5/1/2011 - Windy night, rolly day

The norther blew pretty good during the night but it didn't have any appreciable affect on the sea state so we slept soundly. All of the other boats in the bay have moved closer to the rock face on the north side of the bay for protection from the wind but it just doesn't seem all that bad to us. And, knowing the anchor is dug in deeply makes me loathe to move unless there's a really good reason.

By mid-afternoon, the swell caused by the norther outside the mouth of the bay coming down San Jose Channel had built up sufficiently to start wrapping around the headland and make the water in the bay somewhat bumpy. I watched the motion of the boats who were tucked under the cliff to see if they were riding better than us but it looked to me like they were pretty much the same ride. S/V BunGee did move in even closer late in the afternoon but, at least from out here, he looks too close to the rocky shore to me. I'm sure he knows what he's doing but I think we'll just stay out here and roll the night away.
(note: I wrote that at about 4:00 PM. It's now 9:40 PM and the winds have died down to a more or less steady 10 knots or so. Maybe a few gusts to 15. The seas that were coming around the corner have quit so we should have another good sleeping night like last night.

Ran the watermaker for around 4 hours today making about 22 gallons of water (had it off for a little bit while trying to track down a water leak - which we found and fixed). In spite of this and the fact that I forgot to turn off the anchor light again today, we still made more electricity than we used. Thank goodness the anchor light is an LED.

It was too rough to have much fun fishing today so instead we mostly just sat around and read our books and, in Lulu's case, played games on her Kindle.

The weather I heard this morning calls for this norther to ease up a little tonight and then kick in again tomorrow, peaking in the afternoon and then laying down a little bit again tomorrow night. Tuesday, it's supposed to start to ease but it'll be Wednesday before we're back to "light and variable" winds. My trusty Kestrel 1000 handheld wind gauge recorded readings of 10-15 knots most of the day with the occasional gusts to 22 knots. So, it's blowing but it's not BLOWING! If the weather does as predicted we'll probably be here until Wednesday when we'll depart for either Bahia Amortajada on Isla San Jose or straight up to San Evaristo where there's actually a little tienda.

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