Sweat Equity

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

Man, is it hot!

Every day hits a high of around 40 degrees, cooling off a little around 2 AM.  Difficult to get up the energy to do anything.

In spite of the heat, the boat projects are progressing.  My expanded solar array is almost complete - just a couple of wires to run and we should have a total of close to 700 watts of power available.  Our genoa has had its UV protection re-stitched and we have added a strip of Sunbrella fabric so it will match the rest of the canvas on the boat.  No, we did not actually do this work ourselves; we found an excellent sailmaker in town who had a suitable sail loft - not cheap, but done right.  Now we have the sail back, in a sailbag, taking up room we don't have, in the galley.

After two tries, the dinghy repair dude has managed to get our dinghy floor to hold air again.  Time will tell if this will last, but we have hopes.

Everything has to come out of the locker to get access to the new tuner location.

My main project has been moving our SSB/Ham radio tuner to the back of the boat, closer to the backstay antenna and further from the radio itself.  This should improve our transmission ability.  I was fortunate that I left the coax and control cables long enough to do this when I last installed the antenna tuner.  The real challenge was in running a new length of copper grounding foil throughout the boat (a full 50-foot long run from one end of the boat to the other).  Many hours spent in hot, sweaty conditions for very little gain at times.  With any luck this will also improve our radio reception and transmission - difficult to test here in the marina where there is so much interference.

We hired a rigging specialist to go up the mast and inspect and tune the rigging, something that has not been done in many years.  While he was up there, I had him install our new LED spreader lights and new LED steaming light (we have not had a working steaming light since we left BC).  The spreader (deck) lights were relatively straight forward, only requiring some rewiring in the spreaders themselves - on one side there were three different wires spliced together to span a distance of about 3 feet, some of it just "speaker" wire - no wonder they didn't work any more.  After that, the replacement of the burnt-out steaming light looked like a simpler challenge.


Unfortunately, as boat projects have a tendency to do, this simple light-bulb replacement idea turned into a major expense in both labour and materials.  The steaming light fixture had a type of bulb not easily replace by any LED bulb currently on the market, so with this in mind, we purchased a new fixture and an appropriate LED bulb while we were in San Diego.  When John (the rigger dude) went to install it, it became apparent that there was no power at the fixture near the top of the mast.  After much trial and error we determined that the wire had been broken near the base of the mast where we could not easily get at it.



New LED spreader lights.

We drilled an "inspection" hole at the base of the mast so we could try and snag the end of the wire, but found instead an internal PVC pipe running up inside the mast, through which most of the wires were strung.  The wire we wanted had disappeared up the pipe somewhere and was not retrievable.  John was able to pull the old wire out and, using a weighted string as a plumb-bob, we threaded a new electrical cable up the mast (I actually had a roll of suitable 16-gauge wire in my supplies).  While John did the work at the top of the mast, installing the new fixture, I ran the wire into the boat to the connection box just below the mast.  When this was all working well, John fabricated a cover plate for our inspection hole.  After re-taping the wires from the deck to the base of the mast, everything looks almost as it was when we started, except that we now have some lovely, working lights again.  In theory, since our anchor, steaming and deck lights are all LEDs now, they should last as long as we have this boat.

Note that most of this work is done only in the morning hours.  By noon, the heat is so brutal, nobody wants to do anything.  One afternoon, we treated ourselves to a movie at the nearest Cinemex theatres (a half hour walk in the sun).  Having heard of their higher-end Platino theatres, we splurged for the luxury option.  The Platino theatres have their own ticket booth and concessions and only two theatres.  The theatres themselves are hard to believe.  Fully reclining armchairs with convenient tables and cub-holders, at least 5 feet between the rows, food service for anything from popcorn and soda to lasagna and alcoholic drinks, and the latest big screens and sound systems, all in air-conditioned comfort.  We were happy to pay the price just to sit in the chairs for a couple of hours - the movie was just a bonus.

The movies are current, in English with Spanish subtitles.  As we left the the theatre, they greet you with a tray of chocolates to thank you for your patronage.

What does all this cost you ask?  Well, it is about twice the cost of the regular theatres, so it worked out to 80 pesos (around $6 CDN) per person.  What can I tell you - we will definitely be back.

If you are thinking of moving to La Paz, we spotted this nice fixer-upper on the way to the theatre.  It comes complete with the TV too.

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