Working our way SouthWest

We are sailing towards the tradewinds. The winds that we have have improved but are still inconsistent in speed and direction. It will be a few days till we reach the true tradewinds.
We have been making good progress while trying to avoid motoring if possible. We have been busy on board working on a few new projects. We found water in the (so called)dry storage locker. This is a cabinet in the galley reached through a hatch in the counter top. It appeared to be salt water so I figured it was leaking in around the deck fuel fill. I pulled it out, cleaned it, then re-caulked and screwed it back in place. We won't really test the fix till we get water on the decks again. We have also had several screws backing out due to vibration and overall movement of the boat. We noticed and fixed these before anything bad happened.
Last night around sunset our Monitor windvane stopped working. A weld failed and broke in two, completely disabling the system. The windvane is very important as it steers the boat for us, freeing us from having to be at the wheel constantly. The windvane had steered every mile that we had sailed since leaving San Carlos 500+ miles ago. We have the autopilot but it uses a lot of electricity and only steers a magnetic heading, whereas the windvane will steer relative to the wind. This insures that the sails are always set correctly and is safer. I am currently working on getting a jury rig fix going. Hopefully we can get it working again. If not we will need to stop in Hawaii for a new part. We shall see.

We have made about 680 miles so far.

Feast or Famine

We have definitely gone from too much wind to no wind. No new bruises since yesterday. We are motoring towards Isla Socorra (Mexico), we are heading south rather than west so that we can get to the NE trade winds quicker. Once we hit the trade winds we will head west. This course is a bit longer than the direct route, but with the better winds it is the quicker route.
We hate to motor, but the flat seas are nice and are allowing us to catch up on our rest and clean up the boat. We thought we had everything secured, but the rough weather the first day proved us wrong. We had items flung all over the place. The boat was a mess and we were spending a lot of time picking up items and putting them somewhere they would be safe. A few broken glasses and some very bruised fruits and veggies, but no real damage (a few bruised sailors also).
We are now south of Cabo San Lucas and the last land we will see for a while has disappeared behind us.

Underway!

We are now officially underway and headed for Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Once we get to the trade winds we should have an easy trip. Getting to the trades may be difficult. The last 2 days were spent with gale or near gale winds (30-40k) heading south from San Carlos, with some 10-12ft seas. We hope that that is the worst weather we get on the trip. We made over 120 miles in 24 hours with only the staysail up. We now have a forecast for several days of calms, so we will need to motor south till the winds pick up.

200 miles down, a whole lot more to go!

Feliz Ano Nuevo!!

The crew of Masquerade all want to wish all our friends and family a very Happy New Year!!!

The salvage of Melody

The morning of the day before Thanksgiving we received a call on the VHF from one of the other boats on the dock saying that a fellow boater needed help. We learned that Melody had run aground the previous evening in the high winds.  After a night of strong winds and waves the hull had been holed. David the owner/captain was OK, but needed help to salvage his personal belongings and items of worth from the wreck.  The sailboat melody was on a point a few miles south of Santa Rosalia, near a small estuary.

The crews of Topaz, Sea Change, Little Fawn, Episode II, Tequila Mockingbird, Pear D, Amaranth, and Masquerade gathered at the marina and we drove down in a couple of trucks to the bluff overlooking the boat. We had two choices to recover the items; either a long walk down the cobble beach and then up a steep hill, or ferry across the estuary to a location the trucks could get to. Unfortunately the strong Norther was still blowing and the estuary had breaking waves across it. We decided that the long walk was the only viable option. The Mexican navy was very helpful and had sent out a few soldiers to guard the boat since early that morning to insure that the wreck was not looted. They stayed on site and even helped move some of the items from the boat onto the beach.  We all quickly got to work, some packing up and removing items from the boat, a few people carrying the items down the beach, and a few of us carting the stuff up the hill to the trucks. We spent the next 4-5 hours collecting and moving any items that could be salvaged. Once we were done we told the navy thank you and that they no longer needed to guard the boat. We brought David and all his gear back to Marina Santa Rosalia, and moved the gear into the palapa/office. Dodie offered David her boat Topaz as a place to stay while he was in Santa Rosalia, getting himself organized and going through the salvaged gear.  Everyone helped David set up an impromptu yard sale to sell the gear that he no longer needed and to help recover at least a bit from the financial loss.

When all of us were together the next day for a Thanksgiving dinner, David told us that he was touched by all the help he received. While it was very sad to see David lose his boat, it was heartening to see the boating community come together to help someone in need.