We finally left the Costa Rica Yacht Club, Puntarenus by high tide. Steve managed to get our clearance paper with no more hick ups. John and I completed our last bit of prepping the boat. We fueled up to the rim and off we went.
As we exited the estuary we had some wind! Steve decided to get out the Code Zero (a large head sail) to give us some extra push in the light wind. Soon after getting the Code Zero up the wind suddenly picked up from about 8 knots to 18 knots. This meant getting the Code Zero down again. Not at all easy in strong winds as we had to be very careful of the light sail material which could rip. I was downstairs when all this happened but I could hear the sail flapping loudly so went up to see what was happening. Steve was at the front of the boat trying to roll up the sail while John was trying to control the line to minimize the sail flapping. When Steve saw me he shouted for me to fall off the boat by 20 degrees. Instead of turning the boat away from the wind which falling off means, I turned it into wind by 20 degrees. Well this made the flapping worse and Steve’s job harder. I realised my mistake when I heard angry shouting. Once I got the boat pointing the right way, we managed to bring down the sail. As you can imagine Steve was royally p*** off with me. He lectured saying I must learn and practice my terminology. Which I really must and hope that I learn falling off and heading into wind better than my left and right.
Although the wind was a bit strong for the Code Zero, it was perfect for our normal sails. Once we had all the normal sails trimmed nicely we were really sailing. We had originally planned to stop off at a nearby island where Steve and John could clean the props and bottom of the boat. However with such good wind we decided to stop off at Leona Bay the furthest place we could anchor before heading out into the ocean. It would have been nice not to stop at all but the water was so filthy at Puntarenus that we had to remove the growth on our hull bottom and props so as not to slow down the boat during our crossing. The sail to Leona bay was most pleasant. Flat seas and good wind, just how I like it. We saw a huge turtle, the largest I’ve seen in the waters and loads of rays jumping out and belly flopping back into the sea.
We made it to Leona in good time. John and Steve got into their dive gear immediately and started work on the boats bottom. I did a wash, tested out the air conditions and waxed the dodger which I had completed forgotten to do before. We managed to finish all our chores at the same time. John came out of the water feeling very unwell with motion sickness bobbing up and down under the hull. Not a good start for him as were about to head out into the Pacific.
Anyway we put away what we could, upped our anchor, raised the sails and headed into the setting sun. The wind died!
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