Tuesday, 27 March 2012

We left Puerto Ballandra at 9:45 am, later than our usual departure times. We had some nice north wind on the crossing to Coronados Island so we managed to sail for about an hour and a half. The inside channel of Coronados was recommended as the seaward side gets a lot of fishing and has nets and long-lines which are likely to get tangled in the prop if you happen to run over them. We had also received a tip that some local fishermen use empty Coke bottles as floats for their long lines.
As we turned into the Coronados channel the wind had picked up to 15 knots out of the north and the sea along with it. While this is not necessarily a problem, the short swells were getting steeper with a very short duration. Over the next hour and a half we battled the increasing wind and steeper seas as we headed north to San Juanico. During this time, the wind increased to 18-20 knots (true) and we were pitching heavily in white caps with four foot seas at eight second intervals. Our speed had been reduced to almost two and a half knots and we were still over 10 miles from San Juanico. At 1:00 pm we made the decision to turn, head back to Coronados Island and anchor in the southern bight of the island. With a following sea and wind, we covered the trip back to the Coronados channel in just under an hour and after making our way through the channel, we headed over to the southern anchorage where we finally anchored at 2:40 pm. We put out a long anchor scope to ride out the continuing wind but little sea as we were in the lee of the Island’s ancient volcanic dome. So much for the weather forecast, however these are amateur forecasters’ doing their best to help boaters with some useful weather