Author Archives: Melissa

But Then, There’s This

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After our last post describing the debacle with the boom, I want to follow up with this post that explains, without a lot of words, why we put up with the downsides to this lifestyle; why the ‘fun’ is still out-weighing the hardships. These are photos of Punta Colorado on the ‘far’ side of Isla Carmen, one of our most favorite places we’ve visited in the Sea of Cortez. Protected from weather from the north, it offers such deep beauty that it’s hard to complain about anything. Excellent snorkeling on long, reef lined beaches, desert hiking, wildlife. That’s what it’s all about. This other stuff, this stuff like leaking holding tanks and booms that need replacing, that’s all background noise.

Big Horned Desert Sheep. We have been lucky to see them each time we’ve visited.

A nest of seeds left behind. What plant could this be?

 

A close up of the seed.

 

Following bighorn sheep trails.

Can you see the grasshopper? He’s about 6 inches long.

Blooming Cordon Cactus.

And before I go, there’s this: After a long and satisfying snorkel at Playa Coyote in Bahia Concepcion, an exquisite little Pacific Seahorse swam right into my snorkel mask as I was reaching for the boarding ladder to the dinghy. What? You didn’t hear my delighted squeals of joy from wherever you are? Hands down one of the highs of my life. I’m going to tell you what: that doesn’t happen at home on the sofa. 

S/V Galapagos, out.

Two more photos of those black ‘seeds’. Anyone know what this is?

Enlarge the photo and you might be able to see how the seeds are stacked one inside the other in the middle of this mess.

attached to a stick

Badda Bing, Badda Boom

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Warning: This post contains content which may not be suitable for people with sensitive dispositions. Photos of violence to boat parts are forthcoming. There will be non-gratuitous use of curse words.

We’ve got a situation here. I’m going to ‘splain it using Michael’s words.

“We had an interesting day sailing from Loreto to San Basillio and the La Ramada anchorage last Thursday.  We were moving along at 6.5 knots with the cruising chute and main and the wind on our aft quarter for much of the day. As the wind waves started to build and steering became a little squirrely, we doused the chute and proceeded the last few miles with just the main.  The wind was moving further aft and as we turned inshore toward the anchorage at La Ramada it was essentially dead down wind. We had a preventer rigged and had good control in 12 to 15 knots.  The wind was fine but the waves were confused and  we would slew and jump. Melissa hates these kinds of conditions and expressed feeling anxious about them, even though we were doing well, if a bit uncomfortable. We had certainly been in much worse conditions than this.

As we were coming up on the turn into the anchorage we heard a ‘pop’ sound. Curious, Melissa poked her head out of the cockpit and eyed the mainsail. “Welp”, she deadpanned, “We’ve just lost our boom.” I didn’t understand what she was saying. Was she playing me?  “What?” Surely I had misunderstood her. She gestured in the general direction of the mainsail. It was true. We had just lost our boom. “FUCK!!!”. Usually Melissa is the cursing sailor. This time, it was me but I felt justified, with apologies to my mother. With very little fanfare, the boom had snapped completely in two! It made a little noise but wasn’t like the large explosive event you’d expect. It just kind of quietly gave up.”

View from the cockpit immediately after the challenging event. Preventer is that black line to the right.

Le Sigh. Boat repair needed? Check. Exotic location with few resources available? Check. I guess we’re cruisers now.

Mike and I swung into action as the team that we have become. I turned on Hiram, our reliable Beta Marine engine. We had two pieces of boom to secure and a huge sail to take down in stiff wind and seas that, while they could have been worse, would be bashing us as we turned into them. More to the point, with the wind ahead of us, the sail and damaged pieces would be exposed to weather and get blown around alarmingly.

The short end of the boom, still attached to the mast, the preventer, and the boom vang, was not going anywhere. We left that one alone.

Ouch. Dangerous pieces of jagged metal.

The long end of the boom, secured on one end by the mainsheet and the other by the sail and the stack pack, could act as a battering ram against our expensive and beloved hard dodger windows. Our solar panels, on top of the dodger, were also at risk. We continued on our course to get more sea room, past the entrance to the anchorage as we made our plan to address these issues safely. I thoughtfully pulled out my phone and took the above photo of the initial damage. See how I roll in a crisis? Where’s my camera?

Michael went forward and eased up on the halyard to see if the sail would budge without turning into the wind, hoping. It was a no go. There was too much pressure on the sail. I scrambled to close and secure the dodger windows and the open hatches below the boom. He came back to the cockpit where I was securing the long end of the boom, wrapping the attached mainsheet around a handy winch. I pulled it as tightly as I could against the wood of the dodger but there was still enough slack that I had to hold the remaining line in my hand, pulling it tighter against the dodger. Steer the boat with the right hand, hold that boom tight with the left.

The mainsheet wraps around the back of the dodger and is attached at the block and winch back there. I could only get one wrap on the winch, so I had to hold it to secure the rest of the slack. One wrap is better than none. Our anchorage is ahead.

Retrieving our bluetooth radio headsets, we prepared to turn into the wind and face the proverbial music. Even with the sail slack, we were ‘sailing’ at about 5.5 knots away from our safe harbor. You can never feel the full force of the wind when it’s behind you. With wind from the south/southeast we would not be protected until we got behind the land.

As we turned into the wind the sail came down easily and plastered itself over the windshield. By crouching and peering under it I could just barely see the front of the boat, but not well enough to feel confident about steering in unfamiliar waters. We double checked the Blue Latitude charts, the ONLY reliable charts for common anchorages in the Sea of Cortez, and saw that the way would be clear of obstacles like nasty rocks. There were two other boats anchored on the port side of the bay. We stayed well clear of those with Michael out on deck communicating to me where to steer. If I haven’t mentioned in awhile how much we love those Sena headsets, let me reiterate it here. Hand signals, the beloved way of communicating between the foredeck and the cockpit for the saltiest of sailors, would have been completely useless in this situation.

Surveying the damage. Photo taken from the bow looking aft.

As we got behind the land, the seas lay down, the wind abated, and our breathing was easier. We were safe, the boat was safe. We dropped our anchor in 12 feet of water  under the keel on a sandy bottom and took a well-deserved break before sorting out the mess on deck. We were both feeling particularly grateful about how this went down. We were close to our protected anchorage, no one was hurt, the boat wasn’t hurt in any additional way, and we worked well together. If you’re going to have a catastrophic failure, this is the way to go.

Here are Michael’s thoughts on what happened:

“ The failure seems to have occurred at the furthest bolt hole for the boom vang. The vang connection to the boom is via a steel plate that slides inside the bottom track of the boom. It is attached with two stainless allen head screws to the boom. I think corrosion at that point weakened the aluminum and when the wave hit us just the right way, things went to hell in a handbasket. Interestingly, I had removed those two screws when I disassembled the vang and replaced the tensioning lines. At that point I dressed the threads with TefGel to prevent corrosion. Of course, if the vang had been on there for 30 years, my preventive maintenance wasn’t going to do much.

I also wonder if the preventer we had rigged could have contributed to the problem. There is a pad eye in the bottom track of the boom that we use to attach a 4:1 block arrangement to secure the boom when going downwind. When we bought the boat, there were two such bits of tackle attached to each side and it seemed a sensible arrangement. I wonder if the extra loading from this preventer might have made the already bad problem worse. We may need to rethink our preventer setup.“

In the days since this event, we’ve been in touch with a previous owner of the boat whom I remembered had replaced a boom because of a similar incident. According to this owner, the boat was rigged this way when he bought it. The boat has had this preventer setup probably since it was built.

So there it is. We are moving forward and will find a solution to this current situation. I’m not going to pretend this isn’t a severe hit on our cruising funds, but we will find a solution we can live with and are looking at this as an opportunity to improve on what we had. In boom furling maybe? Finding a used boom off a storm-ruined boat of like size? There’s an answer out there and it will come to us. Michael has already begun contacting people in the San Carlos area and begun getting leads.

Boomless at La Ramada.

In a massive twist of fate, Jamie and Behan Gifford of Sailing Totem are in the Sea of Cortez now, having completed their circumnavigation. We went through Jamie’s company, Zoom Sails, to replace our headsail before we left the Salish Sea. We had been planning to invest in a new mainsail, but didn’t want to buy until we knew how we wanted to re-work the way that system handled.  We had agreed that we would not be crossing any oceans until we addressed these needs. Experience is the best teacher and our year of cruising has given us enough experience to now be able to discuss these things with more certainty. Our priority now is to wait around for the Giffords to get up to where we are located so we can have Jamie on board for a nice long consultation and make a plan of action. Great timing on that boom, Mr. Universe. Be careful what you wish for as it may manifest in ways that are unpredictable.

Meanwhile, Michael has moved the mizzen boom onto the main mast, rigged a topping lift for it, and now we are working to figure out how to run lines where we can at least have a small sail at the center of effort on the boat. Because we rarely use the mizzen sail here in the Sea of Cortez, we had weeks ago removed the boom and stored it upright, secured to the mizzen mast. That opened up the aft deck for the kind of living we are doing right now. It’s good to have that flexibility. We haven’t missed it a bit and now it’s going to come in useful, we think. Of course, we could have just re-rigged the mizzen altogether, but we decided to try this first. Frankly, we didn’t want to give up the ease of moving around the aft deck since we get on and off the boat so frequently and use that area so much.

Re-rigged with the mizzen boom and sail. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Finally, on the surface it does seem as though we’ve had our share of issues lately. A friend was commenting to me that it seemed like our trip had been full of casualties. I was actually taken aback when she said this and had to think about it a bit because it doesn’t really feel that way. But I can see how other people would get this impression. An encounter with a whale, a cracked holding tank, our dead Iridium Go (literally the only thing on this list that completely annoys me), a close and personal encounter with a rock (minor fiberglass repair needed, no biggie), and now a broken boom. I guess we should feel more frustrated than we do. But for us, that would be kind of like signing up for military service and then being surprised that you have to go to war; or having unprotected sex and then wondering where the baby came from. We signed up for this knowing that boat system failures were inevitable, especially on a boat as old as ours. The fun still outweighs the suck so far. At least most days.

And, after all, our boom was 30 years old. It had done its job. Do we wish we had replaced it before we left? Not really. I mean, sure, we could have replaced every single bit of everything on our boat before we left the dock. Heck, we could have built our own boat from the ground up so everything would be exactly like we wanted it. And we could still be working on that boat 20 years later. Our plan was to go cruising, not have the perfect boat. As Michael is fond of saying, ‘Perfection is the enemy of the good’, or something like that. Sailing a boat is a risky business by definition. We could still be sitting at the dock refitting this awesome hulk of a boat, having lived through yet another nasty Pacific Northwest winter. Or, we could leave the dock with what we had, do the best we could do, and live with the consequences. We get to replace a boom in Mexico. How many people get to say that? Plus, we’ve had a year of adventure already.  Overall, I think we made the right choice.

Everything removed from the boom and ready to stow. Hey, we had to get all this stuff off the boat before we leave in July anyhow.

Fortunately, this isn’t an emergency situation. We plan to haul the boat out at some point soon and do some other maintenance and repair work, hopefully over in San Carlos. But for now the priority is meeting up with the Giffords so we’re going to be in the general area of Bahia Concepcion for a few weeks. I don’t need no stinking mainsail to go snorkeling anyhow. Please clap your hands and spin around, spit, pray, or whatever you do to send your best wishes to us. There are whale sharks. We want to see them.

S/V Galapagos, out.

 

 

 

Loreto in Numbers

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My friend Ellen over at The Cynical Sailor and His Salty Sidekick does these monthly posts called “ (Name of month) in Numbers”. They are amusing posts about lots of different things she has counted in her life in the last month. How many cookies she has eaten; how many times she has hailed people on the radio, how many cool things she has found on the ‘free pile’ at her marina. You get the idea. Those posts always give me pleasure. I’m shamelessly riffing off her idea for this post. This also gives me an opportunity to plug her new book, Murder at the Marina; the first in a series of cozy mysteries she is writing. I am hopeful they will be the grownup equivalent to Nancy Drew books. I’ve preordered the first one and I hope you will, too. I’m dead excited to know a real live author.

Anyway, we’ve been hanging out in the Loreto area and having a grand time. Here are some numbers associated with this part of our trip.

Number of weeks we’ve been hanging out in Puerto Escondido/Loreto and the islands right here: 6. When we find an area we like, we tend to stay awhile. We’ve been here long enough now to feel like we are familiar with the area.

Number of stingrays we’ve seen this trip: at least 50.

Number of guests we’ve had aboard Galapagos: 4.  We discovered how fun it is to have guests. We hope for more next season.

Number of largish grocery stores in Loreto: 3. Most people know about El Pescador, which caters to the gringos here and carries items from Costco, if you can believe that. But the good shredded meat by SuKarne is not at that store; at least not when we’ve been there. To find that, you have to walk down the street to the Super Ley. Their produce is also better than El Pescador’s, as a rule. But El Pescador has incredibly good bacon and ground beef.  Then there is Mi Bodega, which is further down the same street that Super Ley is on. Now we’ve been here long enough to know which stores have which good things. It’s almost like we’re locals!

Mi Bodega. It has the biggest parking lot, if not the largest selection of goods. But you can buy a mattress there. And also a blender.

Number of brands of cooked, packaged meat we tried before we found ‘the brand’: 5. Only SuKarne passes our taste, texture, and ingredient tests. It’s hot here and I don’t enjoy cooking and heating up the interior of the boat. So we have found these SuKarne meats to be terrific for easy chicken salads or tostadas, or tacos, or whatever.  They are high quality and delicious.

Number of brands of packaged meat we threw out because they didn’t look or taste like food to us: 2. One brand was so bad that I used it for a cold packs for my knee when I twisted it. The stuff inside, which was pictured as strips of steak for fajitas, was more like play dough in texture. It made a perfect icepack. But food? Not so much.  SuKarne is now our go-to brand of prepackaged, cooked meat, as well as marinated meat ready for the grill. Accept no substitutes.

This is the only brand. What you see in the photo is actually what you get. Just good shredded beef ready to go.

Number of times we tried to call the local recommended dentist before giving up: about 15. We tried all the combinations of numbers and prefixes. We finally had our friend call from his phone. He uses AT&T. We have T Mobile. I don’t know if that’s why we were telephone failures, but his call went through the first time. All I know is that making a phone call in Mexico is not a straight forward process. People have shown us flow charts, we’ve dialed all the prefixes and combination of prefixes. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t. I think it’s just part of being here.

Number of days in advance we had to wait for an appointment to get our teeth cleaned and checked: 1

Number of cavities we had: 0

Number of Pesos we were charged to have our teeth cleaned by the dentist using an ultrasonic tool and to be given a clean bill of dental health: 700 pesos each. In US dollars that’s about $36. The overhead is low. He has an office, good equipment, and not much else. No cushy chairs or TV screens blaring. No huge office staff. He does his own cleaning. No insurance nonsense. We loved it.

A modest waiting room. Do you really need something more than this?

Number of forms we had to fill out in the waiting room: 0. We walked into the modest waiting room, chose which one of us would go first, had a pleasant conversation about our dental health and history, answered brief questions about whether we were on medications and how often we took them, asked about our coffee intake, then got our teeth cleaned. It was outstanding. Not only that, but when our friend called the office from his cellphone, he was able to make the appointments for us with no problem. No questions asked. Just ‘Mike and Melissa? OK. We will see them at 10:00 and 1:00 on Wednesday. Gracias. ‘. Good lord. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Number of dental x rays taken: 0, because we didn’t need any. He asked if we had any issues to be addressed like pain or sensitive teeth, etc. Then he checked the teeth for sensitive spots. Had there been any indication something was amiss, he would have taken x rays. But no need to go looking for problems unless there are concerns.


Number of cool old guys in a beat up pickup truck who stopped and offered us a ride to a restaurant for lunch: 1.

Walking to Enrique’s truck.

     This was a total hoot. After my dental appointment and a trip to the local Ferremar for some fishing lures,  we were standing on the street corner deciding which way to go when this old Chevy truck (and I mean OLD) pulled up to the stop sign and the guy asked if we needed directions. He was a local but spoke fluent English. We responded that we were considering lunch. “Perfect!”, he said. “I’m going to lunch now. Want to hop in and come along?”. Mike looked at me. ‘Want to go to lunch with this guy?’. I think Mike was in love with the guy’s truck. Well, why the hell not? So I said, ‘Sure.’. After all, he didn’t look like a murderer to me.
So we threw our bags in the big old truck bed and hopped in. He took us to Orlandos, which happens to be a favorite place of mine because they serve outstanding fish tacos and delicious margaritas. He went to park the truck and we got a table and ordered drinks.

At Orlando’s.

Turns out Enrique has lived in Loreto his whole life and his family owns some lovely property on the Malecon that they are planning to develop into a high end housing area. Houses (not condos) will sell for 1/2 million US and will be beachfront in Loreto. They also owned some nice property, which I had noticed previously, behind a hotel on the beach. He sold the property today to the hotel owners so they can expand. Looks like Loreto is growing. Enrique says it’s growing very fast.
He was a wealth of information about the real estate market here and buying propery while ‘gringo’. We had a very enjoyable lunch and then he drove us back to the dentist for Mike’s appointment. Sometimes you meet cool people when you take a chance.

Number of degrees of heat on the inside of the boat when we got back today: 90. I think summer is here? No? Still going to get hotter, you say?

Number of frozen margaritas I’ve had in the last 6 weeks: um… I’ve lost count. Just make up a number and call it good.

Number of ripe mangos that fell from the tree and landed at my feet: 1.  It’s mine now.

Number of days before we move further north. 1 We’ll be leaving this area tomorrow to move further north; ready to do more exploring. We plan to sail over to San Carlos and haul the boat out for some maintenance before sailing back down to Puerto Escondido and putting her on the mooring ball for a few months.

See you later, Loreto. We’ll be back.

S/V Galapagos, out.