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.

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