Onward

Now it is mid morning and we begin the slow turn into the Cerralvo Channel. Both Larry and I are punchy: I've had a couple of brief cat naps but all he has had are brief moments of closing his eyes between waves. So no real sleep for either of us in over 24 hours. At this point in time my mind is a little fuzzy, and any who know me at all know that I am "directionally challenged" under the best of circumstances. Still, I look at the GPS and feel certain that this change of direction will at least ease the rocking.  So wrong.

We have a brief respite as we move into the channel. Then it begins. The winds rise to 33 knots and and we are pushed along by a following sea of 10 foot swells. When I turn around I can see each swell rise well above the stern mounted tower. We are making about 6 knots and all we can do is hold on - for over 18 miles. It's not fun but neither is it awful. And this is a grand awakening for me. Long-time sailors will recognize that our trip doesn't begin to compare with passages having, say, 25 foot waves and 50 knot winds. But it did give me a feeling for what a difficult passage might include. When I consider the fabulous sights it has been my privilege to see while sailing on Milagro I believe it is worth it.
Still, it seems to take forever to get to the northern tip of Cerralvo. The sky is quite hazy and every time I look out to the starboard I think I see the "end" of the island, but a half hour later the island continues to rise out of the sea.

Eventually we pass through the Lorenzo Channel and it is a mere 2-3 hours to the Marina. The winds and seas have diminished and we take time to lower the sails and begin to motor towards home. I have never come into Palmira after dark; everything looks so different and I am on the bow searching for the green and red buoys that mark our way to the marina. We call neighbors on our radio and ask them to be available to handle lines. As we motor slowly towards our slip Larry turns Milagro deftly; the bow swings around, I hand off lines to people on the dock and he puts the engine into reverse...uh oh...there is no reverse. One of the marina workers and another friend are on hand and everybody scrambles to tie lines off to the dock cleats and pull Milagro into place. Quick work by one handler prevents Milagro from crunching the dock with her bow. A couple of days later we send a diver down to check the prop; he finds the jib halyard firmly wrapped around the prop shaft. We now know how very fortunate we were to have forward motion and be able to motor at all!
When Larry flew small airplanes a couple of decades ago he told me, "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing." No doubt about it, we had a good landing!

Milagro at dock

We tied up the boat properly and all I wanted to do was to fall into bed - no shower, no teeth brushing, no food. Larry was hungry; I wasn't but he coaxed me into walking with him to the Dinghy Dock restaurant at the head of the our dock. I went reluctantly. I don't usually step outside without a fair amount of personal grooming but that evening (it was nearly 9:00) I stumbled through our security gate and into a restaurant chair, still in my foul weather pants and and a salty velour jacket, ordered a fettuccine alfredo and a glass of red wine and, to my extreme surprise, proceeded to polish off my meal.

Dinghy Dock reflects boats in Palmira

Then it was back to the boat where I had to brush my teeth. We knew that the entire deck was coated in sticky salt crystals and now found some areas dreched below decks as well. Items were strewn all over despite the attention I had given to securing all doors, drawers and loose items before departure. But clean-up was for another day. Thirty-two hours after leaving Palmira and having not slept in 36 hours, we fell into bed, still feeling the rocking of the boat which was no longer rocking, and slumbered peacefully.

January 29, 2012