We are still in Puerto Escondido, or more accurately Nopolo. We have been taken in by a couple I met when I drove from La Paz to San Diego to meet Josh and sail the coast. She and her husband retired here and they have been a literal port in the storm for us.
Hurricane Linda blew by the past two days. Even though it was hundreds of miles away and off the Pacific coast, we had winds up to 30 mph and bands of torrential rain. To let a little air flow through the boat, I had left the hatches secured but cracked, and when I woke to a downpour at 4am at the house here, I couldn’t sleep again until I checked on the boat. We drove to the harbor, and Carlos, a man who owns a boat repair business there, generously gave us a ride in his panga out to Oleada, since the wind would have been too strong to row against. As soon as we left the dock, we got soaked with sideways, driving rain. Amazingly, the boat was dry inside, even in the crossways downpours. We closed everything tightly anyway and returned to shore. Meanwhile, the streets flooded in our friends’ neighborhood, and we marveled at how much money had been thrown into nice pavement but no drainage.
The whole experience made me realize just how different a hurricane feels as a boat owner. They used to feel exciting, even magical, growing up in New Hampshire. Now they still feel that way, but with the heavy twins of worry and waiting. Despite a comfortable bed in air conditioning for the first time in three weeks, neither Josh nor I slept much during the storm.
There is another potential hurricane building off the coast of Guatemala, so we could leave and head north this weekend, but more likely (and depending on the predicted track for the storm) we will stay here if it looks like it will come anywhere close. There is another safe harbor 234 nautical miles to the north, but we are not in the business of trying to outrace hurricanes, so we will wait and see. In the meantime, Josh is repairing my battered paddleboard, and I have been writing, trying to catch up with a backlog of photos, video, and audio, interviewing employees of the national park here, and learning about Mexico’s Climate Change Law of 2012.