March 4

We departed Acapulco this morning (bound for Manzanillo) a little after 7am in bright sunshine and calm seas. As expected there was no wind to speak of and fortunately no opposing current as we thought there might be. We are heading NW our course over ground being about 264M making about 6.2k over the ground. The distance to Manzanillo is about 300nm and we expect to arrive on Tuesday the 6th in the early afternoon.

The seas are a bit rolly with the predominate swell from the WSW at about 3ft with a smaller swell from the NW. The temperature is cooler then last week and is about 80f. The water temperature is also cooler then when we arrived in Acapulco at about 79.5f.

At 12:30 we adjusted course to the North are now on a heading of 283M. The wind has built and is right on the nose at about 9k causing a reduction of speed to about 5.3k even though we have increased engine speed to 2200rpm. The water temperature has increased to 83f and the swell remains from the WSW.

At 1pm the wind has built to 12k and is coming dead on the nose. We unrolled the genoa and bore off to Stbd. about 25 degrees to a heading of 310M and motorsailed at 6.7k. By 2:30pm the wind had veered another 15 degrees to 285M so that continuing would require an even greater turn to stbd. Given that, we rolled up the genoa and continue to motor on a heading of 280M making 5.4k over ground at 2100rpms. We have reduced the distance to shore to about 8nm now, however after Pampanoa the shore bears more to the North and by the time we are off Ixtapa we will be about 17nm offshore. After we pass Lazaro Cardenas the shore will again turn more to the West thus reducing our distance off and by the time we reach Pta. San Telmo we will again be only 8nm off. Since that will be 36 hours from now we can decide what adjustments to make later to maintain our distance.

The afternoon was spent plowing through 4-6ft seas head on as the wind built to 15k. At times our speed was reduced to 3k running flat out at 2200rps in waves of 6-8ft. For the most part we averaged about 4.4k however. It was not very uncomfortable, but Jonah and Kate did succumb seeing how we had not been to sea in weeks (not counting our the trip South to Acapulco since it was motoring in a flat calm the whole way and doesn't count).