Better Weather Today, I Hope

The cold front that wasn't supposed to get here is still lingering around our area. But the weather looks much better this morning.

The forecasters are still saying the winds should be N-NE, but all day yesterday we had W-NW winds, sometimes as high as 25 kts. We hung in our little exposed anchorage by our fingernails, because it was too dangerous to try to leave. It rained on and off all morning. And it was too dicey on board to leave the boat and go ashore.

The Grib File (Wind Forecast)
We amused ourselves by watching the waves breaking on the rock that looks like Gibraltar, in the channel next to us. "Whoa, did you see that one!?"

We did a few 'projects'... tracking down leaks and stowing more stuff--continuing the process of transforming our boat from the floating condo that it has been for the last 6 months to a truly seaworthy vessel.

Dave amused the rest of the boats in the anchorage by playing with his anchor setup every hour or so. We broke one snubber during the night, so he rigged a backup snubber and was playing with variations of snubber arrangements. (For the landlubbers... a snubber is a 10-20' piece of heavy stretchy rope that is connected to the anchor chain to provide a little 'give' to the anchor chain as the boat strains on it). He rigged a second line to our stern anchor, to try to distribute the load a little.

The 12v adaptor for my laptop that we had bought in November didn't have the right end plug on it, so Dave cut off the wrong one and put the right one on. Now I can run my laptop directly off the 12v without going through an 'inverter' (transforms power from 12vDC to 110vAC) and the 'brick' that comes with the computer (transforms the 110vAC to 19vDC). The adaptor boosts the 12vDC to 19vDC directly and is more efficient. priorityelectronics.com for $35 for a high amp one and $25 for a lower one. Or EBay, $15 for an any-volt any-plug adaptor. The EBay one 'smoked' on my big laptop (not high enough amperage when we ran the DVD).

Looking out the porthole of my bunk this morning, I got pretty excited because it looked like the skies had cleared. But now that it has gotten lighter out, I can see we still have a fairly thick layer of low stratus. In the anchorage, surrounded by high hills, it is hard to tell what the wind is doing out there. The winds are light and variable in the anchorage, and the trees don't look like they are getting strong winds either, so maybe today will be a better day. The seas are still running very high--they are still breaking clear over the top of 'Gibraltar'.

I think we'll hang out here another day and let the weather settle a little more, and leave for Utila early tomorrow.