Costa Rica

We’ve been working our way south in Costa Rica, on my way to Puntarenes to pick up Erin. We met in Mazatlan through a mutual friend from La Paz. She loves sailing and has proven skills in the galley so I’m truly looking forward to having her on board. We’ll sail the local islands for a little and work our way south to Ecuador. From there, I plan on sailing back north to transit the Panama Canal in August.

On the way south from Bahia de Panama, we saw a squal up ahead of us. I rolled up the jib and closed the hatches, expecting the normal mid-afternoon storm. Normally, they last about 15 minutes and bring a bunch of rain with wind gusts in the low to mid 20’s. This one looked a little different as it approached. Timo and I had a short conversation on the VHF and prepared for the storm. Behind us, another boat that we’ve been cruising with was prepping for the same storm. All 3 of us got blind-sided to say the least.

I didn’t grab too many pics but I did take a video. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t do the storm justice. We clocked a gust of 59 with sustained winds (lasting 4 or more seconds) at 55. The boat did well and outside of my solar panels flying up. I need to replace the braces with a system that I can lash down in storm conditions; I’ll probably tackle that in Puntarenas. The dinghy and jerry cans stayed on board however at times, I could see the dinghy trying to fly away in the gusts. Swells were about 10-12 feet, coming from every direction. I buried the bow several times and took on some “blue” water. The cockpit stayed pretty dry except for some spray coming off the waves as they crashed over the bow. I was happy to test the boat in a storm that only lasted for about an hour but truly hope that I don’t need to go through that again. The only error I made is that I didn’t put in a reef early enough. I was able to “spill” the wind out of the top 1/3 of the sail, thus I essentially had a double reef in but if flogged near the top. I normally don’t need to reef the main as it doesn’t generate too much power on my boat (a good and bad thing I guess). Going forward, I’ll probably just reef no matter how bad I think the storm may be.

Outside of that, I’m having a great time down here. Looking forward to exploring some of the islands just south of us, more later!