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 . . .