Saturday, April 25, 2009

April 24th (2009) – Mazatlan – Jim’s Blog #88

Current Location – Mazatlan – Lat: 23°16.12’ N / Long: 106°27.85’ W

It has been two weeks now since my last blog and most of that time has been spent in San Diego. There doesn’t seem much reason to write about the mundane aspects of being ashore in this blog, rather than the adventure of living and cruising on our boat. Nevertheless this will bring you up-to-date with what we’re doing before I head back to Mazatlan for the month of May.

We tied our boat securely to the slip in the El Cid Marina on Monday, April 13th, and notified our neighbors to keep an eye on it for us. On the morning net we offered to take flat, stamped mail to the U.S. to post it there, but another cruiser closer to the drop-off point also volunteered; so we had nothing to carry north. That courtesy allows cruisers to bypass the Mexican mail system, and there is usually someone flying north to the U.S. or Canada at least a couple of times a week.

We locked up the hatches and portholes, the lazarettes in the cockpit, and finally the main hatch – no sense inviting folks to take something that seems abandoned. We also locked the outboard motor onto the stern rail, tying down the dinghy securely on the foredeck. We have had no trouble in the two seasons we’ve been cruising, but it’s always wise to eliminate temptation.

There is no bus service to the Mazatlan Airport, so we took a cab for about $30, getting there about three hours ahead of time. We took Alaska Airlines (what are they doing down here?) with a destination of Los Angeles as the first stop. Once there we could wait about 5 hours and take a connecting flight to San Diego, but our daughter, Melissa, who lives in Newport Beach, offered to pick us up and put us up for the night. It was wonderful to see her and her three gorgeous granddaughters.

The next morning Melissa took us down to San Diego, where we started putting our condo back together after renting it to a niece for the last year and a half. We had shoe-horned all of our furniture into the second bedroom for the duration of our cruising, and it was somewhat like playing Tetris in reverse to get it all back out. The difficult part was remembering how to put the bed back together, after first locating the screws and nuts that had previously been stored in a location we thought would be self-evident. Not!

For most of the past two weeks we have been adapting to life on shore in the lap of luxury. Take the refrigerator for example. Imagine having ice cubes delivered automatically from the front of the refrigerator – instead of having to freeze water in plastic bags using an engine-driven compressor for an hour a day and then using an ice pick to break it up into usable chunks! Sheilagh is ecstatic that she can just open the door to the refrigerator instead of having to clear the counter over the refrigerator in the boat in order to get to the top-opening refrigerator and freezer and then unload the top layers to get to the item she wants.

It’s a pleasure to merely jump into a car to go shopping for groceries instead of getting into a dinghy, motoring to shore, surfing the back of the waves onto the beach, hiking to a nearby grocery store, carrying everything back to the beach, loading the dinghy, running the dinghy back through the oncoming surf, loading the groceries onto the boat from the dinghy, and transporting them down the companionway before putting them away. What was that dream about sailing into the sunset with not a care in the world?

We are now used to walking on level surfaces that don’t tip at all. No longer do we have to make sure we’re holding onto some part of the structure as we walk through a room. We can set our glasses and dishes on flat surfaces without worrying about whether they might slide off. Of course our tables no longer have raised edges to guard against losing tableware. One of the drawbacks to this stable environment is that we no longer have the gentle rocking of the bedroom as we’re sleeping.

We have made the rounds of the marine and hardware stores to collect supplies such as oil filters, replacements for broken fittings, and a new pair of sailing gloves (the old ones having worn down from all the kayaking I’ve been doing. One of our fellow cruisers asked me to pick up some bee sting kits and bring them back for use by a number of cruisers in the Sea of Cortez this summer. This kit involves the use of a hypodermic needle without the needle, used to suck out a bee stinger, as well as any fluid that may have been injected with the stinger.

The most important jobs we had were to fix our cockpit GPS and my laptop while in the States. Our GPS had suddenly quit acquiring satellites during our return trip up the coast to Barra de Navidad, and we had been carrying a useless GPS unit since then. Garmin suggested we probably needed a new software update, after their restart procedure didn’t work. We carried the GPS unit up with us to San Diego, where we met up with the software chip we had them send to our mailbox there.

We immediately took the chip and the unit to West Marine where we hoped to update the software using a power setup from one of the GPS’s they had on display. We found a comparably pinned power cord from a demo unit, and updated the software, but couldn’t get any satellite acquisition in the store. The clerk who was helping us lent us a replacement cord, and we went out to our car to use the 12 volt battery there. Soon enough we found that the unit was still not working; so we called the Garmin Support Center and learned that we could get a replacement unit for $170 plus shipping. Apparently “controlled obsolescence” worked fairly well in this case – the unit failing just about 6 months after the warranty had run out.

We sent the unit in with a check and now waiting for its return. Sheilagh and I have been using Skype quite heavily to deal with the long waits and the intricate entry of information as we deal with the Garmin customer-service telephone system, as well as the systems of other service centers we are dealing with. In one case it took me an entire hour of entering data and waiting for responses as I was 1) routed through the automated system to an actual human being, who 2) rerouted me back into the same automated loop I had been in for 10 minutes, which 3) routed me to another individual who apparently disconnected me as he was supposedly putting me on hold. I called up again and went through the same process to 4) get another human being on the phone, who 5) had to consult the next level of support, and who 6) finally got back to me with the news that the unit was being worked on and “it usually takes 5-10 working days to get the unit back.” They couldn’t be more specific.

I had also experienced some bubbles occurring across the top of my laptop screen during the past couple of weeks. The bubbles appeared to be air bubbles, which were growing in size day by day, but which remained at the top of the screen regardless of the orientation of the laptop. In this case the laptop was on warranty; so Dell sent me a box with all the padding and postage I would need. I sent it in last Tuesday and received it back today – no charge for anything. On top of that it was fairly easy to get through to the Dell service organization to get the status of the repair.

To stay in shape I dusted off my bicycle and began riding to get some exercise. I have 24 gears on the bike, with access to only about 16 gears (I can’t get one of the forward gears to work), and the need for only about 8 gears. I installed a speedometer and pacer; so I can keep my mind busy watching gauges as I do on the boat or in a car. I’ve now worked up to an average of 10 mph as I ride on fairly level ground from our condo to Mission Beach on fairly well-protected bike paths most of the way. If it weren’t for the discomfort of the bike seat, the exercise might almost be enjoyable – particularly with the ride along the beach with a close view of bikini-clad roller skaters, sunbathers, and volleyball players.

Our condo is on the San Diego River, which I ride along to get to the beach. This is a fairly shallow river unless the tide is in. I’m looking forward to getting my kayak back to San Diego and seeing if the river is navigable at high tide from my condo to the beach and back. Since the river level is affected clear up to our condo by the tide, I may have to go down the river at the top of the high tide ebb, wait about 6 hours and then return on the incoming tide near the highest level. I’m hoping there aren’t any regulations against kayaking on this river, but I intend to ask forgiveness after the fact rather than learn more than I want to know about the rules and regulations.

That’s about it from here on shore. I hope the mundane things I’ve been discussing haven’t driven you away from this blog. I’m actually looking forward to getting back on the boat next Thursday, and starting preparations for the Baja Bash back up to San Diego. Although not everything is convenient on a boat, there’s nothing like having a floating home that can be sailed anywhere I might want to go. Except for the need for diesel fuel and groceries occasionally, it’s great to be self-sufficient on one’s own boat, making our own water and electricity, and sailing off into the sunset or sunrise whenever we feel like it.

More later . . .

Sunday, April 12, 2009

April 10th (2009) – Mazatlan – Jim’s Blog #87

Current Location – Mazatlan – Lat: 23°16.12’ N / Long: 106°27.85’ W

A Tribute to the 'Best Crewperson' ever

We’ve been relaxing for the past week, as we prepare to end our cruising lifestyle. We’ll be flying up to southern California on Monday, the 13th, and that will be the end of Sheilagh’s cruising on a regular basis. Then I’ll be flying back down to Mazatlan at the end of April and sailing the boat north with two friends of mine, Jim and Craig, in June. I’m not sure about my cruising future, but I intend to look into crewing for other boats or getting crew for my boat to sail to the South Pacific and beyond. Sheilagh says she’ll be glad to visit me when I arrive someplace, but it had better be a location with commercial jet runways that can handle the larger jets – no small planes for her either.

On the bow

Since we started this experiment in October of 2007, Sheilagh has given it a good 18 months of effort to get over her fear of the ocean and of the weather as experienced from the deck of a small sailboat, but that’s not something that may be curable. She has also been the best crew someone could have for any number of reasons, not the least of which is her total command of the galley and the gourmet output from that location. She’s also a bit of a “neat freak” and has spent a lot of time keeping the boat not only clean but in very good order. I have been happy to have her keep things neat except when she puts something away that I had planned to use or wear in the next few days. Frankly I have to confess I’ve been more of a slob than I usually am during this cruising lifestyle, knowing that Sheilagh will clean up after me.

In the engine room

And I also have to confess that I’ve taken advantage of her desire for orderliness by having her keep the inventory of not only food, but boat parts, supplies – in fact whatever is not visible to the naked eye when the cabinets and drawers are closed. She keeps track of the zincs needed to keep our metal boat parts from deteriorating, as well as the schedule of when they need replacement. She tracks when the engine needs an oil change and does a lot of the work related to changing the oil, the oil filters and the fuel filters. She never has trusted the sails or her sailing ability; so the engine has become very high on her list of items to keep in tip top shape. She changes the hard-to-get-at impeller blade that insures the engine stays cooled by delicately inserting herself into the engine room and asking only for tools from me.. She calls this exercise “boat yoga,” and it’s the only “exercise” she will admit to practicing.

Holding her first tuna

In the cruising community there are generally recognized “blue” jobs for the guys and “pink” jobs for the ladies. Sheilagh never has followed that criteria, and I think she’s been considered a threat to the status quo for a lot of the cruising wives. There isn’t a male cruiser we’ve met who wouldn’t love to have her skills and talents wear off on their own crew. What she’s doing is making sure that “her” engine is going to get her back to land when the sails fail. She’s never felt that I really cared about the engine, because I would prefer to sail even if it takes a lot longer to get there. So she’s taken it upon herself to make sure the engine is in perfect shape. Her hearing immediately detects the slightest change in the sound of the engine, and she will not rest until she finds out what’s causing the problem. At times she has been quite upset to find that my knee-bouncing on the deck to a tune on my IPod has caused her to go all over the engine looking for the “engine knock.”

Relaxing for once

I can’t count the number of times Sheilagh has stopped me as I was calling for a sail change to point out that there were lines or line-stoppers that needed to be set before starting the procedure. I’ll never forget the time when we were sailing our Cal 20 in Hawaii some 30 years ago and were laid over by a freak squall. I shouted at Sheilagh to let the “rope” go. I had been lecturing her on the need to learn the proper names of items on the boat, but at that critical time, as the boat was lying on its side, I couldn’t remember the name for the jib sheet. As frightened as she must have been in the situation, she stood fully erect on the side of the boat that was being held under water and yelled “I’ll let it go when you tell me the name of the line you want me to release.” It won’t be easy to replace that kind of quality crew.

At the top of the mast

In the next few days Sheilagh will be taking me around the boat to show me where everything is located that I used to be able to ask her for. I will also have to start keeping the boat log and the maintenance log. The worst part is my having to learn to cook for myself, but even here Sheilagh is preparing me to survive. She has made a list of easy-to-cook dishes with the ingredients necessary to feed me and two crew members. Hopefully they’ll have a few dishes they can cook to offset my “cooking skills.”

Sightseeing

She has already typed out instructions for making water and emptying the holding tank and posted them where they will be easy to access for each procedure. Lately she has been reminding me to turn on the shower drain pump before getting into the shower – something she has been doing for me when I am up to my ankles in shower water and don’t want to track water through the boat to hit the switch.

Taking a cockpit shower

Although Sheilagh has had a history of being geographically challenged every place except in a mall, she has learned to navigate along the coast of Mexico, including planning trips, recording fixes, using radar, and generally questioning every navigational decision I make. She will not agree that we are anchored until she has personally determined that the anchor is well set. She also gets up in the middle of the night to check our position and make sure we’re still anchored securely.

In an internet cafe on Skype

She keeps track of all of our financial dealings and has set up automated payments where possible. When we get into an internet environment, it is Sheilagh who tracks the bills and payments, checks the declining balance of our nest egg, and insures that we have sufficient funds in our account to be able to use the ATM’s in the various localities. She runs down the best buys in health, car, and boat insurance, and makes sure we upgrade at key dates. When her business dealings are complete, she uses Skype to get in touch with each of our four daughters, where she is often called upon for personal advice and parental advice in the raising our four grandchildren and our dog, Rascalita, that she had to leave behind with our daughter, Kim, to do the cruising we wanted to do – Rascalita was not a happy cruiser.

Eating breakfast on a stern seat

When we entertain, it is Sheilagh who decides on the components of the feast, buys and prepares all the food, straightens things up in case guests may come below to look at the inside of the boat (usually we entertain in the cockpit), lays out the table, approves the music, and looks like a million dollars when the guests arrive. She prompts me to make drinks and notifies me when someone needs another drink. She monitors the discussions the guests are having and cuts off those that start to talk of politics. It may be difficult to find crew who can do all these things for future trips, and I am not holding out much hope of being able to do so.

One of her favorite positions in the cockpit

After the foregoing tribute to my lovely crew, some of you may be asking yourselves what it is that I do around the boat. In addition to taking orders from Sheilagh and making sure she is happy with my “decisions,” I’m responsible for a few things such as going topside in the middle of the night to run down any noise that Sheilagh can’t explain. My other duties are to scratch her back when it itches (nearly every morning), lift heavy loads, compliment her on all the work she does, and attempt to get her to slow down and relax. Beyond that I do very little in comparison to what Sheilagh does; so I’d rather not go into those items.

Crewpersons don't come better looking than this

This is a tribute to my gorgeous and wonderful wife of 39+ years, who has gone beyond the marriage vows to support me throughout my life and particularly with regard to this cruising experiment. It is amazing to me that she has been able to put up with me on a 24/7 basis, after years of marriage where my traveling job kept us apart during a large part of each week. She has coped remarkably with her own fears, my hard-to-handle personality on a constant basis, and the gaps of time and distance from her children and grandchildren. They don’t make crew better than Sheilagh.

Eight reasons for returning to the CLOD life (Cruisers Living On Dirt)






More later . . .

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

April 3rd (2009) – Mazatlan – Jim’s Blog #86

Current Location – Mazatlan – Lat: 23°16.12’ N / Long: 106°27.85’ W

I thought this might catch your eye. This is one of the crocodiles we encountered on our jungle cruise in San Blas. The rest of the pictures that follow were taken on that cruise


As of my last blog, we were anchored in Matanchén Bay, which is about 3 miles by bus from San Blas. We prefer to be anchored in the estuary next to the town, but it was low tide when we arrived in the area, and we didn’t want to try entering what can be a tricky and shallow entrance to the estuary. The next morning we moved into the estuary at high tide and never saw a depth of less than 11’, giving 5’ of clearance under our keel. A new marina has been set up in the estuary, and we were strongly encouraged to stay there by the management, but we elected to stay anchored and save our marina fees for the months of April and May in Mazatlan. It also meant our boat changed direction in the estuary four times a day, letting us know when the tide was going out or coming in.

Black Vulture

We made our usual trip into town for internet and lunch, but stayed inside the boat with screens covering all hatches and ports when it began to get dark. This whole area is noted for high insect activity, particularly no-see-ums, which are so small they can get through most metallic screens. We have “no-see-um-fabric” that Sheilagh created into screens for the overhead hatches, and we spray our metallic port screens with bug spray to deter these small bugs from slipping through the mesh. At least we hoped they’d take a whiff and decide to stay away, and it seemed to work.

Snowy Egret

The only bug problem we had was a squadron of them that appeared early the next morning and attacked Sheilagh as she was out swabbing the deck. I was wise enough to remain inside the boat listening to weather predictions on the single-sideband radio for our next leg north. Sheilagh was so intent in her work that it was awhile before she realized she was being bitten and ended up with dozens of bug bites on her back and an itch all over her back that wouldn’t quit. She took some Benadryl internally and some cortisone externally, but it was my careful scratching of her back that seemed to feel best to her. It’s amazing the things I do to endear myself to her and earn her eternal thanks.

Iguana

It was a year ago that I first tried surfing with my kayak at San Blas, but now I had a year of experience to help me challenge the waves that conquered me last year. I hopped in the kayak the next day and paddled it out through the entrance to the estuary and around the point to the beach east of the entrance. I waited for just the right wave, paddled furiously to be up-to-speed when it hit, used my new moves to stay ahead of the wave, and promptly got rolled so violently that I lost the kayak and watched it get pushed to shore. I had to swim a ways with my paddle in my hand to catch up to it. The kayak was so completely filled with water that I had difficulty turning it over to empty it. I tried a number of other assaults on the waves with the same results; so I retired the kayak for the day and turned to body surfing. Those memorable words returned to me “If at first you don’t succeed, try harder; if you still can’t succeed, give up – there’s no sense being a damned fool!”

Red-faced Cormorant

That night we watched an old Alfred Hitchcock movie, “The Jamaica Inn,” in which Maureen O’Hara was introduced to the movie-going public for the first time. It was one of the movies we have on an Alfred Hitchcock DVD collection, and Maureen O’Hara was not only gorgeous, but a good actor as well. The next day we were listening to some classical music on Sirius Radio and heard the theme song that Hitchcock used on his TV series. The name of the song is “Funeral March for a Marionette,” which was a subtlety of his sound track that I had never been aware of. You may remember that he constantly complained in that series that he was at the mercy of the advertisers every time he had to take a commercial break. Viewed in the light of the music, he might have been implying that, although he was the director, he was just a puppet, marching sadly along in step with what others were dictating. It is interesting that it was also a “funeral march.”

Green Heron

Monday we took the jungle cruise with Andre and Martine of “Coup de Soleil,” our neighbors anchored in the estuary with us. This was a repeat of the Jungle cruise that we had taken the year before, but this time we specified that we wanted to include a visit to the crocodile farm. We saw a number of smaller crocodiles along the way, but the farm itself was the highlight of the trip. There we found various large outdoor cages, each with a pond and two very large crocodiles taking life easy together. Apparently they were doing their jobs because there was one cage with dozens of small crocodiles crawling on top of one another as they “played in the back yard.” We didn’t see any actual copulation taking place, which would have been something to see based on the size of those crocodiles.

Ibis

On Wednesday we motor-sailed the 130 miles from San Blas to Mazatlan, arriving at 9AM, exactly 24 hours after leaving San Blas. As we started out from San Blas the wind was light, but within a couple of hours it had gradually increased to 15 knots with white caps on the surface. The boat began hobby-horsing over the higher and higher swells, and we jumped down below to close up all the ports and hatches to keep the boat dry inside.

Then I realized we had left some loose items on the bow that needed to be tied down or brought aft. I worked my way forward against the spray and had to hold on tight as the bow pitched up about 5’ high on the crest of the swells and then dropped about 10’ into the trough immediately behind it. It’s almost a sleight-of-hand trick to keep one hand securely grasping some part of the boat while tying things down with the other.

Tortoises

While I was up above, Sheilagh tucked hand towels in the cabinet with the plastic glasses that invariably want to jump out at us when we open the cabinet later. She also insulated the liquor cabinet with a blanket to keep the clanking down and laid the salt and pepper shakers in a bowl in the cabinet to keep them from spilling everywhere. Everything loose in the galley went into the sink to keep them from being launched across the boat.

Another crocodile - the jaws are left open to allow small animals or fish (when underwater) to enter. An automatic sensory alarm causes the jaw to close instantly when the prey enters the mouth.

As the day progressed we zigzagged up the course a bit to get the sails drawing just off the wind to increase our speed. It was a tossup as to whether we were actually increasing our overall speed to Mazatlan with this process, since the increase in speed is offset by an increase in distance as one deviates from the course directly to the destination. However, the ride was easier on the boat and on us, when we were actually doing some sailing. Another boat, “Coup de Soleil,” with Andre and Martine aboard (Canadian cruisers whom we had just met on the jungle trip), was also making the trip north at the same time. Their boat is a bit shorter, which limits their speed to something less than ours, just as we naturally go slower than nearly any boat longer than ours (a physics limitation). We kept in touch during the trip north and ended up about three hours ahead of them by the end of the trip.

A closeup of the jaws indicates no apparent throat - just a small cave that small game and fish can use as shelter.

As twilight descended on us that day the sky was clear with clouds only on the distant horizon. As it got darker, a sliver of moon created an amazing amount of light all around, particularly because we were miles from any shore lights. Near midnight we finally ran under the threatening cloud bank to the north and found that the clouds were harmless leftovers from the Pineapple Express during the day. However, the moon was completely blocked out and the only visible light sources were glows from small towns along the coast or the red or green running lights of about four boats that seemed to be heading in our same direction. Eventually the passenger liner, the Sapphire Princess, emerged from the dark with every light blazing, also headed to Mazatlan. Its speed slowed down to our speed as it dawdled its way into Mazatlan, waiting for daybreak to enter the harbor and tie up.

One of the crocodile progenitors resting up in the crocodile farm - tough life but someone's got to do it

We got in just as the fuel dock and marina opened at 9AM, which had been our plan; so we quickly got the tanks filled with diesel, had a slip assigned to us, and squeezed between another sailboat and the dock to tie down. The first order of business for me was to catch up on the sleep I had missed most of the night. Sheilagh gathered up a change of clothing and went to the marina shower to indulge in unlimited hot water running over her body. The rest of that day we “hunkered down,” as Sheilagh likes to say, and got access to six English-speaking TV channels from the local cable for the marina. Nothing like turning into a vegetable in front of the TV after seeing no TV for over three months!

The next day was spent cleaning every inch of the boat with fresh water from the dock and hosing down equipment that had been exposed to salt water for the last several months. Sheilagh did a lot of this work because my contribution to cleaning is not as thorough as she would like. I caught up on the internet and then took apart the navigation station to get to the back side of the radar to see if a critical wire might be loose – nothing found. Then it was up the mast to check on the radar connection on the scanner – still no loose wires that I could see. Since the radar manual strongly suggests that only trained service technicians go any further into troubleshooting than checking for loose wires (due to the possibility for receiving life-ending shocks from energy stored in capacitors), I was at the end of what I could do there. I sent off an email describing the problem to the Valiant discussion group, where nearly every problem ever encountered on a Valiant (or her equipment) has been experienced and solved by another Valiant owner. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get a response.

We also conducted a shopping trip to the local Mega store for essential supplies, keeping in mind that we will want to use up everything in the refrigerator and freezer before we leave for California on the 13th of April. I also scheduled to have the boat pulled out of the water to have the bottom painted with growth-defying bottom paint in mid May, before the trip to San Diego on the first of June. I will be living on the boat while it is “on the hard” in the boatyard for about five days as the painting is being done. Nothing better for the physique than having to climb a 12’ ladder to get into and out of the boat for anything I will want to do. That and smelling bottom paint for five days!

After that we found it necessary to grab a good book, put on swimming suits, and loll by one of the two swimming pools for the rest of the afternoon. A waiter immediately came over to take our Margarita order, and we let the cares of the world drain from our bodies for the time being. When we turned down a second order of Margaritas, the waiter had the practiced answer of “you aren’t driving are you?”

That night we saw the latest James Bond movie displayed on a large white square of fabric tied to two of the straighter palm trees. The hotel staff had set out the swimming pool lounge chairs all around the grounds in front of the screen, and there was quite a crowd. The couple to my right was attempting to make out during the show, but their size precluded the use of a single lounge chair. It was an interesting sidelight to note how many different ways two people can overcome the difficulty of connecting across two lounge chairs. No, I wasn’t exactly staying focused on the movie.

More later . . .