All good things...

Departing beautiful San Carlos

Our last leg of our sabbatical adventure has arrived. We returned to San Carlos just as the last tropical depression moved safely out to the Pacific. The weather just broke from heat and humidity in the 90's to temps in the mid-80's with low humidity. Perfect. We said goodbye to cruiser friends who were heading south or heading home and we headed out north. The weekend before, we were so happy to secure a slip at Safe Marina in Rocky Point. This slip will mean only a 6 hour drive from Yarnell, AZ to go sailing in the future. 

The day we sailed out of the bay had fair skies and good winds (that actually were in the direction we needed! For the first hour anyway). 

So good to be at sea again!

The kids had been looking forward to their break off the boat when we headed to the Canyon. So it was nice to hear them say, "It's good to be home!" when we got back to Mangas. 

Back at their favorite perch

We wanted to get to San Francisquito bay, which meant an overnight sail. We were able to keep the main sail up and motor once the wind died in the evening. Meanwhile, Mike had discovered some freshwater in the bilge and was attempting to uncover the reason. Not able to track it down that night,  we continued on since the water was not a lot and because it was freshwater. 

We had a good night sail and Reid kept us company during our shifts. I think he will be ready for a solo night shift soon himself. 

He is still small enough and young enough to sleep on the hard bench without feeling it the next day.

The next morning was the twins' birthday! We pulled into the beautiful bay of San Francisquito and had the cove all to ourselves. We hit the beach and had a great time showing the ropes to our new boat puppy, Mia!

Mia with her safety harness on for the night sail :)

Everyone had a great time on the beach and then we returned to make the cakes for the birthday. Mike finally found the culprit for our leak - unfortunately, it was our freshwater pressure pump. The problem was a split seal and we did not have any way to fix it on the boat. We do have a manual pump, so Mike went to work unpickling our freshwater maker to get the tanks filled after we had gone through all the marina water. While the girls were making cakes and I was making dinner, Mike started the freshwater maker and KABLAMO! One of our membrane canisters blew up. Arrgggghhhhh! 

Cake fun before the Kablamo

A blown water maker and no freshwater pump, meant that we would have to hi-tail it up to Bahia de Los Angeles to get water ASAP. The following morning we headed out to BLA and got in late afternoon. We were able to make it to the tienda before it closed and secure about 15 gallons of freshwater - enough to get us up to Rocky Point. 

Bahia de Los Angeles

That night at BLA, we had an elefante come through with winds sustaining at 35kts and gusting up in the 40's. That is quite a blow to feel at anchor. The good news was that with only 2 other sailboats in the entire bay, we did not have any risk of hitting another boat if we dragged anchor. But, as always, Mangas held tight with no problems. 

The next morning, we sailed out to head for Rocky Point. We had 20kt winds and, wouldn't you know it, we hit a record speed for us on Mangas at 10.3 knots on a beam reach out of the bay. It was so sad to know that we were cutting this short by a couple of weeks when the conditions were so ideal. 

I got up at 4 AM to relieve Mike and found him extremely anxious. We knew that one of the hazards about heading north was the depth. We have a deep draft and the north of the Sea has a very extreme tide and lots of shoals in very inconvenient places. Mike was seeing depths jump from 60 ft to 30 ft in an area of the sea where the depth should have been about 250 feet. Very disconcerting. Especially at night. We saw nothing on the Garmin and nothing on the Mexican Naval Charts to explain. Then I booted up the Navionics on the iPad and Voila! There is was, a shoal directly under us that was marked on the map. Within another 10 minutes, we were past it and back in deeper water. But, the areas of five and six thousand foot depths was way behind us to the south. From here on out, we would be in the hundreds. 

Besides watching for unplanned shoals, we also had to keep an eye out for Rocky Points large and active shrimp fleets that were all around us as we approached land.

We saw many on our radar while it was dark, but they were easy to spot as the sun rose finally above the eastern ranges beyond the shoreline. Once we came close to shore, our next issue was the tide. We are lucky that the difference between low and high tide this time of year is about 16 feet. At some points of the year, that difference will be in the 20's. High tide was 12:30, so Mike went in to the harbor to announce our unplanned early arrival at the marina and we waited for the noon hour. I am happy to say that we made it in without incident and got to our slip just fine. The tide change here is so extreme compared to the 1 or 1.5 meter differences we are accustomed to in the south. 

Just some examples...

 

Once we had the opportunity to take a closer look, Mike discovered that marine growth, despite the pickling, had formed in the container and blocked it up. New water pump and new canister in our future.

So, here we are. We did not reach our original planned destination to South America for this sabbatical. But, we did get in a lot of sailing, and living, and spending time with the people we love. We met a lot of folks along the way that we will always remember and a few that we will be in touch with for years to come. We faced a lot of adversity and we experienced some incredible moments. All in all, a great year. Now we are back in Yarnell and getting back to a new normal. We plan on being on the boat again for the Christmas holidays and we hope to have Mangas for years to come. Maybe that global circumnavigation when we semi-retire? Who knows. But, it's always good to have a dream...