It’s now a week after my first blog for this season and we’re still in our slip in Marina Real in San Carlos. Why are we still here? Batteries – or rather the lack of good ones that I mentioned in the earlier blog! That led to our renting a car on Tuesday, driving the eight-and-a-half hour trip to Phoenix, staying the night, and then driving the same distance back on Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, while the tide was in, I worried each of the seven 72 lb. batteries from the car > down the ramp > to the pier > to the boat > onto the boat > down the gangway > and into the back berth. I did it at high tide to reduce the angle of the ramp down to the pier. I could use a hand truck from the car to the boat, but after that it was shear lifting, making sure my legs were bent and my back straight.
It was then we found that the new batteries are just slightly larger in length than the ones we had, so our battery footprint plate had to be enlarged. Since we couldn’t find any premade plates for the new batteries, we followed the path of several referrals to find a carpenter who sold us some Starboard strips to make our own footprints. It took me a couple of hours to accomplish that, and then we found out that the difference in terminal types and distances between the terminals ruled out the use of five of our terminal cables. It was good that we still had the rental car that day, or it would have taken us umpteen days by bus to accomplish what we did in a few hours by car.
We managed to find a supplier of cables and helped the supplier put together the cable-end-connectors to the cables we needed. With that fixed we found that the new batteries were lower in height that the older batteries, which prevented our hold-down brackets from actually holding down the batteries. We took care of that problem, turned on the DC panel and everything worked well. It only took us about eight additional hours of work and errands to actually install the new batteries – all due to infinitesimal differences in size. I went into this process just to show how each task on a boat leads to other tasks. Thank goodness we encountered this battery problem in a civilized area that just happens to be the closest port in the region to the U.S.
Now we need to get up to the top of the mast to repair some bird damage and maybe set a sharp spike to keep the birds from wanting to land there. We also need to lubricate our anemometer cups up there and get the wind speed indicator working correctly again. We still need to fill our extra diesel fuel cans, load our water tanks, test our water maker, and wait for good weather. We noticed 25-knot winds yesterday outside the marina which resulted in at least one sailboat limping in to take refuge from the rough conditions. Since a common mariner’s superstition is never to start a voyage on a Friday, we will probably go out tomorrow or Sunday. Although we don’t believe in superstitions generally, we have heard so many stories of bad luck heaped on vessels that dare to depart on Friday that we are reluctant to tempt the storm gods.
We have two options to take when we set out. The first is a three-day sail directly south to Mazatlan, some 425 miles south. With the northern winds we have been having it could be a shorter ride, but probably a lot bumpier. There are only a couple of ports we could pull into on this side of the Sea of Cortez, which would leave us few outs if the weather gets bad. The other option is to cross back to the Baja Peninsula side and make a series of day-sails down the eastern coast of the Baja until we get to the tip, and then jump across to Mazatlan. This latter plan would take 10 days and add 100 miles to the trip. It would offer safer passage if there is any question with regard to the weather; so we are staying tuned to the weather reports.
Our objective is to spend the month of December in the Paradise Village Marina in Puerto Vallarta. We had a very relaxing time there last spring and would like to repeat the experience. We belong to the Vallarta Yacht Club there, and should run into a lot of the friends we made during our cruising last year. At the moment we are holed up in our boat waiting for the weather report at 6PM and having our evening rum and coke. So much for the good life! More later . . .
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