Diverse Diversions in Bahía Concepción

The second week of January found us anchored at Santo Domingo which is at the entrance to Bahía Concepción. The day was disappointingly cloudy and cool, but of course it wasn't snowing. Nonetheless, a morale-enhancing treat seemed in order. Fudge is a bit tricky with respect to timing and the rocking of our boat resulted in the whole batch setting up much too quickly. Just as Barb was dealing with that, an open double-masted boat, looking a bit Viking-like, rowed by for a visit. It was one of four vessels, all part of NOLS, a nonprofit global wilderness school. It sounded like a great experience for the students. For their neighbourly behaviour the folks in that boat were each rewarded with a piece of fudge, improperly set but still warm and garnering no complaints. The flotilla pulled up on the beach to camp overnight and everyone was treated to an incredible sunset.

The next day, lessons began in earnest. We seemed to provide a convenient target to sail around, which made for good spectating and also a little bit of, shall we say, alertness on our part. Particularly fun to watch were the capsize drills. After all the students had gotten wet and taken turns at bailing out their swamped vessel, Bjarne couldn't resist the chance to play a song for them: Six Months in a Leaky Boat seemed appropriate.

That colourful parachute-like sail that flies from the front of the boat is called a spinnaker. If you ever watch sailing regattas you can see an impressive sight when the competitors pop their chutes for the downwind run. The kaleidoscope of colours is splendid and the boats practically leap forward when the sails fill. Spinnakers are the best sail for moving your boat when the wind is blowing on your backside, but they are also finicky and require a lot of attention when deployed, which is why not all cruisers carry them. Flying a chute gives you a certain amount of cool points but there is no other sail that carries such a high potential for disaster. That cool point count can quickly drop into the red.

That being said, we recently acquired a used spinnaker. The sailmaker who checked it out advised us not to use it in anything more than 10 kts as she wasn't sure it would hold together beyond that (also seems like good advice simply to avoid increased hairiness in one's day). We've flown spinnaker before but on a different boat, some years ago, and neither of us would claim more than novice status without giggling. We also have an additional feature we'd never tried - a spinnaker sock, which is supposed to make things easier by helping you to collapse that big bag of air. As we left Santo Domingo, winds were light enough from behind to test out our newest sail, and so the straight 7-mile shot down the bay beckoned. After 20 minutes of figuring out where all the lines go, we were ready to fly; the wind was picking up a titch, but no point in wasting all that work. The chute filled out nicely, revealing an unintentional tie-dye look that came from a wet storage arrangement at an earlier home. Things were going smoothly enough to take pictures. Our speed started to increase from 4, to 5, then 6 knots. Hey, this is pretty fun! Hmmm, there are white caps building... We were discussing the idea that we should take the sail down before things got too exciting when a call came over the radio. "Looking good, out there!" reported an observer on the beach. Well, that's pretty cool. We look good. We discussed that a bit, not wanting to disappoint our audience, while the wind and boat speed further increased. We were pushing out a good bow wave now, and hitting 7 knots.

We had a plan for dropping the chute but apparently it wasn't a good plan. It was definitely a bad idea to then let go of the downwind sheet: instead of spilling wind it just moved the foot of the sail farther away from the boat and left us with no control over it.Trying to pull that handy sock down didn't work because the strong wind pressure kept the top of the sail filled and flying pretty much horizontally now. Meanwhile the boat was speeding up and heeling alarmingly while the steerage was minimal! Yikes! We let the halyard go and dumped the sail unceremoniously into the drink. (Taking a sail down is also termed 'dousing' - really!) Not looking so good, now! If you think the spinnaker catches wind well, you should see what a good job it does with water. We slowly hauled the heavy wet lump of nylon back on deck then carried on to our destination under a subdued jib.

Hmmm, should we drop the sail?

As you might guess, our happy hour conversation took the form of a debrief. We pulled out Chapman Piloting: Seamanship and Small Boat Handling to help us - very informative. It might have been good to read that a little earlier but hey, you don't always know what you need to know until you know it's too late. A couple of weeks after, with a little trepidation but armed with new tactics, we tried again. Although we found different things to go wrong (for example, we had a devil of a time releasing the spinnaker pole from the sheet), there was a marked improvement from the last endeavour. Our third go at it was even better but we won't let that go to our heads. We have not yet plumbed the depths of potential disasters.

Peninsula Highway to Playa el Burro

Playa Santispac in Bahía Concepción provides good protection in north winds, so when a long stretch of Nortes kicked in we stayed put, along with many other cruisers. This made for a lot of opportunities to socialize (and help out here and there), making sure we didn't forget how to behave in the presence of others. Naturally happy hours are part of that, but breakfasts, hiking, and soaking in a hotspring are also nice with company. We even attended the gala event of the season - the Charity Art Show and Auction - with all of the upstanding citizens in the neighbourhood, or at least the gringo hoi polloi. Scholarship funds were being raised for local kids to attend grade 10 and up as the government only supports up to grade 9.

We arrived at 1000h (after a 70 min tramp along the highway to Playa el Burro) to the sound of lively music. The organizers had done a good job of finding ways to extract money from the attendees. In addition to the prints and original art for sale (donated by local artists), there were draws for services supplied by local merchants, interesting items in the silent auction, tickets to guess the number of candies in a jar, 50-50 draws, beverages for sale, and food to buy - all proceeds going to the charity. Hot sunny weather meant the beer sales were hopping.

this art wasn't for sale

a hotly contested piece of beach art

The finale was the live auction of beach art, created by denizens of the local beaches with some competition between the communities. We managed to spend the money we'd brought and were glad we hadn't brought more, but the food was good, the day was fun, and we now have a pelican print to prettify our cabin.

Although we'd had a busy day of admiring art we weren't done yet. Another big show was scheduled for that night - a lunar eclipse! We didn't even have to leave the boat for this entertainment, and, happily, the sky was clear. First we had the pleasure of watching the full moon rise over the hills, followed a little later by a veil creeping across the glowing orb. As the shadow covered the lunar surface, more stars emerged and the whole moon took on a reddish hue. Despite the shadow, the markings on the moon (craters, etc) could be seen easily with the binoculars. It was all quite beautiful. Bjarne was inspired by this event to take photographs of the moon every day for the next month.

One afternoon we were relaxing in the cockpit at Playa Santispac when Bjarne espied a dinghy heading out of the anchorage. That's not so unusual, except this one didn't have any people aboard and the north wind was moving it quite steadily away from the line of RVs on the beach. We quickly paddled over to the escaping vessel (putting the engine on would take too long) on an intercept course and towed it back to its probable home. We then hunted down the owners so they would know why their boat was not where they'd left it. The sheepish fellow who had poorly secured it took some RIBbing from his pals, and his wife kindly presented us with a bottle of wine. Well, that was worth a little exercise.