Awash in a Sea of Disappointment

Well, we almost made it. We continued to move down the coast towards Panama making slow progress due largely to the weather and currents. There comes a time of year when the wind patterns change and start to work against you,… that time has come. We  have to try to move against the northbound Equatorial Counter Current that is moving north a 3 – 4 knots. We had started motoring because of the complete lack of favorable wind but were only able to make 4 -5 knots against the current. It was a very slow slog. When we put the boat back in the water way back in La Paz I had noticed that we had a slight rumble when we motored. This sometimes happens when a boat is hauled out of the water.  A boat can lose its shape without the water supporting it from all sides. Once they are back in the water, it takes a while for them to regain the shape. I was surprised that this had occurred to a boat that is this heavily built but, there it was so, I thought I would wait and see if it settled back into shape. It didn’t go away but, it didn’t get worse ether. On our last leg from Las Hadas to Zihuatanejo it got a lot worse. We were taking long tall swells on the beam and each time we rolled the rumble turned into a grind. What was happening was that at least one of the motor mounts was allowing the motor to lean with each roll. This leaning would throw the alignment of the engine transmission and the propeller shaft all out of whack. There was nothing to do but grit my teeth and hope it would hold together until we could make port. We were forced to motor 188 miles at 3 knots. Once we were safely at anchor I check the shaft alignment and confirmed my fears, the trip was over for this year. The only fix for this is a new shaft, an 11 ft long 1-¾ inch solid stainless steel rod, probably not available in Mexico. We will have to travel back to Florida, locate a new one and then, because it won’t fit under the seat or in the overhead, drive it back here in a cheap van that we will have to leave here when we leave. Driving the cheap van through the Mts. of central Mexico might be another blog of it’s own. Next problem to solve; our visas expire in 5 days. We had planned on arriving in Huatulco by now and checking out of the country there but that also did not happen. Jimmy, our trusty guide/waiter, told us that his friend Alahandro, was the head of the immigration office here and that he could give us another 30 days, no problem. First, Jimmy’s friend was on vacation when we walked in. We sat down in front of “Alex” who told us we had to leave Mexico and then return to get a new visa. I told him that the boat was broken but we might be able to get it 12 miles off shore and back thereby checking out and then back in. Alex also told us that the immigration office could not handle this, only the immigration office at the airport could do this. He called the airport and arranged for two immigration officers to meet us in front of the port captains office on the pier. When they arrived we explained what we needed and I asked if I actually had to move the boat, “couldn’t I just say we went out so you wouldn’t have to make a second trip here to check me in and I don’t have to risk further damage to the boat?”. They had a short chat and got on the phone to Alahandro, “Everything is fine” they said, “Alex was wrong, you don’t need to leave, go back and see Alex”. Off we went again. Alex was much more helpful when he got off the phone to everyone that called him. To do the “paperwork” would cost us 550 pesos each and what he was telling us was that we needed to apply for permanent resident status, an FM 3, which would cost us 1451 pesos each. Our son Mike, has a flight out of here in less than a week so he was told he should, at the last minute, say he had changed his mind about the FM 3 at which point he would be thrown out of the country in 10 days and not have to pay for the FM 3. He’d be gone before he could be thrown out. Shannon and I on the other hand ,will get the new status because we need to come back and the FM 3 comes with some real benefits that I won’t go into here but, it just allows us to come and go as we please. The plan is to get a new shaft and new engine mounts in the states and drive back to install them in Dec or Jan. Then head south again but this time without Mike who has to get back to school. He wants to come back in time to go through the canal with us and that makes me feel much better about him having to leave. He’s been a great 1st mate and a quick and eager learner. He has struggled with his command and management skills but, no father has been prouder of his son and the man he has become on this voyage. He has faced his fears without flinching and endured many hardships without much talk of mutiny. I will miss his wit and companionship, I will miss my son for the first time in my life.

South by Southeast

False starts are becoming the norm on board. The old description of a boat being a hole in the water that you shovel money into has become all too true. The good news is that we have replaced almost everything at this point. Almost everything. After getting squared away in La Cruz I pulled into the fuel dock to top off the tanks before heading over to Yelapa. My tanks have sight tubes installed (small clear tubes that allow you to see the fuel level in the tanks) so I positioned myself below in the engine room to watch the tubes while my son pumped the fuel. We filled the starboard tank with 100 gallons and began to fill the port tank when I suddenly heard a loud gushing sound followed by the sound of me yelling for him to stop. Of all things, the fuel fill hose had exploded, just blew apart and of course the high pressure fuel pump filled the bilge with fresh diesel. Exactly Oh Gezzz gallons. I had to take a slip in the marina for two days while I looked for inch and a half red strip fuel hose. And yes, it cost an arm and a leg for the hose and 600 pesos for the cab. I took the opportunity to talk Mike into letting me hoist him up the mizzen mast once more to haul the wind generator down so I could see what happened to it. I can’t remember if I mentioned that it cooked thousand bucks worth of batteries. When I bought it I was told that it had just been rebuilt and that turned out to be true but, the fellow had neglected to wire tie the wires from the windings so the slip ring cut through them and shorted the whole thing out. A huge expense for the lack of a couple one cent wire ties. Lucky for me that he had given me the old parts he replaced as they were still good. It seems to be working fine now. With the hose installed and the generator fixed we set sail for Yelapa. This is a place that everyone should visit. I don’t think you will find it on any travel agency brochure stand. This is a tiny cove on the southwest shore of Bandaras Bay. It is inhabited by an Indian tribe that that has been there for a very long time. The land was given to them by the Queen of Spain and the current Mexican government still honors the grant to this day. No one owns the land they live on because they don’t believe in ownership of the earth. The only way to get to the village is by boat, horse or burro through the mountains. Yalapa has only had electricity for the past eleven years. There is a small hotel and a couple restaurants but not much more. Just peace and quiet like you have never imagined. The residents are happy and very friendly. As we approached the bay we were met by a ponga and the man sleeping in it awoke and offered us a mooring in the bay which we took for $200 pesos. Once we were secured we noticed that the sailboat moored next us was Liquid 8 which belongs to an old Marine buddy of mine. I hadn’t seen him in two years. I found him with the binoculars sitting on the beach in front of a grass hut. I launched the kayak on the opposite side of Halcyon and paddled into the beach. Looking in from the sea you don’t notice the waves breaking onto the sand so I rolled the kayak in the surf and arrived dripping water and picking sea shells out of everywhere. He still didn’t notice me until I was on him. Being a former Marine, I can’t quote him here but, he was delighted to see us and we got together on Halcyon for happy hour at sunset. The following morning he was headed north and we were headed south around Cabo Correntes and on to Panama. We stayed in Yelapa because it is the last place to stop before you try to round Cabo Correntes We are told it is best to attempt it late at night or early in the morning. The weather and sea conditions can be somewhat violent during the day so, we bow to local knowledge. Still it was a bumpy ride the morning we began the leg. Seas were running about four feet and a light wind out of the north. Within the hour we began to see a large number of humpback in the distance. Shannon began to shoot pictures that were not going to amount to much because they were so far off and all you could see was a sliver of their backs. Suddenly one mother with a calf rolled over and waved her huge pectoral fin in the air and the next second a whale launched completely out of the water. These shots are sure to be the best ones of the trip unless we meet aliens along the way. The whales far behind us, the weather took a turn for the worse. The wind and seas are on our transom and building up. This wouldn’t have been too bad except the waves were very confused. Most of them came from the northwest but every five minutes or so a really big one would hit from the east and roll us over on our side. The wind began to clock and then veer, then clock and veer etc, etc. We took in the sails and continued on under power. The sea began to reach six and seven feet with the occasional eight and nine. We had to turn off the auto pilot and wrestle the wheel by hand. The sea was trying to turn the boat sideways with every wave. It is exhausting work trying to stay within 15 or 20 degrees of your intended course. I expected the conditions to die down after dark but they did not. They got worse. So, I did what all prudent sailors have done for centuries, I tucked my tail between my legs and headed for the nearest port. As it turned out it wasn’t that “near”. We rounded Punta Perula into Bahia Chamela at 1300 hours feeling rode hard and put away wet. We were still two miles from the safety of the anchorage. There was no moon so it was pitch black and the fog was just setting in. The pilot house windows have no wipers so I had to hand squeegee every three or four minutes and still I could see nothing. The charts of this coast line are based on the charts made in the eighteen hundreds and very inaccurate. My electronic charts are based on those same charts so they can be up to two miles off. In the case of this bay, which is filled with rocks and reefs, they are only a mile off. I have the ability to overlay satellite photography onto my chart so I could see the huge discrepancies. I had purchase a night vision scope at the last swap meet and I was really glad I did now. I put Mike on the bow to scan the area as we inched our way in. When I hit thirty feet of water I ordered the anchor down. We backed down on a hundred-fifty feet of chain, setting the anchor in the sand bottom. The next morning, when I poked my head out of the companionway, I could see that we had sailed right over a fisherman’s unlit net stretched out between two large steel drums and never knew it.

Close Encounters

We set sail for Punta De Mita at Bahia Banderas where we would meet up with some cruising friends coming north. The wind was light but we were making some way. It felt good to be heading south. Within the first couple hours the wind freshened, we started picking up speed and soon began to sight whales in the distance. Humpbacks on their way south to the warm waters for breeding and calving and there were a lot of them. We are concerned about them because a collision between them and us is usually fatal to the whale. Not to mention it could sink us in 1,100 feet of water. There have been some rare events of a male mistaking a sailboat hull for another male and attacking the boat, as with the Essex, the boat that Moby Dick was based on. If you ever want to read a really grim tale, read the Essex’s true story. Most of the time it’s just a simple bumping into each other but with that kind of mass, the damage is bad. I was below and Shannon was on the wheel when I heard her yell, “Whuuha, whuuha, Whale! I got up the companionway just in time to see the 80,000 pound animal about to cross our bow at less than 30 ft. So, of course, I grabbed the camera and began shooting. She crossed under our bow and surfaced 20 feet from our starboard side, blowing a huge spray of breath before diving. As it dove it raised it’s tale and seemed to wave good-bye to the people on the boat with their jaws hanging and their hearts stopped. Standing watch at four in the morning on a moonless night with nothing to see but the glowing red light from the compass, we sometimes ask ourselves why we are doing this, then we see something like today’s encounter on the endless sea and those thoughts melt away.

Sleep Deprivation and Decisions at Sea

Note; I use my internet connection for weather updates.  My time is very limited here on the Mexican coast so I will not be adding any pictures for a while.  I am taking a lot of shots and will include them when I get somewhere I can upload them on another account.

The first few days at sea are the hardest in my view.  You have to learn a whole new sleep cycle and be able to fall asleep on command.  We are a three person crew which means a four-hour watch at the wheel every eight hours.  Mine is from four to eight morning and night.  Shannon’s is from twelve to four and Mikes is from eight to twelve.  These are the times that each of us felt were the easiest for us.  Being asleep when you are scheduled to sleep becomes very important both to the individual and to the boat.  My job as any Captain is as follows; my first consideration is always for the boat and not the crew.  This might seem wrong at first glance but consider that I’ll have a tough time seeing to the welfare of my crew if I lose the boat.  My second consideration is the crew (in this case, my loved ones).  I have to keep them well rested, well fed as well as warm and dry.  A crew that is tired, hungry, cold and wet steers a lousy course.

Our sail over from La Paz to the mainland of Mexico was going well even though we were unable to sail.  A Northern was forecasted to begin in a couple of days so we couldn’t take time to tack across the Sea of Cortez.  Sailing from west to east with a wind event coming down on us from the north would make for a very uncomfortable ride and even dangerous.  In my opinion my crew still needed some experience under their belts before they took on any weather.  So, we motored along at 6.5 knots.

The goal was to make it around Cabo Corrientes, a point of land on the south side of Bahia de Banderas at Puerto Vallarta.  Getting around this point would bring a whole new weather system that would be much nicer to sail in.

With the mainland of Mexico just 34 miles off  the wind shifted from the nose and to the north, we turned south toward Puerto Vallarta to take advantage of a slight breeze now coming from behind us. We pulled out the jib and mizzen and began to motor sail south.  With everything going well I turned in and the midnight shift change took place.  Mike stayed up talking to Shannon for a few minutes before he turned in for the night.  While he was talking he heard the exhaust note change abruptly and called down to me that something was up.  When we checked we found the top of the engine covered with a huge amount of oil and the bilge filled with water.  We shut the engine down and began looking for the source of all this chaos.

At this point Mike has been up all day and is due for his bunk.  Shannon has not been able to sleep when she is supposed to and I have been catnapping while overseeing everyone’s watches.  We are all in need of sleep and we are not going to get it.  My brain is trying to come up with logical decisions.  What to do?  The first decision is to head to the closest port and get the anchor down.  The closest port is Mazatlan and at our present speed we won’t get there for another nine hours.  It looked like we were going to have to enter a strange port under sail.  Mike and I got to work on the engine while Shannon did her best at the wheel in light wind and three foot swells hitting on the beam every few seconds.  Mike and I soon found the source of the mess, a broken ½  inch nut.  This one brass nut held together the entire cooling system.  A boat has no radiator like a car but rather, a heat exchanger for both engine cooling water and oil.  When the nut broke the whole assembly came apart.  The water pump continued to pump seawater though now it wasn’t going into the cooler but into the bilge.  The oil pump continued it’s job of pumping oil, also into the bilge until the engine was totally out of oil.  The nut was not an ordinary nut ether, it was really special which means that we didn’t have anything to replace it with.  The heat exchanger is several individual units that have a rod passing through the center with the “special” nut on the end.  The rod is threaded on the end and the nut has a sleeve that passes through the end cap and onto the rod.  The rod does not extend beyond the  cap.  That would have made it simple to put on a new nut but, no, some engineer wanted it to be “special”.

I am aware that I am very tired and I know it is effecting my ability to think clearly so each decision is filled with self-doubt.  I think and rethink everything.  I finally decide that attaching anything to the interior rod isn’t going to happen with anything we have onboard.  I keep drifting back to the ground crew for Apollo 13 scrambling to come up with something workable using just what is on hand, then I snap back to the here and now.  I decide that the only other option is to clamp it back together from the outside.  I have some threaded rod in the foc’sle and I go up and sit on the floor and begin to play with the parts I have on hand.  After perhaps a half hour I come on the idea to use the rod connected to four turnbuckles and use the turnbuckles to tighten the whole mess down on the heat exchanger.  Mike comes down from the pilot house and says, “I have an idea, why don’t we clamp it from the outside?  We could use some threaded rod and a couple blocks of wood on the ends to hold it together.  Then we could tighten it all down.”  The same approach with slightly different components, a proud moment for papa.  He was still thinking in spite of his lack of sleep and he was well outside the “box” as the situation called for.  I already had assembled the parts for my version so we use the turnbuckles and rod.  Thinking back I think the blocks might have worked better.

Getting it all attached and clamped down evenly was no small trick while standing in an oily bilge in a rolling boat.  We got it on and started the motor.  Water sprayed out of the end cap like the broken pipes in a submarine movie.  After a few more adjustments we were able to get it down to an acceptable leak.  We shut down the engine thinking that the clamp would not hold for long.  I wanted to sail as close to the harbor entrance as possible before using it.  The harbor is a busy shipping center that requires each vessel entering to get clearance from the port manager.  I would have only one shot.  If the clamp failed while entering I could be left in the path of a tanker that would be hard pressed to stop before running me down.

I sent Mike to his bunk as I would need him to be sharp when we made port.  Shannon and I continued to try to squeeze something out of one to two knots of wind.  I thought briefly about hoving to but decided not to as we were more or less drifting anyway.  At day break I decided not to enter the harbor but to divert to an anchorage to the south of it.  It would keep me out of the shipping channel.  I started the engine with ten miles to go and began to creep at three knots toward the anchorage.  I kept a close watch on our exhaust water to tell me if the clamp failed.  I had Shannon wake Mike.  As we neared the shipping channel we could see a ship approaching from the north.  I turned to get out of it’s way but it turned into me again.  I was not going to be able to cross the channel without cutting across his bow so I had to do a large circle to port, letting him pass.  Each second I expected the clamp to explode.  It didn’t explode, it held.  Mike let the anchor go in twenty-four feet of water and I backed down hard on One hundred-fifty feet of chain, shut down the engine and we all went to sleep in the lee of the Mazatlan Light House.  The clean up would have to wait.

For those of you that might like to hear the womans version of these events I would suggest you visit Wenchhandle.wordpress.com which is my wife Shannon’s site.

Tragic Music

I love the local bands down here.  There are only two kinds of music in this town, Mariachi and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Of course the Mariachi is everywhere but, Rock is king and they only play classics from the 60’s and 70’s.  Walking down the streets of town at night, listening and closing my eyes takes me back in time.  There is a girl singing everyone of Janis Joplin’s tunes and she sounds just like her.  Another group is doing Moody Blues stuff and a little early Beatles while the Stones seem to be playing just down the way.  But, nothing is perfect as we all know.  The musicians here are very good but most don’t speak English and they don’t seem to have any sheet music.  They have to learn everything they play by ear.  I think they all have learned everything from the same bootleg Golden Oldies Greatest Hits of the 60’s & 70’s CD.  I heard one group that must have learned everything form the TV commercials for the CD because they only played the beginning of everything.  The music is fine but the words are very interesting because they are just repeating the sounds they hear.  I like lyrics so I really listen and I don’t think most people do these days.  Sometimes the words are nothing more than a mumble and other times they are really mangled.  Last night I was making my way back to the marina and caught a band playing that great Santana song, Got a Fat Tragic Woman.  Do I tell em?

Pirates

The time is 0530, it’s cold and the kettle is now on the stove. Forty-five minutes ago I heard the sound of a mans voice drift through the port next to my bed. Loud enough to wake me, though I am a light sleeper, still, loud enough to get this old Marine out of bed and up on deck for a look around. Mostly because I heard just the voice and nothing else, no boat engine. The tide is running and there is no moon. Conditions are perfect for a boat to quietly drift by on the current without making a sound, no motor, not even the creek of an oar lock. A much used tactic on the water by those up to no good. As I looked into the darkness and tried to hear any sound, I considered what I had on board to fend off an intruder. A single shot pellet rifle (for fishing of course), a spear gun (for fishing of course), a base ball bat (for playing base ball of course) and this old Marine with bad knees and attitude. Am I looking to repel pirates? Not in the true sense of the word, not the kind that wants to take my boat and make us jump into the sea. These pirates are more like a squid fisherman that is on his way home from fishing all night and looking to supplement his income with an un- attended outboard motor on a dingy left in the water or anything that isn’t nailed down. It doesn’t happen too often here as the population is pretty honest but when a man is hungry he will do what needs to be done to feed his family. To be fair, this is something that is not below the gringo cruiser either. We have a friend that caught a couple guys on deck late one night here. He went on deck with a camera and took their pictures and as they fled he chased them down in his dingy and beat on them with an oar. The pictures, of two very surprise thieves, were given to the police and they are currently in the local prison. It’s a mile long dingy ride to the town and the nearest boat is 300 yards away so, we are our own police dept., fire dept. etc, etc. Another fishing boat just went by on his way home with the catch I’ll order tonight in a restaurant. All is well, the coffee’s ready, the sun will be up soon and it looks like I’ll be awake to see it. Which brings up my favorite thing to do on a cruising boat, stand in the companion-way with just my head sticking out the hatch, drinking coffee and watching the morning sun come up. Some things I can’t explain.

Calling Dr. Pepper

I believe the stem can also be used as a fuse

We walked into town, trying to find a pool hall that we were told about. It didn’t open until 8 pm so we waited at the out-door bar in the alley next to the heavy wooden doors that led to the pool hall. This town used to be a silver mining town so a lot of the doors look like entrances to forts, huge wooden doors with heavy metal hinges and straps. When the owner showed up and opened the double doors there stood an old spiral staircase so up we went, three stories. The walls were covered with old photos of old Mexico and it’s people. The pool hall was a multi level affair with tables covering each level. The beer was ice cold and we felt at home immediately. The waiter brought us our beer and offered a list of munchies. Two types of peanuts were offered, salad and chili. Mike asked for chili. They came and I watched him eat the first few to see how hot they were, no reaction. He said they were spicy but not real hot so I grabbed a handful. I like hot food . I like jalapenos on my hamburgers. That said, I think I heard the voice in my head say, “We have ignition!”. The first thing I thought was, “How is that kid eating these?”, and the second thing I thought was, “I love the taste of Napalm in the morning!” and the last thing that came to mind was, “Where the #*!$% is my beer!”. I drank my beer in one continuous suck but, it didn’t seem as cold as it did a second ago. I grabbed Mike’s beer and drank it down with no relief. The heat was agony and instead of it slowly going away, it slowly got worse and worse. I grabbed Shannon’s beer and drained it which allowed me to talk again, I managed to wheeze, “Get more, hurry”. Fluid was running out of every hole in my head at this point and breathing was getting difficult. I continued drinking like I was at my first college kegger . It lasted for about half an hour. Keep in mind that one normal hour is equal to 3 unbearably hot hours. The next time the waiter arrived I croaked something about how #!$%&*!!ing hot the peanuts were. First there was just a blank look on his face which after a second gave way to an “Oh my God” look at which point he grabbed the bowel of peanuts and closely looked inside it. His head snapped up, looking more closely at my face, and said in amazement, “You ate the pepper?”. He said it the same way you would say, “You slayed the dragon?” or “You stabbed yourself in the eye with your fork?“. They put a pepper in the peanut bowel that you DON’T eat. It’s there to rub up against the peanuts, making them really hot. I didn’t know that and he sure as hell didn’t mention it was in there so I got it along with my handful of peanuts. For the rest of the night he was pointing me out to the other Mexicans and telling them how I ate the pepper. Years form now, the old ones will still be telling the story of how the gringo ate the pepper and not only did he stay conscious and on his feet but, he bravely ordered another bowel of peanuts. No one has ever eaten the pepper and lived. I feel like a hero. When nobody was looking I grabbed the pepper from the second bowel and stuck it in my pocket so they would think I ate it too. I will be known as Macho Miguel the Fearless One. More likely, “That Loco Gringo”, or more accurately, “Old Fire Poo“. We later identified the pepper as a Bird pepper. That’s what they are called in the islands. They make jalapenos taste like Juicyfruit. I wrote a story about them in my other blog .http://michaelscottstories.wordpress.com/florida-state-chili-cookoff/ . Those of you reading at home should never attempt to eat one of these. As a matter of fact nether should the trained professionals. If you should ever happen upon one some day, treat it as a blasting cap, (come to think of it that might be the only use for them) do not touch it or go near it, call the bomb squad.