Category Archives: Cruising Life

Is the Party Over?

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Welp, readers, we are on the hard in San Carlos. Just when we were getting used to being able to swim at will off the boat, just when we were seeing sea horses and eels and octopi and flying herds of mobula rays and all the other incredible underwater creatures, suddenly the party is over.  How long will we be in boatyard hell? If I knew the answer to that, I’d buy a lottery ticket. You might want to settle in with a beverage for this post.

Galapagos getting trundled down the road to the Marina Seca yard  in San Carlos.

It’s like this: shit happens when you are not paying close enough attention, when you are still learning that all the charts are wrong (except for the Blue Latitude charts) and that’s really the only explanation for what happened on March 30. We have no excuses except for our own humanity. We just made errors in judgement. Due to those errors we had an encounter I like to refer to as a ‘deep French kiss’ with a big flat rock near Los Candeleros; probably the same one many other boats have left their mark on. It’s not that the rock is uncharted. It’s just that we weren’t sure which chart was accurate and we didn’t stay far enough off. Whoops! Poor Galapagos. She’s such a forgiving vessel. It took us awhile to forgive ourselves for this, but here we are now, no worse for the wear.

Thankfully we were going dead slow and were heading into deeper water when the cursed  rock leaped with malice and deliberation into our path and smacked Galapagos on her not-insignificant bottom. Otherwise we might be writing a different blog post. We felt like crap about it, but, well, if you’ve never hit a rock maybe you just weren’t trying hard enough. We slid right onto it, and then we backed down off using our trusty and reliable Beta Marine engine. We were very, very fortunate as in all of our mishaps.

All of our mishaps? Let’s see. So far during this year we’ve lost our headsail, we’ve hit a whale (totally the whale’s fault), lost our boom, somehow cracked our holding tank (might have been the whale that did that), and given a rock some love. These things, and others that will surely happen at some point, are  why we bought a big, thick, fiberglass hull of a boat. It takes a lot to take our girl down. She needs to protect us from our own stupid sometimes.

Yep, that’s a project all right.

I have to tell you, this rock encounter was the loudest event ever. Honestly it sounded like the entire boat was coming apart in the moment but after lifting all the floorboards it was clear we were still floating. Later we realized why there was so much noise. It wasn’t the rock’s fault. It was that Mike had left his wall unit of thousands of stainless steel screws, bolts, etc, unsecured in the workshop. He had been organizing all the pieces. Oy.  The impact sent the drawers flying, spewing metal pieces all over the workshop floor. The cacophony! Could have been worse. Those drawers left standing on the counter top could have joined their brethren on the floor.

After it happened we pulled into Puerto Escondido and had a diver check the hull and take photos of the damage and decided that while there certainly WAS damage to be fixed, it wasn’t a deal breaker and we’d continue with our cruise and fix it when we hauled out to do maintenance. And that’s how we find ourselves here, in a cheap apartment about a mile from the Marina Seca boatyard with Mike in the kitchen checking out the cassette tape player and listening to Mexican music he doesn’t understand. I’m hanging out underneath the air conditioner, which barely keeps up with the heat. It’s an interesting life overall, but we are about to get a whole lot of bored. But let’s go back to our arrival here in San Carlos.

Le sigh. This was a nice hotel room.

As has been our usual routine, we had not made reservations for things like haul outs or hotel rooms preferring to just trust that things will work out like they generally do. Since having determined dates on the calender causes us untold stress because…sailing… we arrived with only a loose plan that we needed a haulout date and time, and then a hotel room or Air BnB, in that order. Little did we know that the marina would be offering us a haulout time of 3:00 on the same day we walked in the door. We took it and hightailed it across to the lovely Hotel MarinaTerra, throwing ourselves on the mercy of handsome and charming Juan Carlos, behind the front desk. Did they possibly have room for us for three nights while we got our feet on the ground and figured out how long we’d need to be here? Juan Carlos typed quickly into his keyboard, frown lines wrinkling his really very attractive eyes. After hemming and hawing and clicking frantically, he was able to ‘move people around’ to accomodate us for the low cash up front price of 1700 pesos per night. We would need to go to the ATM just up the street to get the cash. No need to take our names, etc. Just find him when we got back and he would check us in.

Nice view, huh? You don’t want to see the view from our current digs.

The ATM turned out to be a little further than “just up the street” in the 90+ degree heat and dripping humidity that felt more like 105 degrees. By the time we got back I was sweating alarmingly and was probably a nauseating shade of pink. We approached our Juan Carlos, money in hand. “But Señora! You are sweating!”. Honestly, had the lad offered me his handkerchief I would have taken it willingly. My parasol simply was not up to the task in this weather. “Yes, well, Juan Carlos, it’s a long walk to that ATM just up the street.” Eyebrows raised in consternation, “Walk? You walked to the ATM? No no no no! Why would you walk? You must always call me if you need something. Here is my phone number. If you need to go anywhere else you call me and I will get you a taxi. We work with two taxis who are honest.”  NOW he tells me.

We hand our money over to our shining friend, who says that this day is his birthday and this is why everything is working out for us, and ask for the receipt. Receipt? Receipt? Juan Carlos ‘splains everything: “Here we have two systems. We have the regular system where we print out a receipt from the computer and we have the cash system, which is cheaper, and where there is no receipt. But here are your room keys, and the towel cards for the swimming pool. And you tell me if you need anything and if you want to stay longer I will find something for you even if we are very full because today is my birthday! ”  Since manager Jesus was standing by (and perhaps his name may have had something to do with our decision to just roll with things, as we’ve learned to do in Mexico, even when it makes us all kinds of nervous), we threw our American-caution-receipt-loving to the wind. After all, we don’t give a flying donkey’s hind end what happens with that money and they don’t have our credit card information. We just want a room with a marina view and excellent air conditioning and maid service. And that’s exactly what we got for three glorious days. If only we had been able to enjoy it more. Instead we were at the boatyard sweating and swearing during the hot parts of the day.

On the first boatyard day it looked like things were going to move along quickly. A well known metal-working man named Raphael came from Guaymas and looked at our boom, taking the short end with him to his partner at his shop to discuss and come up with a bid for repair. We, fortunately, had a translator with us when Raphael came to visit because otherwise who knows what we may have agreed to. Today Mike found the short end of the boom returned to the yard, sitting by the boat. No word from Raphael, no idea what is going on in his mind about our boom. Will he be able to fix it? Only Raphael knows and he’s not talking. At least not today. Perhaps Monday. Or Tuesday. Hell, we got here without a  boom, so I guess it’s technically not necessary to have one but we are not much of a sailboat without it. On the other hand, it’s dead simple sailing with only a headsail and a tiny mizzen acting as the main. We sailed almost all the way here from Isla Carmen that way.

On the second boatyard day we found a guy who used to build holding tanks out of PolyEthylene. He doesn’t anymore but he came with some rod and tried to repair ours for us. We were hopeful as we stood around the back of his pickup truck watching him melt the material into the holes in our tank. But it appears our tank material is somehow compromised and the rod has trouble sticking in certain trouble spots. He did his darndest, but it still leaks a bit. However, we’ve been limping along with it like this for months now, the butyl roofing tape holding the leaks at bay. As long as we don’t let it get too full, it’s fine. We just keep it pumped out frequently. We could cruise with it like this until we are in an area where people still build poly tanks; an area which, apparently,  is not around here. We are leaning toward just leaving it alone for now. We should stop borrowing trouble.

1970’s chic is everywhere. Why yes, that IS a VHS player underneath the TV. It probably works, too. The bed is behind that screen, which also effectively blocks the AC from circulating around the rest of the room. But that’s why there’s a huge roaring fan called ‘Wind funnel’ or some such thing.

Take a look at that standing refrigerator! A very nicely furnished kitchen except there is no built in oven. Just a free standing oven that is over the 8 track/cassette player. It’s way too hot to consider baking anyhow.

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, our time in luxury was running short. We couldn’t keep paying 80$/night and still enjoy it. Mike located this Air BnB place for 39$ a night.  It looked like a reasonably good place, had air conditioning, and the listing said there was a pool we could use. We snagged it and checked in. Alas, no pool. Really, I’m pretty irritated by that because I could use an outdoor activity that involves water without the additional elements of sand and salt. Also the air conditioning is marginal. It’s too small a unit for this large a place and has to run on high all the time. These are small things compared to dying of heat exhaustion in the boatyard , and you get what you pay for.  But come on, man! Don’t tempt me with the promise of a pool if you can’t deliver! And I need to clarify each and every single item that is in a listing if it’s important to me, I guess. Honestly, we probably would have taken it anyway because the hotel was booked for the weekend, Juan Carlos was nowhere to be found when we needed him,  and we needed an affordable place within walking distance of the boatyard. Thankfully there is good wifi and the blender works.

This guy. Wow.

So aside from living arrangements on land,  the big question remains “Is the party over?” for this season. Will we get back into the water in time to sail back to Puerto Escondido and stop for one last lingering snorkel? The determining factor in terms of how long Galapagos will be in the yard, is how long it will take for the damaged part of the hull to dry out. It was drip drip dripping water for two days but has slowed down considerably today. Yesterday one of the yard workers took on the hot job of grinding out all the loose material so we could get a good look at the damage and also so it would dry out more quickly and make a clean area for repair. I felt for the guy but I’ve never been so pleased to pay anyone 115$ in my life.  It was brutal work. So she’s ready to fill and glass in, but she’s not dry enough yet and so we wait. Here’s why that’s an important issue, and you’ll just love the irony of this:

We fly home on July 2 from Loreto, on the other side of the sea. Yes, it’s a deadline! An APPOINTMENT! We have an actual reservation and have paid for our tickets, an act which we knew would lead to a thwarting of the cruising gods, we just were not sure how. We had planned to leave Galapagos on a mooring ball in Puerto Escondido because we wanted to leave her in the temperature-moderating water rather than in the blazing hot boatyard. We were happy with that decision. However, if she doesn’t dry out fast, and we want to be absolutely sure she is very dry before repairing her, then we will have to change plans and leave her here at Marina Seca with the hundreds of other boats left behind by their owners. It’s like long term daycare for boats here; a great sea of masts. That would mean finding a way back across the sea with our luggage to pick up our flight out of Loreto because we cannot cancel those tickets without a significant penalty.

We have options. There is a ferry to Santa Rosalia from Guaymas. There are also flights from Guaymas to Loreto. We’ll be checking all that out. I mean, what else will we have to do with our time? It’s too hot to do outdoor activities away from the water. Heat exhaustion is a real thing and we’ve both been close to the edge a couple of times. So for the next few days we have plenty of time to do all the research. We have good wifi at this place and the air conditioning is right over the bed, which is king sized and made of memory foam and actually really comfortable. I’m predicting a lot of naps in the next few days. And that blender will be getting plenty of use.

S/V Galapagos, out, for now.

 

 

 

 

 

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.