After a couple lazy days in Paradise Village we moved a few miles to the La Cruz anchorage. We ordered a new jib sail from Ullman Sails, our sailmaker in San Diego and that means it would be 3+ weeks before we could get moving again. But I had plenty of boat jobs and Peggy could take a trip home to see her mom and work a few days.
While in Paradise Village I bought an old scuba tank and weight belt for $20. Got it inspected, recertified and filled. This is mostly for emergencies like freeing up a stuck anchor, fixing propeller problems and such. I have a BC, regulator and dive computer on board already. I am also thinking of setting up a ‘hookha’ system, running a long (like 50 ft) hose from the tank to a regulator for cleaning the bottom of the boat. With two hoses we could also use it for ‘diving’, putting the tank in a float and moving it with us.
Peggy flew to San Diego April 29. One thing on her ‘to do list’ was to file an ammended tax return. It turns out there are tax incentives for solar and our boat qualifies as a ‘second home’ for us. In 2020 we spent about $50k on solar panels, an arch to support them, new lithium-ion batteries, and electronics upgrades. All that counts for the tax incentive so we are saving quite a bit. 🙂
Some of the projects I completed while in La Cruz:
– Got a sun-cover made for the front of the mainsail when it is rolled up. A local canvas person did this in 3 days and I am really happy with the result.
– Fix BBQ gas valve. It had gotten corroded and very hard to turn. I went to 6 stores before finding the right one. That’s a chore when you don’t have a car and things are not so close.
– Unpickled the watermaker and ran it. I had pickled it because there was a sulfur smell coming from the new water and that cleaned it nicely. But in running the watermaker, I found that the pressure release valve on the high pressure pump was leaking so I ordered a replacement. The company, Cruise RO has GREAT customer service and they sent the new valve for free! Took me about an hour to replace.
– We have a SodaStream system for making fizzy water but the refill CO2 tanks are not available in Mexico so we have a really big CO2 tank to refill them. I tried multiple times but could not get a good refill. I finally figured out that the company in San Diego that sold and filled it had done only a partial fill (like 10%). I found a place in Puerto Vallarta that would exchange for a full tank (they are also used for soft drinks and beer) and was able to fill the tanks well!
– Cleaned the bottom of the boat more than once. This is normally a 4 day job, about an hour each day (thats as long as I can work without getting cramps in my legs) and needs to be done when the seas are calm (no wind) and there is minimal current. This generally means before 10am on days where the tidal flow is not too high at that time. I put on my wetsuit, mask, snorkel and fins and go in with an abrasive pad and a plastic scraper. Each day I try to do one side of one hull, including the keel and rudder. Cleaning the saildrive (like the bottom section of an outboard motor with the propeller) takes special attention with a screwdriver to poke into water intake ports.
– Added more ‘pole hangers’ under the solar panel. These hold things like boat hooks, brooms, and a net on the end of a long pole for getting trash out of the water.
– Failing to update the OS on my Mac laptop. It is over 6G bytes and even the cafes that claimed to have great wifi were not able to allow me to finish. After 3 tries and nearly 5 hours, I gave up. It was not a total loss as I had some good fish tacos and drinks in the process. (I did the OS upgrade when I came home to San Diego)
– Practice setting a stern anchor. When you have a regular anchor off the bow, the boat points into the wind and / or the current. In La Cruz the wind and tides swing the boat all around but the sea swell always comes in from the south. This means that sometimes the swell hits you broadside which can cause uncomfortable rolling (yes, even in a catamaran). In theory, setting a stern anchor keeps the boat oriented the same way, eliminating the broadside swell. In practice, if the wind / current are strong and you don’t have ideal locations to tie the stern anchor rode (the line to the anchor) you end up moving some which changes the angle the rode leaves its tie-point (in this case our aft cleat on the outside of one of the hulls). This can cause chafing, damaging the boat and the rode. After some experimentation I gave up, realizing I need to install another set of strong cleats even further aft. This will require building up a strong platform for them, probably on the edge of our ‘sugar scoops’ (steps off the back).
– Making strong loops and lines with eye-splices. There are high-strength lines made of ‘dyneema’ that are ‘braided 12 strand’ which can be VERY strong. I spliced up a number of loops of various sizes and line widths and put eye-splices in a number of lines. These are very handy for rigging changes, especially when downwind sailing.
– Lots of cleaning. A constant job on the boat.
La Cruz has a very active community of sailors. Every morning there is a ‘cruisers net’ where someone takes over as the ‘net controller’ on the VHF radio and goes through lots of useful info like weather and local events. People also get a chance to ask questions about where to get things or how to fix something and to offer things for swap and trade. This really helps build the community and keeps us all active in supporting the local people. We do regular trash pickup days, fund raise for schools, etc.
One fund raiser was for two local kids who are going to compete for Mexico in sailboat racing. They will be at the Laser North American Championship Race in San Francisco in July. The fund raising included a ‘sailing ballet‘ where our friend played the violin while the boys did ‘synchronized sailing’.
The new sail arrived May 23 and Peggy returned May 25. We spent the 26th provisioning and left May 26, heading for Mazatlan.Edit