3/17/14 - Puerto Escondido

We pay very close attention to the weather. Knowing that some northerly winds (30knots) were predicted for Saturday and Sunday, we got up early on Saturday and headed into the inner harbor in Escondido on the high tide.  By Saturday evening the wind had built to 20kn or so and continued to build through the night.  It was a bit hard to sleep.  Sunday morning it was more like 35 knots.  By late morning we were up to 40kn or so and boats were startig to have some issues with dragging or swinging close to others.  We were well anchored and had 175ft out in 40ft of water.  Around noon we were getting gusts up to 55kn.  This is enough wind to flat bow the tops of waves into a mist called spindrift.  The boat next to us drug and had to re-anchor.  In the process their dinghy flipped upside down and they were unable to get it flipped over.  With the wind, waves, and dragging an upside down dinghy, they decided to cut it loose at the upwind end of the bay.  They alerted everyone by VHF.  I was just finishing deploying a second anchor to dampen our swing and saw the dinghy floating by.  I hopped into our dingy and was able to snare the loose dingy and eventually get it flipped and towed back to our boat.  There were a couple boats that drug into the mangroves and one that went up on the rocks.  By Sunday evening the wind had subsided.  Everyone was safe but there was a fair amount of incidents reported on the morning net.  We will be heading down to La Paz from here and with a few stops plan to be there in 5 days or so.  That will likely be our next access to internet.