Monthly Archives: March 2018

Everything Here Will Kill You

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Hello, readers! We’re still in the Sea of Cortez, sometimes hunkered down against weather, sometimes snorkeling in clear waters, sometimes hiking through rough and tumble arroyos and scrambling over rocks. What we aren’t doing lately is updating our position page. It’s not that we are going dark on you, at least not by choice. It’s that our illustrious Iridium Go, the unit we pondered over for months before making a decision, the unit that has given us updated weather while at sea, has allowed us to post to Facebook while off grid, that dependable unit, has gone bad on us. One day it worked fine and I posted an update to Facebook. The next day it began an ‘Initializing’ loop and refused to connect to the satellites. The magnitude of our irritation cannot be overstated here.

Cordón Cactus

This is a significant piece of communications equipment for us and while we should be grateful this didn’t happen in the middle of the fricking Pacific Ocean, its steadying presence keeping families apprised of our position, the ability to send them emails, and the ability of family to contact us if necessary is sorely missed. There is no cellular service in the Sea of Cortez unless you are close to a population center. The population centers are few and far between. If there is anything we have learned in our travels here so far, it’s that most people who live in this region live a very remote life. Back home you have to travel pretty far to be ‘remote’. Here, it’s a matter of a day of sailboat traveling. It’s easy to minimize this fact when you are looking at a map, or when you are talking to people who come here on their boats but hang out, really, at the population centers like La Paz or Mazatlan.

We’ve been making way toward Loreto, where we know we can get cellular service, so we can work with customer service on this Iridium Go! issue. Meanwhile, since we have no way except VHF radio to contact the outside world, we’ve been grateful to notice other boats here and there and to stay in VHF contact with some of them. At least we know that in an emergency, we could get help if necessary. This is not an unimportant point since everything in this environment is made to kill or maim, if not through active aggression, then through passive resistance to being touched or encountered. You have to be careful out here. All the time and energy spent stocking our medical cabinet was well spent.
We like to hike the arroyos, scrambling over rocks, doing small amounts of chimney climbing, giving our old bodies more of a workout than they are accustomed to.

Mike views the cactus with the awe it deserves. And keeps his distance.

During one of these forays into the hot desert Mike found an interesting spider web, a dessicated lizard caught in its sticky web. He began poking the web with a stick, hoping the spider would come out. In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Oh great, this is a spider that is big enough to eat a lizard, we’re out here completely alone and my husband is poking the thing with a stick to make it come out and defend its territory.’. I compelled him to stop. I’ve seen the Harry Potter movies. I know how big spiders can get. We moved on.

The rocks here are magnificent. I love them almost as much as I do the ones in our Four Corners area of the desert southwest of the United States. But they will maim you and if you are not careful worse things could happen. Actually, even when you are careful things happen. That’s why they call them ‘accidents’. On another one of our scrambles up an arroyo my knee punished me severely for pushing off a rock to reach another rock. It wasn’t that I was doing anything wrong. I had apparently just done too much of a good thing and it decided enough was enough.

One mile up the canyon, I felt a disconcerting pulling sensation which immediately, in my brain, translated to, “Shit! This is going to hurt later.”. The word ‘later’ here means in about 60 seconds, when it truly registered that I had hurt myself in the middle of a hot pile of rocks. Make that ‘in the middle of nowhere’. Calling for help would not have been an option. Why? Because the damned Iridium Go! was useless, bringing home to me just how vulnerable we were out there in the desert. The mind began to wander towards Mike having to leave me there and go get help, helicopters having to land in the Outback to transport me to the nearest medical facility, tears running down my leathered cheeks. Thank goodness we bought that DAN Diver’s Network emergency evacuation service. I told my mind to shut the hell up and,  blessedly fortunate that I could technically still walk, ‘spider monkeyed’ down that arroyo on all fours mostly and back to the boat. I’ve given birth to a 10 pound baby. This was nothing to me.

For the record, this right knee has been hurt many times. By the time you are our age, you’ve collected a number of injuries over the years and some of them create weakness in a body part. This right knee has to be babied a bit and I forget that in the joy of rock scrambling, which makes me feel really alive. So it’s very unlikely I’m going to give that up completely. It’s no good telling me to be careful. Just ask my mother.

Can you blame us for wanting this view?

This is such a hostile environment. You know, we’re from the Pacific Northwest. Barring an encounter with a disgruntled bear or cougar (rare as rare) nothing there is going to hurt you much. You can climb up rocks and scurry down paths without being cautious about where you put your feet, your hands, etc. Fortunately, my parents are both from Texas and growing up they instilled in us that you don’t put hands anywhere in the wilderness before checking first. In this desert, this is very good advice. Due to their excellent tutelage, and the solid memory of my mother grabbing my sister’s hand and running screaming down the hill away from a rattlesnake sunning on a stump, I am constantly on the lookout for snakes, but I’ve never so much as heard one here. Yet. I carry my snakebite kit. Perhaps they know this and move on. Their venom would find no purchase in us. I’ve seen the original  ” True Grit”, starring John Wayne. I know what to do. A whole generation of movie goers knows what to do.

Snakes are one thing, but even things that are not poisonous are sharp and pokey. From the tiniest little grass-like plant to the scrubby shrubs, everything is protecting itself from something else. Hiking up a hill, it’s sometimes necessary to use a small shrub or tree to stabilize yourself. Look first, touch second here. Otherwise, you are likely to get a nasty surprise.

Beautiful flower. Don’t touch.

Even the fish have spines and stingers. Shuffling my feet through the shallows, I’m grateful for my time as a child at the beach at the Gulf of Mexico where I learned about stingrays. We don’t have those in the Salish Sea. You can walk a mudflat without worrying about anything worse than hypothermia.

Here we’ve seen all kinds of rays, all of them with stingers we never want to encounter. (I understand my snakebite kit is useful for stingray stings as well, but I don’t want to test that.) We shuffle through the sea with abandon. The sea here is glorious, full of life and with water warm enough that you can encounter creatures previously enjoyed only through the efforts of Jacques Cousteau. Just don’t touch anything if you don’t know what it is. Snorkeling on Isla Espiritu Santo we saw 5 Moray Eels in one day. The next day it was two octopi, plus eels. It was the best snorkeling ever. Mike got ink-squirted by an octopus. He’s the ‘chosen one’.

Thanks to Curt Brownlow on S/V Slow Motion for taking this photo of us in the blistering sun. Why yes, I actually do carry this parasol with me on hikes. The sun will kill you, too.

Anyhoo, as I write this up we’re sitting pretty in Puerto Escondido with the gang all here. Kevin Baerg on S/V Blue, whom we haven’t seen since Thanksgiving back in San Diego, is here. Hurrah! His mate Cressie will be back on Monday and we can’t wait to see her. Curt and Lynn Brownlow on S/V Slow Motion are here. They tried to escape us but we keep finding them. The folks on S/V Passport and S/V Grey Goose are both here. Nice to see them, too. Just when I think I can’t go another day without being in touch with something or somebody familiar, we enter a port and find a ready group of good friends. What a blessing that is. I say to Mike it’s like being in college without the threat of school failure if you don’t spend more time studying. We’re so glad to be here.

Puerto Escondido will be seeing a lot of Galapagos. We love it here. There is just enough ‘civilization’ here with the nice little tienda selling gringo stuff from Costco, plus some fresh fruits and vegetables; the wonderful pizza restaurant up top, the helpful staff at the marina, where you can rent a car for 40$ a day all included (except gas). Loreto is just 14 miles down the road. The islands are close enough to touch. The water at the dock is potable and the pumpouts are free. It’s like living in a medieval fortress with the one narrow entry, surrounded by tall mountains and the sea. It’s absolutely the best place we’ve been so far. I think we’ll stay awhile.

Mike considers: Will this sea cave eat us up? Or will it play nice? It was a nice cave, but we didn’t tempt fate.

 

Temporary Holding Tank Fix

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The dreaded holding tank. Everyone who cruises and has a traditional style head and holding tank will eventually need to ‘deal’ with maintaining this system. Unfortunately for us, our time was this week. We had already given Marina Cortez notice we would be leaving, twice, and so, naturally, we came up against a repair that meant we needed to stay a few more days. They probably think we’re a little nuts up there in the office.

A few days ago Mike and I tackled a job we’ve been putting off: we replaced the hose that goes from the holding tank to the aft head. While we were doing that job I noticed some nasty looking liquid in the storage compartment in front of the tank. Yes, the tank was leaking. From the bottom. The amount of sighing this caused cannot be overstated. In order to reach the leak, we’d have to remove the tank. That meant taking stuff apart. That meant the boat was about to get messy again.

We are really lucky aboard Galapagos because our tank is pretty accessible. It’s under the midship berth. You can lift a heavy wooden cover to access it. Getting the tank out requires a bit more disassembly, but it’s not nearly as hard as it would be in our friend’s Tayana 37.  Theirs is under the engine. Enough said. We’re grateful for small things like this.

The crack is located to the right of Mike’s arm, down underneath.

After the marina’s pumpout service came by, we used this nifty little tool to get the rest of the liquids out of the tank. Mike uses this to change the oil in the engine. Makes getting the oil out, or the black water out, pretty easy. By this time, there wasn’t much in the tank. 

After getting the tank free from it’s home, we saw that, indeed, the tank was actually cracked right by the seam. We were hoping that a seam had given way, but it was a real doozy of a crack. Honestly we can’t figure out how this happened. But whatever, it was leaking like nobody’s business. I whipped out the bleach water mighty fast.

The tank is plastic; believed to be made of polyethylene. This is a substance that resists fixing unless you have exactly the right stuff. We didn’t. We weren’t even exactly sure that the tank is made from this stuff. It could be ‘poly’ anything. But we did know that given the right materials, we should be able to heat weld a fix to the tank. But how to go about getting the right materials here in Mexico? We started with putting out our need on the morning cruiser’s net on the radio. We got nothing there. Moving on, Mike’s research brought up a plastic supply place within walking distance. I put on my Teva’s and we went off into the bright Mexican sun, still feeling confident we could get this fixed. We enjoy the feeling of confidence that comes with ignorance.

The offending crack.

Unfortunately, we speak so little Spanish that we have to use photos and a lot of sign language and Google Translate (which is frequently wrong, by the way) to get by. The young man behind the counter at the plastic supply was having none of it. I pointed to my photo of the tank. He shook his head no and looked straight ahead. Mike brought out the plastic welding rods he did have already (wrong stuff, right shape) and the lad shook his head vigorously ‘no’ again. We showed him more stuff. Frankly, he just wasn’t interested in helping us. We decided to look around the store and see what jumped off the shelf at us. We could smell plastic resin. They make plastic stuff there. Surely…

Mike found some small trays that looked and felt like the exact stuff our tank was made of. We bought two for 85 Pesos, about $4.50. Our hopes soared as we walked back to the marina, still believing in fairies.

I do not understand this face. But these are the trays. Pretty nice trays, too.

Back at Galapagos Mike cut strips of plastic off the trays and set to work. Using the multitool (part of our Ryobi rechargeable tool sets that we cannot live without) he ground out the crack back to clean plastic, then used the sander to sand the surface with heavy grit, then cleaned the surface with acetone.  He got out the butane torch and began laying the plastic into the groove. It looked good. The stuff melted easily and flowed into the crack. We thought we’d hit paydirt.

We were wrong. As the plastic melted some of it began to bubble and when those popped they left pinholes. In the end, the pinholes leaked. Back to the drawing board.

That’s a butane torch.

Well, not exactly that fast. We did a lot of other things like add more material, remelt and try to smooth the existing material, and use the heat gun, which actually worked pretty well. But the weld was not a good one and the tank still leaked. We didn’t know if we had the wrong temperature, or the wrong materials, or what. We’d had to peel a thick layer of rubber off the side of the tank and the plastic underneath was discolored. Mike thought perhaps the plastic was somehow contaminated.  But whatever the problem was, it was wrong. And, by the way, this is why there are professionals who know about this kind of stuff and do it for a living. Most places.

Another cruiser came over and took a look and lent us his wood plane. Mike used that to shave off thin strips of material off the corner of the tank so that we could use the exact same material the tank was made from and try again. I routed out the old material, exposing the area of the crack again. Oddly, some of the stuff we’d just done had welded great. But not good enough to keep those pinholes from leaking.

We laid the small strips of tank material in the groove and commenced with the heat. It melted well, seemed to adhere well, and there was less bubbling. I thought we were onto something. Alas.

Still another cruiser came by and offered us some blue plastic stuff he used to repair his poly…something tank 10 years ago. It was still holding after all that time. He suggested a propane torch, which was what he used. With nothing to lose but our sanity, we sanded and cleaned the surface again with acetone. Because of the wind, the torch had trouble staying lit. But Mike finally got the stuff to melt and the surface of the tank to melt enough to hold it. After letting it firm up he tested it and the strip of blue plastic peeled right off. Things were not looking good. I decided it was time to try to find a professional. At this point I was ready to pay someone else to get frustrated.

We used the propane torch on this stuff. Honestly we thought this would work. Everything went all melty. It peeled right off.

We contacted La Paz Cruiser’s Supply and got a phone number of a guy who welded plastics. It was disconnected. Then I contacted a long time resident of La Paz who has his finger on the pulse of boat works around here and had given us a tour of all the marinas and boat yards. He used to own a yacht management service and is a marine surveyor. He said there were no plastics welders in La Paz. He should know. He said we might have to get a fiberglass tank built to spec or we could probably order a new tank through Lopez Marine for $$$. To me that sounded like a lot of money, but mostly a lot of time, and also our tank should be reparable with the right materials and know-how.  He also suggested a special repair kit for plastic tanks sold by Autozone. Leaving Mike to perseverate over the tank, I Ubered to Autozone, only to read the back of the package where it says, ‘Not to be used on Polyethylene or …’.   Back to square one.

This is the stuff. A different brand than what we used before, but equally good.

I texted Mike and told him it was a ‘no go’ in terms of the plastic repair kit. He decided to try one more thing. This is the ‘one more thing’ that will get us off the dock on Saturday for however long it holds up; the ‘one more thing’ that will buy us time until we can find someone who can do an appropriate repair.  And that one more thing is this wonderful Pro Flex All Weather Water Proof Butyl Roof Repair tape we keep on board. This is the stuff we got to replace the sealing around the little rectangular ports on our hull above the waterline. It has worked so well that we keep it on board for other possible uses. And now we found one.

When I returned to the boat the tank was standing up on the dock, full of water and not leaking. The rubber was holding the leak back. I reinforced Mike’s taping with a couple more strips of this magic tape and now we’re good to go, as long as this holds. We have no idea how long that will be. I mean it could last as long as next week, or as long as 5 years.  But however long it is is better than sitting here on the dock right now. We can easily keep an eye on this since now we know exactly where the leak is.

Now that the tank is back in place we’ll be getting a can of that expanding foam and putting a bead of that under the leading edge of the tank. We believe there is not enough support for the tank in this location and that led to the eventual cracking. There is plenty of room for the foam to expand without causing a problem.

All taped up and ready to rumble again.

One of the good things that came out of this little setback was that we were able to get a good look inside our tank. Remember that fun science experiment we did with the Zaal No Flex Digestor; the one where we demonstrated what a good job it does at dissolving solid waste and toilet paper? Those results held true. What could have been a nasty, stinky job was really not bad at all. When we opened up the hose connections we could see into the tank and there was zero buildup inside. Much to people’s dismay, we actually do put about half of the toilet paper we use into the holding tank. So let me state this again: we had zero buildup in the tank, and the aroma was nothing like you’d expect. No gag reflexes were engaged.  I’m sticking with my Zaal NoFlex Digestor and the toilet paper is going to continue to go into the tank.

And now we are hoping to leave La Paz on Saturday to go to the islands and really begin seeing the Sea of Cortez. Shh. Don’t tell the gods of cruising. We don’t like to tempt them openly. Nothing to look at here….nothing at all.

Before we sign off, someone is bound to bring up getting a composting head. We’re not ready to do that at this point. We’d have to order it and wait around for it. Then that’s another boat project. We’d rather be cruising. In the future, if this tank issue can’t be resolved, then maybe. But it’s been a bulletproof system until now. It’s a good installation that has lasted since the 1980’s. If we can fix what we have, we’ll keep it.

S/V Galapagos, out.

La Paz Ramblings

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We’re in La Paz! The last time we were here was 6 years ago on our 30th wedding anniversary. We came down to check out the place and meet with some cruisers we’d met by following their blog. We had a wild and crazy time what with driving down arroyos to get to the beach and one-legged juggling clowns. We looked with longing upon Isla Espíritu Santo. Now here we are ready to do the islands in our own boat!

One of my favorite statues on the malecon.

When we pulled into La Paz a week ago our intention was to stay 3-4 days. We were finally in the Sea of Cortez and we didn’t want to waste no stinking time in town! We figured a few days would be enough time to provision, get propane, do laundry, do a couple of minor boat maintenance things like change the oil, and rest up before heading out to the islands.  What a joke. Does anyone actually stay only 3-4 days in La Paz?

Escorted by a friendly local dolphin, we found a place to anchor just across the channel from the entrance to Marina De La Paz. Cruisers who are anchored out can pull up to their dinghy dock and leave their dinghy, dump their trash, and take on water in jerry cans for 20 Pesos/day. It’s a great deal. By the way, here’s another update to your cruising guide: There is no fuel dock at Marina de La Paz anymore and there hasn’t been for several years. Likewise there is no guest dock where you can tie up for a few hours. There are three places to get diesel in La Paz and they all tack on a 12% surcharge just because they can. I guess it’s the price you pay to have the convenience of pulling up to a dock rather than lugging jerry cans from the Pemex station. Diesel is round about 4$/gallon here. Plus your surcharge for being on a boat.

Anyhoo,  we were just fine at anchor, even though the winds howled away every afternoon and the currents run ridiculously strong through the anchorage. I think our GPS registered 4 knots running under our keel at one point. Our Mantus anchor, which frankly deserves her own name she’s so great, holds us fast. We were on task to get our chores done and get out of La Paz.

But then… then Mike had wanted to equalize his batteries, so that meant we needed to be hooked up to a dock with electricity. After checking out the tight conditions in Marina de La Paz, we decided on Marina Cortez, right next door. They have nice wide fairways and slips that relieve my stress about getting in and out of the place, especially with the big winds and currents here. Plus, Lynn and Curt Brownlow on S/V Slow Motion were there and we thought it would be nice to know someone to hang with.  We pulled into Marina Cortez and thought we’d stay 3 days. But very quickly that turned into a week because the price was right. (In fact, it was considerably lower than the price the marina office wrote down on a slip of paper the day before when we were checking the place out. Why? I don’t know. ) So we were supposed to leave on March 12, but guess what’s coming on that day? Another good strong norther. Do we want to leave the marina and go anchor out in winds gusting to 25 knots? We do decidedly not. So now we’re staying until Wednesday. I’ll believe we are leaving the marina when we pull out of the slip. We’re kind of enjoying it right now.

WIDE slips and a straight shot into the slip. My favorite kind of marina.

Besides, we have lycra body suits to order. Yes, this is going to be fun. We’d read that there was a woman in La Paz who made ‘skin suits’ for people – basically lycra onesies for grownups- to protect them from sunburn and jelly fish stings during the heat of the summer. They are for swimming in the sea. We don’t like sunburn and would rather not be stung by jellyfish so this sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I’m not sure if I’d be seen in town wearing one of these outfits, but they sound dead comfortable. We’re going to go look at fabric on Monday.  I’m thinking something splashy and colorful that breaks up the field of vision a bit so I don’t look like a round smurf, or maybe a Weeble. Mike was going for basic black, but I think that’s too close to looking like a seal. Maybe grey and black, like a Great White shark? Or he could dress as a crayon, or maybe a tube of toothpaste.  I could talk myself out of this if I go on too long. But…jelly fish…ouch. I’m sure we’ll post the results of our quest, but don’t look for photos.

Can we talk about tipping? The kind that involves money? How does this work in Mexico? Today we found out, much to our chagrin, that the baggers in the grocery stores work only for tips. They don’t get paid any other way. What??? How would we have known that? We told some other cruisers and they didn’t know this either. Now we all feel terrible that we didn’t tip the bagger when we went to the store, and our friend now thinks he knows why the lady at the Chedraui was giving him the old stinkeye. Here’s the question I have though: how do the Mexican people tip? I want to tip like a Mexican. Not like a gringo. There is enough of a ‘gringo tax’ already in place without my adding to that. What about the guys who open the marina gate for me? Do I tip those guys? This seems like a culture that is set up to prevent you from doing your own work whenever possible, or at least make it easier to get someone else to do it for you,  because if you do your own work, then someone else can’t get paid for it. I get that, but I don’t know the boundaries and rules around that kind of way of doing things and I want to do it right. I want to do right by the folks who are giving me a service, and also do right by my fellow cruisers are are following in our wakes. Meanwhile I want to go back to the store and find the woman who bagged my groceries last time and tip her heftily with many apologies for being a stupid gringo.

Speaking of having people do things, I’ve never had our laundry done by anyone else until now. What I’ve been missing! Of course, it’s actually easier to have it done here than to do it yourself. See above paragraph. There are not that many laundromats. The laundromat in Marina de La Paz did not look great and when I went in to check it out there was a woman sitting around, appearing to be waiting to take people’s laundry off their hands. Am I going to go into that laundromat and do my own laundry right in front of her?  No I am not. I bet she has kids to feed.

Just look at that! Perfect.

At Marina Cortez you simply drop your laundry off at the office and a mysterious laundress comes and picks it up and returns it to you the following day,  expertly washed, pressed, and folded, all laid out beautifully in plastic bags to protect it. Honestly, I’ve never seen more beautiful laundry. I would have shaken that woman’s hand and congratulated her; the skill level was that good.  This was the Nordstrom of laundry. All of our daily worn clothing, rugs, sheets and towels were done for $27. If I lived here I would never do laundry again. I admire a job that well done.

We are addicted to the ice cream place down on the Malecon: La Fuente. We’ve been here in the marina for almost a week. In that time we’ve been to the ice cream place 3 times, and it wasn’t even my idea. I will take their Naranjita and Toasted Coconut any day and any time. Big chunks of roasted coconut in a creamy ice cream, and what amounts to a scoop of frozen freshly squeezed orange juice in a chunky cone. I don’t think you can even get stuff that good back home. But if you can, you are certainly going to pay more than 5$ for two cones.

I love how the Malecon is so well used in La Paz. There are always families out walking, young lovers grappling with each other, kids playing, people on roller blades…it’s the equivalent of the town square. Everyone here uses the Malecon with its beautiful statues and magnificent views of the bay. It’s a great place to go for a walk. Like maybe to La Fuente for ice cream.

Pretty nice view in the anchorage here.

La Paz has a thriving ‘cruising’ community, but many of the cruisers who live here have lived in the marinas for years. I don’t know how often they still go cruising, but I can see the draw to just move your boat here and be in the marina. Marina de La Paz has that Club Cruceros, a really nice little clubhouse with its large book and DVD library, coffee time in the mornings, card games, and the like. Marina Palmira has movie night in their gathering place by the pool. The cruiser’s net in the morning is informative and gets people connected with each other.  There’s a tight community waiting to welcome you. We can feel the draw, but we’ll be moving on. We have some cruising to do.

Today we met a young man who has a sailboat down at Foss Harbor Marina, our old stomping grounds. He’s planning to leave the dock next August and bring the boat down here with his girlfriend. They are here in La Paz checking out the place; on their reconnaissance trip like we were on 6 years ago.  Another Tacoma boat pulled in next to us in the marina yesterday. It’s such a small cruising world on this side of the country.

Tomorrow we’ll go to the fabric store and find our lycra for our swim suits. That will be fun. We have final provisioning to do as well. I finally found some La Croix for sale at the local big Chedraui. I wonder if they have restocked since we visited? Hmmm. Maybe another trip to that store. And definitely another couple of meals of delicious fish tacos.  Then it’s the wilds of the beautiful islands and we’ll be heading up to Puerto Escondido and Loreto. My sister and nephew are coming in the middle of April and we’re dead excited.

S/V Galapagos, out.

It’s possible the restaurants have something to do with our love of being in La Paz.