On April 13 we got underway from La Isla Marina in Mazatlan bound for Isla San Francisco, north of La Paz. We decided to skip La Paz and head to the Islands to relax and get away from it all.
We motored and motorsailed across the sea and I got some interesting data about motorsailing in to the wind. Yes, yes we’re on a sailboat and can sail almost everywhere we want to go, but heading directly in to the wind requires tacking back and forth to catch it at about a 45 degree angle on our sails. So if we want to sail in to the wind it can make a crossing take twice as long. Plus, we’re cruising, not on a sailing vacation. If it’s going to take twice as long, in this case an extra two or three days to get somewhere I’m all for firing up the engine.
Our passage across the Sea of Cortez took 2 days, 7 hours. We used 46 gallons of fuel in 55 hours of engine runtime giving us 0.8 gallons per hour usage. We travelled 249 Nautical Miles and got 5.4 Nautical Miles to the gallon and averaged 4.5 knots. We run the engine at 2000 RPMs when motoring, and if we’re motorsailing efficiently we may run the engine at 1500 RPMs. Most of the engine run time was at 2000 RPMs.
With all the bashing into the wind and waves, we had a lot of water splashing over the bow and coming down through the anchor windlass and hawsepipe under Sully’s berth and in to the bilge. The water accumulated and we found we have a faulty bilge pump, but we have two backups to keep the water out. The propellor shaft packing was dripping excessively adding more water to the bilge, so I adjusted it while we were underway to keep the bilge drier. The water was also finding it’s way into Sully’s bed. Natalie went in to get him after our first night and found the poor kid in a puddle. She emptied his who berth to air dry in the cockpit.
Calm weather underway after a rough night meant we could air out the contents Sully’s stateroom in the cockpit
