Still hanging in Turtle Bay…1.14.08

Hola! I hope everyone is doing well out there! We're still having out here in Turtle Bay for today and are scheduled to leave tomorrow morning for Bahia Asuncion, a quick 50 mile trip down the coast. After the post yesterday when I was being rushed….we hailed a panga and got a ride into town on the fuel panga. They pulled up to a severely bent ladder and were up on the pier! We walked around town a bit, it was Sunday so many stores were closed already, but we identified quite a few restaurants,
markets, the fuel station, the internet café, etc. We walked around a bit, then came back to Enrique's Restaurant just to the left of the pier on the beach and had fish & carne asada tacos, fresh pico de gallo (cilantro, onions, & tomatoes), and guacamole sauce….and beer. Yumm!! As the sun set, it started to get chilly so we called the panga and went back to the boat for a movie and early to bed. Last night the wind piped up to about 25-30 in the bay and we were rocking and rolling for about
4 hours. The town lost power about 4am and it was eerie to see the town dark! Only about two lights were on, which were navigation lights.

Oh, someone asked how it is to pull into an anchorage at dark. Well, in Turtle Bay and most places, there are lights that act as navigational aids to help you get in. They blink differently, or are solid lights, or blink for a few seconds, etc. and this is marked on the maps and then you have to wing it a bit too. In the case of Turtle Bay, on the map it says there's a 16 second light, with multiple blinks on the port (or left) hand side of the bay, there's a light that blinks once every 6 seconds
on the starboard (or right) side of the bay, and there's a 10 second light that blinks once that is at the far inside of the bay. This is the light that you line up on as you're coming in to make sure you're going straight in. What we saw was a light that blinked 4 times, then was dark for 8 seconds on the port side, we saw the 6 second light on the starboard, and the blinky light at the inside of the bay. We lined up to that light, watched our radar, which also showed us the lay of the land,
and finally watched our GPS chartplotter. In addition, we have a depth meter that we were watching and Chad & I were on either side of the boat looking for unlit vessels. The hardest thing when pulling into this bay was when you're moving at night, white lights screw with your night vision, and there was some HUGE bright white lights in the bay. When we're sailing at night, there are no white lights allowed on in the boat, only red. We have salon lights that are red, and each of us wears a little
red LED light on our jacket, or in our pocket, that we use to read & shine lights on.

I made bisquick pancakes & bacon this morning….surely I'll get better at this cooking thing soon!! Hahaha… Chad has been outside working on the fishing poles and is casting away trying to catch us some fish for sushi! We'd love to have sushi! Since last night the winds piped up, Michael & Chad didn't get much sleep for all the noises & concern so they're both pretty tired. I spent some time working on the website and as soon as I can get to an internet café, I'll update the changes. I'm also
hoping to send some photos today, we'll see!

I'll write more later…
Rene