Blog site update

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

While relaxing in the much cooler summer temperatures, I thought it would be a good opportunity to update this blog a bit. So with this post I am introducing a new google map feature. With any luck, this map will be synchronized to the postings so it will show the locations mentioned in whatever posts are being displayed. For this to work, you may notice a GPS lat/long reference at the end of some posts - try not to let this distract you from the enticing text included on these posts.

{GMST}53|35.3868|N|113|32.3568|W|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada|Edmonton, Alberta, Canada{GEND}

Departure Imminent

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

Lots of last minute jobs.  A frenzy of activity and we are almost ready to leave the boat for the summer.  And not a bit too soon; the weatherman in predicting daytime highs in the low 40s for next week.  I did use the relatively clear skies and our new improved solar array to give the batteries a big boost (equalization) before we leave - pretty cool!

Walking along the Malecon in the late afternoon tells the tail.  In the evening, this place will be full of people, but right now the only idiots who would venture out in the sun are us - we had to go down to the bus depot to get some tickets on the shuttle to the airport for Saturday.  Airlines do not fly to places like Canada from La Paz.  Instead, you have to travel to the larger airport at San Jose del Cabo, a little further south on the peninsula (this is where the recent G20 conference was being held so the airport should be in tip-top condition).  We will take a 3-hour shuttle bus ride from La Paz to the airport, then fly on Westjet to Vancouver, and on to Edmonton, arriving as usual in the middle of the night.

The boat is as ready as we can make it.  All of the sails, solar panels, and loose stuff is packed in down below and we have enough dock lines deployed to handle the Queen Mary.  With any luck all of these precautions will be unnecessary, and it will be a perfectly benign summer here in La Paz.

Testing of all of the systems before we abandon the boat did turn up one annoying issue.  One of the bilge pumps was not working at all.  I spent the better part of the day cleaning all the accumulated crap out of the bilge, then testing the pump and float-switch (These are down there at the bottom of the bilge, at the extreme limit of my arm-reach, making for lots of fun).  It turned out to be a simple case of corroded wires.  I have replaced the offending circuits and the pump is in business again (hopefully never to actually be needed).
Now that Susanne has the sewing machine out, she whipped up some spiffy covers for the little storage access holes at the sides of the cockpit.  These have always been a problem when it rains as they fill up with water - there is no drainage and everything in the compartment gets soaked.  Hopefully these covers will keep the majority of the water out, in the unlikely event that it ever rains here - they are still in the middle of a drought.

Basically, the boat has never looked better, or been more ready to go to sea.  I just hope we actually get to start using it when we get back in October.  We have spent far too much time sitting in one place and just working on the boat, and not near enough time enjoying the fruits of our labour.  Of course, the more we do to the boat, the more projects we find that we would like to do, but we have to draw the line somewhere.  Maybe we should upgrade the chart plotter?  Add AIS?, get a dinghy that holds air?  The deck could use another coat of paint.  The bright work is in need of some TLC.  Please somebody - stop me!

Just for information, this breakwater is between us and the marina next door.  This was not in place the year that the big hurricane caused so much damage to the boats here.  Marina de la Paz blamed a lot of the problems on the fact that the docks next door broke loose and the boats and docks came plowing through into our marina - this breakwater is an attempt to prevent that issue from recurring.  Note the series of posts in the shallower water, which we have heard referred to as "boat shredders".

For those of you who might be wondering, here is the progess
 on the new clubhouse.  In another month or two, it could be complete.

{GMST}24|9.3042|N|110|19.6152|W|Marina de La Paz|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}

De-sailing

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

We are now in the process of officially turning this boat into a motor vessel.



Stay sail on the dock

In order to leave the boat here in La Paz for the summer (hurricane season), we have to take down all possible windage.  Since this is a sailboat, windage is what we have the most of.  Thus, the removal of all the sails.

The Genoa was already off from when we took it to the sail maker to get the UV strip re-done.  We have had it back for several weeks now, stowed conveniently by our bed in the forward cabin.

This week, we first removed the stay sail and its cover.  This is relatively easy since this is quite a small sail. This is now cleaned and stacked neatly beside the bag holding the Genoa.  Space in our bedroom is getting to be a bit of a premium.  The sailcover was in pretty bad shape and Susanne spent a day mending some seams and re-sewing the zipper - now it looks pretty good for a 10-year old cover, although it is not really the same colour it was when in was first made (the sun does a good job of bleaching sunbrella fabric here in Mexico).


We left the main sail for the last, knowing that we would have to stumble around it in the boat once it was down below.  On Sunday, we finally did the deed.  We got up early so we could get to work on it by 7 AM.  There was a little breeze blowing, just enough to keep it from getting too hot but not enough to be a bother with taking the sail off.


Nothing about taking the sail or sail cover off is particularly complicated - it is just awkward with all that stiff canvas to deal with on a 5-foot wide dock.  Since the boom on this boat is 22 feet long, it means there are some very long battens in both the sail and sail cover - we will store these down below when we leave the boat, but for now they will just be laid out on the deck so we will not be tripping over them all the time.

Sue has done an incredible job of cleaning the sail and sail cover and has spent a couple of days on the sewing machine re-installing the long zippers on the cover.  The sunbrella fabric stands up pretty well in the sun but the thread holding everything together does not fair so well.

The sail is now bagged and stowed in the back cabin, along with the kayak, life rings, cockpit cushions and too many other things to keep track of.

Today, we hired a diver to clean off the bottom of the boat and propeller.  He will be looking after this issue while we are back in Canada for the rest of the summer.  Stuff grows too fast in these nutrient-rich waters to just leave it alone for 3 months.


Can you find Waldo?

Just so you don't think it is all work for us, we have been to the movie theatre twice more this week.  They have the air conditioning turned up so high that we were tempted to rent blankets when watching the pictures (yes, they have them available).   These theatres remain one of the best kept secrets in La Paz -  as you can see, it is standing room only.

Yesterday, we saw the newest Spiderman movie in 3D.  You pay extra for 3D movies, 100 pesos (about $7.50 CDN) each for tickets, and they use the bigger theatre (probably better able to handle the crowds).

{GMST}24|9.3042|N|110|19.6152|W|La Paz, BCS, Mexico|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}

Are we done yet?

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

As we near the time to leave this place, the work seems to be accelerating nicely.  Three main projects this week...

First was a fairly straightforward installation of a new A/B switch for our VHF antenna, so I could hook up our old backup radio in the cockpit.  The problem up till now has been that having the VHF radio mounted at the navigation table means that the volume has to be turned way up in order to hear it from the cockpit, then run down below to actually use it.  We attempted to solve this with a remote microphone with its own speaker that we can keep in the cockpit with us, but have found that it just does not keep a charge long enough to be used full-time.  Since we already had the 2nd radio available, mounting it in the cockpit seemed like the easiest solution.  Of course, it meant running a new antenna cable from the nav table to the cockpit and that meant taking half the boat apart (again). The fancy A/B switch was one of the purchases we made when we were in San Diego.

The second project consisted of some new shade for the boat.  For this, we hired a local awning guy who could supply the material and labour.  Altogether, there are 6 pieces to our new setup, 4 that attach to the bimini in the cockpit, giving about 75% sun blockage and providing shade from most directions, and two larger, more dense, pieces that go over the staysail boom and main boom respectively, to give some shade to our main hatches - this way we can keep the hatches open for some light and air without heating the boat up to the same degree (pun intended).  We sure wish we had these last summer when we were in the northern Sea of Cortez.  As it is, we have these in place now, just in time for us to take them down for this summer.

The last project, and probably the most exciting, is our new stove.

The old stove has served us very well over the years, but lately the rust was starting to win the war.  With the occasional flames coming from places I don't think they should, we have become a little concerned about how safe the stove is, so we had made the decision to replace it back before we got to La Paz.

Getting rid of the old stove is the easy part.  The problem was finding something that would fit in to space available and not look to silly.  After much study, via the Internet, of the marine stoves on the market, it looked like the only candidate was a European sub-compact model by Force 10.  West Marine carries this model, so we took a look at it while we were in San Diego.  It turns out that the actual dimensions are NOT the same as the ones in the brochure, and the stove would have been ludicrously narrow, although the height would have been perfect.  Disappointed, we cruised all of the marine stores and found what appeared to be the perfect stove, from a company called Seaward.  We took lots of measurements so we could double check the space on the boat before we ordered it.

Once we had returned to La Paz, it became apparent that the stove we picked out would be much too high for our space, unless we wanted to make major modifications to the boat (not really an option we wanted to think about).  After again browsing the Internet, we finally determined that another of the Force 10 models (the North American sub-compact) would be a close (hopefully not too close) fit.  We bit the bullet and ordered one from an expediter-dude in San Diego - he charges for his services and you still have to pay Mexican tax, duty and shipping, but he does save us the California sales tax, so it is a pretty good deal (Susanne can't get over the fact that we are paying a premium to purchase a Canadian-made stove in California).  It was a pretty exciting day when the big box arrived and we enlisted the help of our buddy John to help pick it up from the freight company.  In spite of the fact that the box looked a little beat up, the stove seems to be fine.

Now that we definitely had the new stove in hand, I tackled getting the old stove out.  As usual, this required taking lots of other pieces of the boat apart, mostly dealing with drawers and cupboard doors that stick out a bit too much.  The stove fit through the companionway with about 1/2" to spare.

The new stove is virtually the same size as the old, so it went in pretty much the same way the old one came out.  I had to take off the old "gimble" hinges and mount the new ones a little lower down, but it actually went very smoothly.  Getting the right gas fittings for the connection to the propane was a no-brainer, as almost all stoves are gas appliances here in Mexico.  After putting the old stove in the cardboard box, we donated it to the local charity auction, where we were assured someone would be very happy to get it - since that stove was not really a marine stove in the first place, it should do very well in the right environment.

Now, you are probably thinking that these little projects could have been done in much less than a week, but keep in mind that you can only work comfortably from about 7 till 10 in the mornings, before it becomes so unbearable hot and humid that you just sort of collapse.  Every day the temperature reaches to between 37 and 39 (sometimes we can keep the inside of the boat below 35), cooling off to a frigid 27 or so at night.  Lately what has been killing us is the humidity, which has really peaked over the last few days.  It has been partly overcast which reduces the heat from the direct sun, but seems to increase the humidity - no rain though.

It is interesting to note that since the start of July, there are a whole lot of Mexican tourists in La Paz, for their summer holidays.  The Malecon is busier than ever and there are quite often lots of activities going on at the beach - they don't seem to think it is too hot at all.

The ice cream shop remains one of the most popular spots on the Malecon.

Next comes the traditional removing of the sails.  Stay tuned to this blog for information on this thrilling endeavour.

{GMST}24|9.3042|N|110|19.6152|W|La Paz, BCS, Mexico|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}

Sweat Equity 2

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

The work continues, in spite of the heat.

Actually we had a bit of a reprieve from the weather for a couple of days.  We even got some rain earlier this week, the first we have seen since January of 2010.  Some interesting clouds come over from the mainland and almost get past us before they dissipate.  Thank goodness for the nightly breezes here in La Paz, or we would surely perish.

I have completed my solar panel upgrade.  The two new 135-watt panels take the place of the old 85-watt panels, semi-permanently mounted near the stern of the boat.  The old 85-watt panels are now "roving" panels, able to be mounted anywhere along the side rails from about mid-ship back, with an electrical connection that can be easily disconnected, allowing the panels to be stored below deck when we are sailing; on the assumption that they will just get in the way of the lines for the head sail otherwise.


In order to test the electrical production, I had to turn off the shore-power charger to let the batteries run down for a day, so the solar charger would need to try and make it back.  At mid-day, with the boom still shadowing at least two of the dodger-mounted 55-watt panels, we observed a steady 32 amps coming from the panels.  In theory, if we were to swing the boom out to expose all of the panels, as we had to do last summer in the Sea of Cortez, we should see close to 40 amps.  This moves us from subsistence to luxury production, as long as the sun is shining.  Woo-hoo!

The next project on the list was a new rear chain locker.  This is a project that came about as a result of the work I had been doing while moving the SSB antenna tuner to inside the rear lazerette.  While groping around in there, along with various issues such as broken hose-clamps on thru-hulls, etc., I found that the hose that drains the propane locker through the stern of the boat had become dislodged - actually the "mushroom" fittings at both ends had broken off.  As a result, the hose was draining into a back locker compartment that was pretty much inaccessible.  After scooping all of the water out of this compartment (no doubt there as yet another result of our trip around Cape Mendocino in 2010), I was able to re-run the drain hose and replace the fittings in such a way as to make this compartment more usable as a rear anchor chain locker, something that I have always lusted after.


To complete this project required cutting a huge hole in the deck of the boat and installing a new "deck pipe" which we acquired on our trip to San Diego.  In spite of the shrieks from Susanne regarding my cutting of said hole, I think it came out pretty nice.  All of that 15 feet of 5/16" chain and 150 feet of 5/8" nylon rope are now stored nicely out of the way and I no longer have to trip over them in the back cabin.

The most important project, from the perspective of keeping the boat afloat in the future, was the replacement of the "bob stay".  This is a 1/2" stainless steel wire that attaches the end of the bow sprite to the bow of the boat, right at the water line.  As you can see from the pictures, it was beginning to rust pretty badly.

The problem with this replacement was that no-one here in Mexico can deal with swaging ends onto such a large diameter cable.  This item we had custom built for us in San Diego, and shipped here.  It arrived yesterday and John, the rigging dude, installed it today - it needed a little bit of adjustment on the grinder before it fit perfectly.  Finally we can breath a little easier about this very important item.  The rigging company in San Diego told us that they don't expect bob stays to last more than about 12 years, due to the fact that they are so exposed to the salt water all of the time - I'm sure this one was a lot older than that.

Old vs New

So you see, we are getting a lot done these days.  To add some incentive, we now have a deadline.  We have booked a flight to Edmonton on the 21st of July, only a little over 2 weeks from now and would like to have everything possible done before we leave.  Really, we only have two or three major jobs left now.  The new stove should arrive early next week, but that's a tale for another day.

{GMST}24|9.3042|N|110|19.6152|W|La Paz, BCS, Mexico|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}