Osprey - 10-12-2009 at 06:33 AM
Squalls
In my little word book a Chubasco is a squall. There are squalls and there are hurricanes --- and it turns out, lots of things in between.
Today we have TS Patricia which yesterday and the day before was TD E 19. The thing was hundreds of miles to the south when I saw it on the internet.
Sooo while it was still way down there I checked our East Cape weather on all my local sites and discovered yesterday I could sneak in a tuna/dorado
trip days before the thing would be anywhere near here.
Loaded up the panga, found some eager fishermen, took off at first light knowing the whole morning would be flat and safe and fun. I did not know
Patricia, by mid morning, would have outer bands and that they would be a thousand miles across and that they would spawn a squall.
In this bay, in a 22 ft panga, it is usually good practice to wait out squalls, don’t try to outrun them --- just conserve fuel, hold a safe course,
keep all your stuff in one bag. So while we waited, we bounced and fished. We caught a lot of big barrilette and 3 keeper dorado and took on enough
rain and waves to clean my boat, get the bailer and the sponge working. Since I had been tricked I couldn’t know that what I thought was a local popup
squall might be hundreds of miles across and might take a lot more than the usual hour to pass.
The really heavy rain and wind were moving east to west so I nudged our little craft southeast and trolled through the waves and troughs to give the
storm time to pass while I went inshore behind it to ride the wind back to the beach. That all worked out so without much warning I just told my 3
guests to hold on and I ran hard up the sand at just under 30MPH. We all stepped out high but not dry and saluted the rain, now moving off toward Los
Barriles, with a cold Pacifico.
Baja: cheap thrills. Never fails me.
Diver - 10-12-2009 at 07:47 AM
A day on the boat, catching fish and living a story to tell; what more could you ask for !!
Makes a man feel alive !
Thanks for sharing !