and drying everything out, and I would of been able to sleep in my comfy bed instead of the uncomfortable couch. The good thing about it was we got a pretty good dousing and it helped wash away a lot of that yellow sand that was still stuck to everything from the Chubasco we sat through in San Francisquito.

The other wind common in the Sea of Cortez, is called a Coromuel. They are typical for the southern end of the Baja, they come across from the Pacific Ocean in the evenings, nearly everyday and because they don't have nearly as much land to cross as they do further north, they are a nice cool wind. They blow usually from 10-20knots and are a welcome air conditioning like breeze that helps cool everything off in the evening making sleep much more pleasant. You still have to watch the boats around you and hope they're not dragging but relatively mild when compared to the winds we've been getting up here.

And then there's the hurricanes, which occasionally come up this way, but we haven't had to experience one of those yet and hope we never do. Just a few more weeks to go before the end of the hurricane season, we've got our fingers crossed. Only a couple have made up this far north in the last 40 years, so we're probably safe.

Of course when you want to go somewhere and want to put up the sails, there's no wind to be had. It's all or nothing it seems around here.

We ended up missing out on the party, which was held the following day. They were having some sort of floaty competition, where you were supposed to construct some sort of floating costume, we really weren't prepared for that but I had been planning on making my stir-fried wild rice for the potluck.  Oh well, maybe next time.

Let's see if the internet connection is working well enough to get some photos downloaded.....

Sunset as seen from Isla Ventana

Islas Flecha and Ventana

Sun setting at Puerto Don Juan