Author Archives: Michael

A Cunning Little Christmas

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We got an early Christmas present as we left Puerto Escondido on the winter solstice, December 21st. The solstice is one of our favorite days especially when we are in the Pacific Northwest. The days can only get longer from here on out. But because we left just before sunrise, we got to witness a beautiful sight during this Mexican solstice. Not only was Venus huge and gorgeous in the pre dawn sky, Jupiter and Mercury were in conjunction. That means they were at their closest point to one another from our earth bound perspective.

MercuryVenusJupiter 12-20-2018 18-12-55

Venus, top right, has been spectacular the last few mornings, In real life she looks like a small moon. Stately Jupiter is the brighter of the two planets just above the mountains of Isla Danzante. And little Mercury is just to Jupiter’s left

Christmas is a little bittersweet aboard Galapagos this year. We are far away from the people we love. Our kids aren’t even on the same continents; Claire and Daniel are in Ecuador. Andrew and Jill are in Paris. The Boyte-Whites are scattered across the globe; a small, brave, curious little tribe separated by great distances but bound close to one another by an even greater love.

Our larger family; Melissa’s mother and sisters in Washington and my own mother and sisters in Tennessee anchor us to Christmases past. In ways large and small, they made us who we are. They gave us the confidence to take chances, risk failure and know that we are loved regardless of the outcome. When I watch Melissa on the beach, picking up rocks and pocketing shells, I can see the young girl that both exasperated and made her parents smile. I suspect a similarly inclined young boy, haunting the sloughs and ponds of West Tennessee still lurks in an older, grayer me.

DriedStarfish

Melissa found a perfect little dried starfish on the beach at Mangle Solo.

It makes me smile to know that in whatever time zone you may find us, we will celebrate the day with traditions that we created when we were all together. French donuts and mimosas will surely be on hand.

Mimosas

Mimosas and French Breakfast Donuts in the morning have been a Christmas staple for years. Andrew and Jill will be making those in their little Paris apartment this year.

 

christmascave

Claire and Andrew came up with the idea of a Christmas cave some years back.

 

Skippy

And some years we would have a good old fashioned fake tree. Skippy approves.

 

Aboard Galapagos traditions like a Christmas tree require local modifications.

ChollaTree

We found some dried out cholla cactus and Melissa got crafty all over it. These are all ornaments brought from home.

Andrew and Jill, aka The WanderBlobs, bought the Charlie Browniest Christmas tree Paris had to offer.

 

So, wherever in the world you find yourself this Christmas and however far flung your family may be, Galapagos and her crew hope it is filled with much happiness.

Our Insatiable Lust (for Power)

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Now that the title of this post has your full and undivided attention, I’ll apologize in advance for the bait and switch. No bodices will be ripped in this post but there may be some sighing, heaving and even a swoon or two.

As Michael manfully heaved the 8D battery from the swooning bosom of Galapagos, Melissa sighed womanfully.

As reported in our last post, The seven year old engine battery, a 150 pounder that came with the boat died just a day after we launched Galapagos from the San Carlos Marina. We weren’t terribly surprised by it’s passing; we had gotten long and reliable service from this battery. The only thing I dreaded was pulling it out of the engine room and then getting it off the boat.

But like many dreaded tasks, the reality was only a little dreadful. Once it was out of the engine room, Curt Brownlow of sv Slow Motion helped me get the beast up the companionway and onto the dock at Marina Real. Other than the loss of a pair of pants to battery acid (sorry Curt), it was a relatively painless procedure.

Curt and Michael hurking the old start battery off the boat. Thanks, Lynn Brownlow for the photo.

With that job out of the way, the next step was to buy a new battery. This battery is used to start the engine but is also used by our Lofrans Falkon windlass, two really important jobs. That windlass can pull up to 200 amps and runs for a few minutes.

With the recently deceased big battery in the back of our minivan, I ventured out once more into the wilds of Guaymas. We have been very grateful to have a car here in Mexico as we prepare the boat for launching and this is but one of many reasons.

BatteryIntoCar

Michael and Curt wrestle the old battery into the car.

I already knew that I wasn’t going to put another huge 8D back in. The effort of replacing such heavy piece of equipment is a risk I just don’t need to take. Instead, three smaller, Group 27 sized batteries take up the same room and can be wired in parallel to provide nearly the same capacity as the one big battery.

Batteries2 12-17-2018 11-12-11

Three Group 27 batteries fit perfectly in the old battery box that the old 8D battery sat in. Just one of these batteries would be more than enough to start the engine but the windlass has its own insatiable lust for power and we rely on ours like a third crew member.

You can buy just about any kind of battery you want in Mexico as long as it is an LTH. The brand has been around forever in Mexico and the rest of Latin America and has a pretty good reputation. At this point, I was in no position to be too choosy about brands anyway but I was able to find three marine deepcycle batteries that hopefully will give good service. The price of the three batteries was about $250 US and that included the new cables to jumper the batteries together. The cables were made on the spot by a little old man with a hammer and cable crimper on the floor of the parts store.

Installation of the our new batteries was a breeze; light as feather at about 55 pounds a piece. With care and maintenance we should get four or five good years of service.

And how do you take good care of batteries? Proper charging is one important step and in the past we have used our solar panels and the 110 amp Balmar Alternator to handle all of our charging needs. But using the engine to keep the batteries topped up presents some problems. If we are in an anchorage for more than two days, we have to run the engine just to charge the batteries and diesels like to work harder than that.

And so it seemed that all the cool kids in our little cruiser community, are now carrying a small generator on the boat. Desperately wanting to be cool, we bought an awesome little generator from Costco when we were in Tacoma.

Happy Little Trees make this Generator Environmentally friendly. Sort of.

With this little guy we can run the shore power electrical battery charger, for hours at a time using very little fuel. And that is one of two new solar panels we brought down to replace the flexible panels that failed within a year.

It also provides AC power to allow us to run a troubling array of electrical appliances. I think we could write a picture book titled If You Give a Boat a Generator

ACAppliances 12-17-2018 11-10-33

The generator even  allows us run our hot water heater  instead of using the engine to heat water.  While we have used the crockpot on our small inverter with great success, We would never have been able to use the new to us Insta-Pot. Cressie of S/V Blue gave it to Melissa before they headed home for Christmas. Thanks Cressie! And my editor would like to emphatically point out that she has NEVER! used a hairdryer away from the dock and that the above pictured hairdryer was hidden way in a cabinet that I had to dig furiously into find for this clearly staged and possibly sexist photo.

So with our new batteries, new generator and two new solar panels, will our our lust for power finally be sated? Probably not. But as Melissa will readily attest, I worry over our batteries more than just about anything else. Hopefully I can worry about them a little less now.

The Trouble with Trees

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When last we left you, dear reader, Melissa and I were filling up a thirty yard dumpster with all manner of greenery.  Laurels, garden plants that got too big for their britches, and a seemingly unending supply of fir branches, fir cones, fir needles and other fir inspired detritus.

Our nemesis, the 30 yard dumpster

In short, we have a firry yard. Before this week, we had 37 fir trees, two big maples and one scruffy looking cedar tree.  These are all big trees, most are a couple of feet in diameter and the biggest are almost four feet in diameter and perhaps 150 feet tall.

As we prepare the house for rent this fall, one of the biggest, prettiest trees needed to be addressed. With its two crowns, we had been warned that this could be a weak area and might be a danger.  It is very close to our house, near the kitchen and we have worried that one day a winter storm will bring part of it down onto the roof.  That has already happened once, with a branch crashing into our kitchen, smashing a large picture window.

I should add that we struggled mightily with taking out this tree.  It has been standing guard over our house for the last 54 years and in the summer it offers wonderful shade. While I am glad to be rid of the mess that it makes on our roof and the risk that it poses to our house, killing something this old and beautiful is not to be taken lightly.

We haven’t counted the rings yet but we are guessing about 150 years old.

Melissa solicited a number of tree services to take out this big tree plus two or three smaller trees that would give us more light in the yard.  We knew pretty quickly who we wanted to work on our property.  John Sperry is just starting out with his own company, Arbor Services Northwest, after working for years for other tree companies.  Together with his partner, Naomi, they put together an affordable bid.  Perhaps more importantly, they gave both Melissa and myself a sense that they cared about the trees and for the safety of our house and themselves.

John taking down a small, scraggly fir.

In addition to the large tree in the back,  we had John and his team take out four smaller firs and a cedar tree in the front yard.  These trees were not huge but they shaded the yard quite a bit and a few near the road  had grown too close to the fence.  John also limbed up a few trees including our big maple.

This beautiful maple had branches that nearly touched the ground. John gave it a trim.

The big fir, almost four feet in diameter was a challenge.  To tackle that tree, John brought in a friend, Luiz, who had bigger saws and more experience bringing down such large trees.  Luiz also brought a huge chipper to help with the cleanup.  A tree this size creates a lot debris.

Luiz worikng his way up the tree

Just another day on the job for Luiz. This tree had a double crown which gave it really big canopy. Sometimes these crowns are weak and can break off in a storm.

While bringing down big trees is interesting and exciting,  cleaning up the debris, moving plants and taking down fences is just as important and a lot of work.  Melissa and I were out in the yard every day, moving things along as best we could. I think we are both constitutionally incapable of not pitching in when there is work to be done.

Michael saying goodbye to the big fir.

Melissa surveys the carnage.

As you may have noticed, that is a lot of wood.  How did we get rid of it you ask? While it would be lovely to imagine these trees being used as lumber for our mountain cabin, the reality is that you just can’t bring down a whole tree this close to our house, near power lines and all the other structures in an old neighborhood. So, the trees were brought down in sections, none longer that ten feet, and then John would cut them in sixteen inch long rounds that could be split. Then we rolled the big stuff around to the side of the house.  Even cut down to sixteen inches, this big tree was a lot of work to move.

After the tree was down and cut into somewhat more manageable sizes, John put the word out on OfferUp.com and we had trucks coming all day to pick up wood.  In the Pacific Northwest, many people still heat their homes with wood in the winter time; some people have no other source of heat and free firewood is quite a windfall.

Get yer free wood here!

With that big project complete, we can finish making the yard and garden spaces more manageable.  Melissa has been aggressively clearing the beds and giving away plants. I have gotten the greenhouse cleared out and have been repairing rotted fence posts. Which is more work, a house or a boat?

Sistering in new supports for some of the more rotten fence posts. A good excuse to use our new generator. That will be going back to the boat with us.

While we have been working hard on the house, I did find time to try out the new paddle board.  It seems very stable on grass. We have another one on order. We are really looking forward to having these in Mexico.

Our new Aqua Marine Magma SUP. Water not included