Zihuatanejo

Zihuatanejo, Mexico

If ever there was a place designed to make you forget your troubles, it is Zihuatanejo.

It is a beautiful anchorage, a safe place to land and leave your dinghy and there are an endless number of restaurants and bars serving cold drinks and incredible Mexican food.  It is not hard to understand how some cruisers spend weeks or even months here.  The weather is still warm during the day, but it is a lot cooler at night than where we have been lately - lovely for sleeping on the boat.

My first task was to find a way to get our mainsail functional again - I didn’t want to continue up this coast without it, if it was at all possible.  I was able to get the sail track off the mast and rolled up as best I could. It became very evident where the problem lies. The entire track has become brittle and it takes very little effort to break chunks out of it, which is exactly what the sail slides did.  Interesting enough, the catamaran anchored next to us, who we first met back in Chiapas, have the same Tides Marine system and they had exactly the same failure, four days out of Panama on their way to the South Pacific - they turned around and aborted the passage.  We feel lucky to have had the problem so close to a safe harbour.

Fortunately for us, the original sail track on the mast takes the same shape and size of sail slides as the Tides Marine track.  With the track removed, and a jury-rigged track stop (made from a piece cut off of the Tides Marine track), we were able to untangle the mainsail and get all but the bottom two slides into the mast track.  This should make the sail usable, although limited to a double or triple reef - this is OK since we rarely sail with more than a double reefed mainsail anyway.

At this point in time, we are pretty well a fully functional sailboat again, ready for the next challenge.  In preparation for an imminent departure, we had 60 gallons of diesel and 50 gallons of water delivered to the boat yesterday. Now we are once again just waiting for an ideal weather window.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, we will do a bit of provisioning, with a possible departure on Wednesday.

{GMST}17|38.128|N|101|33.28|W|Zihuatanejo, Mexico|Zihuatanejo, Mexico{GEND}

Another passage, another problem!

Zihuatanejo, Mexico

With the headsail (Genoa) jury-rigged repairs completed and what looked like a good weather window for a longer, 3-day, passage to Zihuatanejo, we topped up our diesel at the somewhat inconvenient fuel dock and were on our way out of Marina Chahua by 10 AM on Tuesday.  We knew we would be fighting some nasty currents in at least three spots on this passage but the winds promised to be light (and even possibly sailable, albeit very close hauled).

The currents were certainly there, but the winds really did not cooperate at all.

The first day was slow, the first 30 miles bucking a 1 to 2 knot counter current, with about 10 knots of wind on the nose.  The seas were a bit choppy, keeping our speed down to 3 or 4 knots most of the time.  The first night was nice and calm.  Pretty much what we were expecting.  We saw a few dolphins but not much else in the way of excitement.

Sunrise behind us

The second day was pretty uneventful, light winds and mild currents, until late in the afternoon.  From 5 PM until around midnight, we fought against a moderate current, a 10 knot headwind and some nasty chop.  In the morning, conditions were good and we decided not to stop in Acapulco - the latest weather predictions led me to believe that this would be our best opportunity for the push to Zihuatanejo - somewhat stronger winds but a little less current than later in the week.  Not one of my best decisions as it turned out.

Everything was fine until early afternoon, no wind and no current - motoring at better than 6 knots most of the time and way ahead of schedule for an early morning arrival at Z-town.  We were joined by a lively pod of dolphins for while and we spotted a whale breaching in the distance. Just as we started into the longest stretch of contrary current, the winds started building.  I knew that was going to happen - the weather app predicted the winds to peak at 15 knots around 3 PM, then die off around 6 PM.  I was prepared for that.

What I was not prepared for was for the winds (right on the nose of course) to continue to rise into the night, settling in around 20+ knots until 9 PM.  This strong wind on top of the strong current led to some impressive seas.  Large, short-period waves that would cut our blistering top speed of 2.8 knots down to 1.5 every time we slammed into them.  Needless to say, my crew was sick.

Just before dark, I decided that we should try sailing - the motion couldn’t get any worse and we might make a bit more speed (albeit in the wrong direction).  We already had our usual double-reefed mainsail flying, just to give us some stability when motoring.  We unfurled as much of the possibly compromised headsail as we dared and tried for some closed-hauled action.  The good news was that the Genoa worked flawlessly.  The bad news was that the entire mainsail became detached from the mast - every one of the sail slides tore right out of the track.  With nothing but the halyard holding it, and the boat trying to buck me off, I had a fun time getting it down and mostly into the sail cover.  Susanne did a great job of steering the boat to minimize my struggle.

The only sailslides still in the track

Gouges torn out of the track

Once we had the sails down and the boat back on course, we just hung on and motored through the night.  By morning everything was sweet and nice again.  In spite of all the slow-going and unexpected delays, we arrived in the bay at Zihuatanejo around 9:30 this morning.  The anchor is down (hurray, something worked) and we are resting up from one of our more harried passages of late.

So far on this journey, we have made 3 passages.  We have flooded the engine with salt water, torn the halyard off the headsail and now put our mainsail out of business.  These 3 items make up our entire means of propulsion.  It is a little discouraging!

Oh, I forgot to mention, our Radar is not working properly any more - kind of minor in the great scheme of things.

{GMST}17|38.128|N|101|33.28|W|Zihuatanejo, Mexico|Zihuatanejo, Mexico{GEND}

One small step

Huatulco, Mexico

Last Thursday, a weather window appeared for transiting the Gulfo de Tehuantepec, a couple of days earlier than we expected.  Wednesday morning I informed the marina at Chiapas that we wanted to be off around 9 AM the next day, to which they replied that is not enough notice to arrange for our marina bill and obtain a “national” Zarpe from the port captain’s office.  After some back and forth, we settled for a noon departure time instead.  We managed to pay our bill by the end of the day so all we had to do on Thursday morning was to take some paperwork to the port captain’s office.  Not surprisingly this took an extraordinary amount of time - by the time we got back to the marina and had our departure inspection by the port captain, the navy and the drug-sniffing dog, we actually left the dock around 12:45.

The two day crossing started off with a 6 hour close-reach sail, followed by 42 hours of motoring.  At times the sea was like glass and we had some spectacular phosphorescence on the first moonless night.  For the last half of the passage, almost 100 miles, we fought a 1 to 2 knot current against us, making us wonder if we would ever get across the gulf.  We burned a lot of diesel to try and maintain a minimum 4 knot speed.

We saw a lot of turtles and birds on this passage, as well as a couple of huge pods of small dolphins.

At some point on the second day, while I was shaking the shrouds in an effort to scare off some boobies that were trying to roost on our spreaders, I noticed that our furling headsail had become detached from the swivel on the halyard, making it impossible to use that sail any more.  We actually did have some reasonable winds in the late afternoon and throughout the second night but it probably would not have been enough for us to maintain our speed against the current, even if we could have used the Genoa.

We arrived at Marina Chahue just after noon on Saturday.  Today, Sunday, we started tackling the headsail issue.  We took the sail down and Susanne tried to stitch up the piece of torn fabric that caused the failure.  I had to make another trip up the mast to retrieve the halyard, as it no longer comes down with the sail since it is no longer attached to same.

Hopefully tomorrow we can successfully hoist and furl the sail.  It appears we have a reasonable pause in the strong westerly winds, starting on Tuesday morning.  For our next leg, we will have to face a strong counter-current for the first 50 miles regardless and really don’t need to be heading straight into the wind as well.

Meanwhile we have been enjoying Huatulco, rather more than we did 5 years ago.  We have wondered around the town of La Crucecita and have had some very nice meals, both in town and at the selection of restaurants here at the marina.  Maybe this place is not so bad after all.

{GMST}15|45.832|N|96|07.318|W|Huatulco, Mexico|Huatulco, Mexico{GEND}

A break cannot be got!

Marina Chiapas, Chiapas, Mexico

After over 2 weeks in the work yard, Sine Timore was finally dropped back in the water, 1 week ago, on a Saturday morning.  Our temporary hull repairs got delayed due to a combination of screwed up work priorities by the yard foreman (other cruisers screamed louder) and an unfortunate traffic accident in which Henry, apparently the only one allowed to work on our boat, was injured when a pickup truck rear ended the collectivo (small bus) he was riding in.  Fortunately for him and us, he was back on the job after only a few days of recuperation.

Once back in our slip in the marina, we started making our plans for departure.  The one remaining job on our list was to replace the battery in our wireless wind instrument on the top of the mast.  My attempts to entice one of the yard workers with the exciting prospect of climbing the mast were not successful, so last Monday I made two trips up there to retrieve and replace the offending instrument, now possessing a somewhat newer battery - I think we bought it about 3 years ago.  So far it appears to be working much better.

There is some interesting work going on in the marina.  After the damage that resulted from last year’s Tsunami, they are adding an additional meter to the height of all the posts.  The main problem when the water rose was that the docks came off the posts and had new holes punched in them when they came back down.  In spite of that, and the fact that the work yard was flooded to a couple of feet, no boats were damaged in the yard or on the docks.  Hard to imagine what it must have been like.

With everything on the boat seemingly ship-shape, we just had to watch the weather forecasts for a suitable window of opportunity for sneaking past the dreaded Gulf of Tehuantepec - we need a good 48 hours with less than gale-force winds.  Prospects looked good for a Friday (yesterday) departure.  I went so far as to tell the marina that we would be leaving then.  Those of you who are more observant may have noticed that we are still here.

Anticipating the Friday departure, I started doing the usual checks of all the systems and such.  Everything looked real good until I went to check the oil in the engine.  When I pulled the dipstick out, I was shocked to find the oil was oozing out of that hole.  Indeed, upon looking further down, it became apparent that the bilge was full of oil - my precious engine oil!  Something was displacing the oil in the engine.  The only real possibility was water, but was it fresh water or salt water?

Because the bottom of our engine is inaccessible, it has a hand pump which allows me to pump the oil out of the bottom of the sump.  I used this pump to extract a few litres of water from the engine - tasting it confirmed that it was salt water.  Oddly enough this turns out to be good news.  If it had been fresh water, it would have indicated a blown head gasket or heat exchanger, both of which would be major problems requiring much time and expense to fix.  Salt water almost certainly meant we had a failed siphon-break in the raw-water cooling system.  Not pleasant but not quite as devastating.

To explain... Basically, on a system like ours, sea water comes in through a thru-hull fitting and valve, passes through a raw-water strainer, then is pressurized by a raw-water pump that runs on its own pulley on the engine.  From there, it passes through the heat exchanger, providing cooling for the fresh water of the engine, continuing through the transmission oil cooler, then finally being injected into the exhaust system, where it cools and muffles the exhaust and is ultimately ejected from the boat via the exhaust pipe at the stern.

Because our engine is mounted below the waterline, care must be taken to prevent water from pouring into the exhaust when the engine is not running.  In our boat, this is accomplished by having the water hose between the oil cooler and the exhaust injection rise up above the waterline, up behind the kitchen cupboards.  At its highest point, a vented loop is used which, in conjunction with a one-way check-valve, allows air to enter the line when no pressure is being provided by the raw-water pump.  Needless to say, if that vent gets blocked, or the check-valve sticks, the siphon break will not work.  In that case, and indeed in our case, when the engine is shut off, a siphon is created, which slowly fills the exhaust pipe, then the exhaust manifold on the engine, then the engine itself, possibly even filling some cylinders with water if their exhaust valves happened to stop in the open position.  Since water is heavier than oil, the water sinks to the bottom of the sump and pushes the oil up and out of the engine via the dipstick hole.

On our boat, the vent line from the vented loop travels across the galley, behind the cupboards, runs through the closet in the aft cabin, continues into the storage compartment under the cockpit, where the check-valve actually resides, then exits from the boat through its own little hole in the side of the hull.  All of this was news to me but I know it well now.  I found the source of the problem right at the fitting where the vent exits the boat - totally plugged with who knows what.  I was able to clear out the obstruction and confirmed that the check-valve was functioning properly.  Unfortunately when I attempted to get the small vent hose off the vented loop fitting behind the kitchen cupboard, the hose adapter broke off.  This turned out to be an easy fix once we found a welder in Tapachula that could solder it all together again.  The total cost of the repair came to 50 pesos (about 3 dollars).

The real problem though is that salt water in a Diesel engine is never a good thing.  I was able to contact the dealer in Vancouver where we bought the engine some 12 years ago and got some specific instructions to follow for purging the water from the engine, part of which entailed 4 complete oil and filter changes.  At this point, I think the engine problem has been solved - just some more cleanup to do in the bilge.  But of course, we have missed our weather window for the Tehuantepec - there doesn’t seem to be another one predicted for at least a week.

On the plus side, the hunt for parts, oil, filters and welders did get us a glimpse of more of the city of Tapachula than we had seen before.

So here we sit, no closer to our ultimate destination in San Carlos than we were 3 weeks ago.

{GMST}14|41.9333|N|92|23.5167|W|Marina Chiapas, Mexico|Marina Chiapas, Mexico{GEND}