Progress is being made

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

Looking longingly north towards the Sea of Cortez (Statue on the Malecon)

Just when you are about to give up hope, a miracle happens!  The new pump motor arrived.

Of course, I was sort of hoping for a whole new motor and pump, but I guess that would have been silly since only the motor was bad.  Actually, I was just ignorant enough to not realize they were two separate pieces.  The good side of this is that I did not spend as much money as I would have if I had ordered the whole thing.  The bad side is that now I had to marry the new motor to the old pump.

Detaching the old motor/pump assembly was not too tricky.  Just disconnect the hydraulic hoses, trying to keep most of the subsequent flood of hydraulic fluid contained, then cutting the electrical connections and forcing the rubber mounts off of the pump.  Similarly, separating the old motor from the pump was simply a matter of using some pliers to loosen the Allen screws (yes, I do have Allen wrenches but the position of the screws was such that there was no way to get the wrenches onto the screws without totally dismantling the pump itself), then pulling the two pieces apart, again attempting to catch all of the hydraulic fluid that this lets loose.

After cleaning up the pump somewhat, I simply had to align the old pump's odd, eccentric piston arrangement while simultaneously keeping a critical (as it turns out) O-ring in place while I attached it to the new motor.  The result looked good and after re-mounting the motor/pump assembly and reconnecting the hydraulic hoses, reconnecting the electrical, topping up the fluid, and spending a couple of hours getting the air out of the whole system, I had a perfectly working autopilot again.

Anticipating 2nd attempt

Of course, it leaked like a sieve and I had to do the whole thing over.  Apparently I did not get the O-ring in properly and it was mashed and broken as a result.  The second time, using the old O-ring (the new pump came with a new O-ring) and about an hour of trial and error, I managed to put it together much better and by the end of the day I had a non-leaking motor/pump and a totally working autopilot - at least until something else goes wrong.  I did check online on the pump manufacturer's site to see if there was any guidance for putting the O-ring in - they indicate that they have a special tool for that, and suggest sending the whole thing to them for assembly - not really a viable option for me.

Anyway, suffice it to say we are making progress and are now much closer to being able to leave La Paz for points north (our usual 1 or 2 weeks turning into a month).  At this time, we are aiming for a Monday morning launch, giving us ample time to finish off all of the other items we had on our to-do list that somehow got postponed until after the autopilot was fixed.  A lot of it is just re-supplying our groceries, cleaning up the boat, topping up the fuel and water tanks, etc.  Should be no problem.

Meanwhile, we continue to explore parts of La Paz and partake of some new restaurants we had not tried yet.  Here is the wonderful view from the Rancho Viejo seafood place, looking back at our marina around sunset.



Can you spot where the infinity pool leaves off?

A new friend, Boomer by name, has been kind enough to drive us around town a bit, so we were able to visit the local downtown market and a Sam's Club to replenish our Diet Coke supply and a few other heavy items. One night he took us up to the Costa Baja Resort and Marina, the newest and furthest marina from where we are here in central La Paz.  Really nice place with hardly anybody around.  Beautiful resort complete with swimming pools and fancy restaurants and prices that are virtually the same as where we are.  Tempting except that it is 6 miles out of town and quite isolated when you don't have a car.

Right now, we are trying to find out what the chances are that there will be any cell-phone coverage (and thus Internet possibilities) as we go up the inside coast of the Sea of Cortez.  Seems to be really hard to get a definitive answer from anyone.  As you can see from this picture, cell phones are very popular here (or is that just a huge, perfectly straight palm tree?).

Working hard on boat projects...

{GMST}24|9.3066|N|110|19.6068|W|La Paz, BCS, Mexico|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}