Adjusting to Marina Life

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

The last week has been spent adjusting to life in the marina.

We are trying to get used to things like unlimited power, fast Internet and long walks to the washrooms.  A large part of the challenge is the heat.  In some ways it is like living in the desert; the temperature in the afternoon is typically around 36 to 38 degrees, cooling off at night to less than 20.  If you want to get anything accomplished, it is best to do it in the early morning or late evening.  Note: We have no air conditioning on this boat!

Here we are in our slip at Marina de la Paz - can you spot the Canadian flag lost amongst all the big white power yachts?

In the evening the common pastime of the locals is to stroll along the Malecon, so we have done a bit of that, although, with the long days we are now getting, we often don't want to stay up that late.  Walking into town along the Malecon during the morning is OK too - good time to stop into a coffee shop for quick bite or even a full breakfast at one of the numerous restaurants.

Walking a long way down the Malecon took us to the site of one of the newest statues, just unveiled the day before we arrived in town.  This is a monument to Jacques Cousteau, the underwater pioneer.

So what have we accomplished since we arrived you may ask?

I was pleasantly surprised to find a fully-stocked warehouse of Kyocera solar panels and have acquired two new 135-watt panels.  Yesterday Sue and I took a long walk downtown, where we found a shop that supplied aluminum and had them make up some pieces of flat aluminum bar to my exact specifications (4 pieces 26-1/4" long each), suitable for mounting said panels.  Of course they would not sell me less than a full 6-meter bar, so I have lots of extra.  Now I need to try and find some rail clamps to complete the project - may have to steal them off of the old 85-watt panels.

My other project was dealing with the refrigerator.  Last summer in the sea we found that the compartment that the compressor lives in was getting very hot - we ended up pointing one of our precious cabin fans at the vent to keep some air circulating, which helped a lot.  What I have now done is mounted a couple of extra 12-volt computer fans to push and pull air into and out of this compartment, switch operated.  These are more effective and use much less power.  As a bonus, I mounted an indicator light by the salon table so we can see when the compressor is actually running, so we can keep track of just how hard it is working.  Since we replaced the compressor fan last year in Mazatlan the thing is so quiet we cannot otherwise tell when it is on.

So you see we are actually trying to get some work done, so don't give us a hard time for living in paradise!

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This is site of the virtual marina - looks like it is not so "virtual" any more.
These docks were not here a year ago.