Wednesday wasn't a very good day...It started off with a plugged toilet which, after draining, tearing apart and finding all OK inside the boat, I found was due to the thru-hull being totally plugged by barnacles. I went over the side and scraped my knuckles reaming it out with a screwdriver. Next I found the freezer totally discharged. I put in one of the new 1/4 ton expansion valves which I'd brought back from the States but then wasted a charge of freon finding the leak. My new leak detector did the job though, showing that one of the tubing flares that the guy in Puntarenas did was no good...first item on the list of things to buy in town. I then started in on the bad fitting lid to the freezer. I thought I knew where the problem was, but after two hours of carrying the heavy lid out on the dock, working in the heat sanding the bulges, carrying it back for a fit check, and finally cutting off one end it still wouldn't fit. I about worked myself into a heat stroke before all my sanding belts broke, forcing me to give up for the day.
Thursday went a little better. We caught a ride into PV with another boater who dropped us and our empty dive tanks at the marina taxi stand. There we got a driver named Rodrigo who spoke very good English, so we hired him for our tour first to CHICO's dive shop where the lady told us our tanks would be ready in a half hour, then to the bank where it took 3/4 of an hour to get some pesos, back to the dive shop where the tanks of course weren't ready, then to the hardware for new sanding belts and grocery for a few goodies, then on to REACSA for freezer parts. We were at REACSA for more than an hour while a very dull clerk tried to figure out how to sell us a drier, 5 cans of freon, and a flaring tool. By the time we got back to the dive shop our tanks were ready. On the way back to Nuevo Vallarta we stopped for lunch at a place Rodrigo recommended, a nice palapa restaurant right across the street from the airport called Islas Marias, and had a super good mesquite broiled game hen. Back at the boat, I got the leak fixed in the freezer and we got almost all of our goodies stow in their proper places before settling down to watch one of the Indiana Jones movies which Sis had sent back with us.
Thursday dawned a little drier, although with fewer clouds the sun shone a little hotter. I spent most of the day working on the freezer lid. After about ten more trips carrying it between the dock and the freezer I managed to get a pretty good fit. I then smeared Marine Tex over the exposed foam and after that had cured painted the whole thing with clear epoxy. It isn't very pretty but it should do the job better. When I get the chance I'll get some nice white paint to cover the whole thing.
El Sabado, 13 Octubre 1990
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Pretty nice day today! We cranked up the freezer and by noon it was down to zero so we now can make our own ice and keep our beer cold. We also got our new VCR installed and working, and I installed the new Elapsed Time Indicator for Gimmy. I spent quite a while in the engine room cleaning up the wiring but still have a lot of work to do. Gennie is a mess...for some reason she seems to have built up more rust than usual during her rest. I hope she still runs...haven't had the courage to try her yet.
*printer 27,112,0,27,120,1,27,82,0*
ALARM SYSTEM WIRING IN ENGINE ROOM
¦+24 v¦
¦ on ¦
¦white¦
black¦ ¦ ¦red
¦ ¦ ¦
+-----+ ¦ ¦ ¦
+--¦SMOKE+--* ¦ ¦ 10/13/90
blue ¦ +-----red¦ ¦ ¦ *Installed new ETI
¦ +-----+ ¦ ¦ ¦ *Had to splice in a
*--¦TEMP +--* ¦ ¦ piece of red wire here¦
¦ +-----+brn ¦ ¦red ¦
¦ ¦ ¦ +----+ green ¦
+--------------* *--¦FLOW+-----+ ¦
white ¦ ¦ ----+ ¦ ¦
¦ ¦red----+ ¦ ¦
¦ *--¦PRESS-----* ¦
blue ¦ +-#2-+ ¦ ¦
brn +-----+ +-----+ ¦ ¦ ¦
+-X+ ETI +X-+PRESS+X -----------------+ ¦
¦ +-----+ +-#1--+¦ small white ¦
------- +----------------------------------------+
----- Sensor shorted to ground - wires cut at X's 5/90
--- - respliced 10/13/90
*printer 27,82,7,27,120,0,27,112,1*
We went over to Eagle's Song for a drink in the evening. They have a broken bearing on their car and it has been in the shop for the last three days. Diane's daughter who lives in Pacific Beach got a bearing onto a Tiajuana airplane but, as usual, it got lost somewhere between there and here. They are really feeling out of touch with no car.
El Domingo, 14 Octubre 1990
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This was a quiet day in Nuevo Vallarta. We continued our cleanup and checkout process with some good and some bad news. The freezer seems to be working well with the new expansion valve and Gimmy started right off and ran nicely as usual. When I tried to start Gennie, though, the starter relay wouldn't operate. That has been a continuing hassle and Nan sent down a new one last year...maybe now is the time to change it out while we're on the dock and the engine room is relatively "cool". I dread the job because the starter is so hard to get to. On the plus side, I tried to clean out the thru-hulls by snorkling but the water is so silty that I couldn't find them so I hooked up my new 50 ft hose to an air tank on the deck and worked on the bottom with Lois feeding me the hose. Worked great! The flip side of that was that I discovered that the guys at Chico's Dive Shop damaged the valve on my tank when they filled it...it leaks a little around the O-ring. Oh well, one more item for the Wish List.
Tried to help Peter with his icemaker which has been flooding and freezing the whole compartment but didn't have much luck. All the parts seem to be functioning properly. Another mystery.
El Lunes, 15 Octubre 1990
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When I checked the engine room this morning I found that the little battery charger which I had hooked up to Gennie's batteries yesterday was still charging at about 5 amps. I checked the specific gravity and, sure 'nough, I've got three bad cells in the two batteries. I tried again to start her and this time she took right off. Low voltage might have been my problem yesterday. I guess new batteries are in order. Can't complain too much about the old ones...they are Mexican batteries we bought in Loreto two and a half years ago. They've done a good job. Spent the rest of the day working on the maintenance list. I pulled the center standpipe out of Gennie's muffler and found it pretty badly pitted. It's been just over a year since we replaced the whole muffler at Puntarenas so it looks like my one year inspection period is pretty good. I've added a 1 1/2 x 10" galvanized nipple to the batteries on my to-buy list for PV.
Peter and Diane got word today that their bearing had been found so Peter headed off for the airport to pick it up and take it to the Ford garage. It wasn't too long before he called back to say that the car wouldn't be ready until tonight and asked me to drive his dinghy over to pick him up at the cruise dock. That was kind of fun...they have a Boston Whaler with a thirty horse Evenrude which will do about 30 MPH. Its about five miles over there and I was back with Peter in less than half an hour. Of course the sea was calm and there wasn't much wind; it would be different if there was any weather.
El Martes, 16 Octubre 1990
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Spent the morning working in the engine room cleaning, sorting and taking inventory. I worked below while Lois checked things off on the inventory list. We got the starboard side pretty well cleaned up. Peter and Diane had been promised that their car would be ready about noon today so I made a deal with them to pay for the taxi ride in return for them taking us to buy some batteries for Gennie. We got to the Ford agency at 1:00 but it was a quarter to 2:00 before we left...it took that long for them to figure the bill.
We rushed to the auto parts store, catching them just before they closed for siesta, and I bought two batteries for 218,000 pesos, about 70 dollars. We'll hope they do the job as well as the last ones.
From the auto parts place we went to a restaurant called the Porto Bella at Marina Puerto Vallarta. It's an Italian place and served an excellent pasta lunch for about six bucks. Diane and Lois both had groceries to get, and I needed to fill the cooler with beer, so we spent an hour shopping at Gigante, one of the big supermarkets here. By the time we got home and stuff put away it was 5:30 and martini time. For the evening's entertainment we watched "Fiddler on the Roof", one of the movies we got from Norm and Pat this summer.
El Miercoles, 17 Octubre 1990
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This morning I got down to the items on my maintenance list which call for checking the engine zincs. There are three on the ONAN heat exchanger, two in the hydraulic exchanger, and two big ones in Gimmy's. All were pretty badly eroded and, when I tried to remove the pencil zincs from the bronze plugs, every one of the five small ones twisted off with the threads still in the plug. I spent the next couple of hours drilling the plugs out and retapping the threads before I could install new zincs. Fortunately, Gimmy's large zincs all came out...they have a 5/8" thread, larger than any of my taps. My other big job for the day was installing Gennie's new batteries. I spent quite a bit of time at that, a lot of it in cleaning up the cables and connectors. When I was through I sprayed some gunk called "Battery Protector" on the terminals...we'll see if that does any good.
El Jueves, 18 Octubre 1990
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Today I went swimming again and replaced the propeller hub zinc which was just about gone...it broke into two pieces as I was taking it off. The other hull zincs still look to have some life in them, although the visibility is so bad that it's hard to see much. As soon as we get out into some clearer water I'll check again. That now brings everything on our routine maintenance list up-to-date except for oiling the cap rail. I think I'll wait for a cloudy day to do that, either that or do it in the evening after the sun goes down. I also got Gennie's muffler back together this afternoon. We were taking inventory in the engine room when I found a 1 1/2" nipple which I'd used as a standpipe for less than a month before Lois brought back the new muffler, so we put it in. That should hold us until we get back to the States. Then I might want to go to a stainless or plastic standpipe.
Since we got back and I started writing this log again I've been using a word processing program Paul gave me called Q & A WRITE and the new PANSONIC KX-1091i printer I brought back. Q & A WRITE has a lot of features which I like better than WORDSTAR but, since Paul only sent a few pages of the manual, it's taking some time to figure out how to use it. I was also having lots of trouble getting my new printer to work properly until yesterday I finally discovered that one of the dip switches was in the wrong position. Now everything seems to be working OK. We'll find out when I get ready to print out the first update for mailing. One disadvantage of the new printer is that it uses a special ribbon rather than typewriter ribbons as my old STAR does. Jim, the guy at Acme who sold it to me swears the ribbons last a long time but he probably doesn't have much experience with printing weatherfax charts. I discovered that the one that was in the machine is damaged, and I've only got two new ones...we'll see.
El Viernes, 19 Octubre 1990
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Peter called before breakfast this morning asking if we'd like to ride to town with them, so we threw our clothes on and went. We went first to the bank to get more pesos (They sure seem to disappear in a hurry), then while Peter and Diane did their shopping Lois and I walked through town and across the bridge to Chili Willie's where we had breakfast before strolling around "old town" for an hour. It's kind of an arty part of the city and much more interesting than the beachfront area. From there we caught one of the fine Mexican buses out to hotel row where I bought a spare nipple for Gennie's muffler, another one to the Marina Plaza where we did a little shopping, and a third on to the airport.
At the airport, Lois negotiated with Mexicana for tickets to Gautamala while I used the good telephones there to call Nan and Dad. Nan I got through to...Dad and Mom were evidently out. With the help of the nice lady at Mexicana Lois got a program worked out for us. We'll be flying to Mexico City next Monday morning, staying at Casa Gonzalez, while we tour Mexico for a day, then going on to Guatemala on Wednesday morning. We're now scheduled to spend only four days in Guatemala but can extend our tour if we decide we want more time.
We'd gotten all squared away at the airport and had walked across the street to the Islas Marias where we'd had the game hen the other day to try their barbecued ribs. Peter and Diane showed up, so we all had ribs, some of the best I've ever tasted. Our taxi driver friend sure pointed out a good joint to us.
El Sabado, 20 Octubre 1990
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Pretty slow day today...didn't do much of anything, just fooled around with the computer and printer getting letters ready to go north with Gail on "Exit Left" who is leaving tomorrow. I think I'm going to like my new printer. It has a proportional spacing mode which really makes a nice looking page. Paul's word processer is pretty neat too, especially the spelling checker which I need badly. I still haven't figured out how to get it to number pages though...I may have to wait until I can contact Paul to find out how to do that.
We were invited for dinner on Eagle's Song and Lois baked an apple pie to take along. What a job! She was really cussing before she got it in the oven! The problem was the heat...the shorting would start to melt before she could get it cut into the flour and she had a heck of a time getting the dough rolled out. It turned out great though, and the Mexican apples she used were firm and tart. Diane did a good job on roast veal for dinner, a special treat down here.
El Domingo, 21 Octubre 1990
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Another day spent fiddling and fixing. Started out by having trouble starting Gennie with her new batteries, a problem that went away as soon as I discovered that I'd failed to connect one of the ground cables. Then the washing machine refused to run and I spent an hour taking it apart before it decided to start working. I didn't do anything to it, it just started going again, so we decided not to tear it apart any further.
There's another hurricane, Trudy, wandering around off the coast. It's about 400 miles away but is packing winds of over 100 MPH and causing a bit of a surge even here in the marina. It was cloudy most of the day and there was a little rain, lightning, and thunder in the evening. The dry season isn't quite here yet.
El Lunes, 22 Octubre 1990
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Last night Lois had us all packed up, I had scheduled a taxi to be here at seven o'clock to pick us up, and we were all ready to go. Then, about midnight, Lois started feeling bad...she had a fever and pains in her chest and shoulder. Said it felt like pneumonia. By morning she wasn't ready to go anywhere. She just stayed in bed and slept until after noon. I spent a good part of the morning getting phone calls through to the airline and Casa Gonzalez in Mexico City to cancel our reservations. I did learn something, though. Mexico City has a U.S. style area code, (905). That caused a lot of confusion up here at the little store with the guy who makes the phone calls. He said there wasn't any such number as (905)514-3302 in Mexico. It took a while to figure out that from here you have to dial 91-514-3302. He also charged me 14,000 pesos ($4.79) for the call rather than 7,000 which is what the girl at the airport charged. Oh well, at least he managed to get the call through.
We just laid around all day doing nothing. Lois slept most of the day and by evening was feeling quite a bit better. If she's still feeling good tomorrow we'll go through the whole rescheduling bit again.
El Martes, 23 Octubre 1990
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Lois was still feeling pretty good this morning so when Peter called and asked if I'd like a ride to the airport I took him up on it. Diane had lost her Debit Card, their only means of getting cash down here, and was in a panic. She had called and canceled it and arranged for a new one to be sent, but the bank insisted on signature confirmation by fax...Peter's job for the day. He dropped me at the airport and headed off to the Holiday Inn to send his fax.
There wasn't anyone at the Mexicana counter when I got there so it didn't take long to get our tickets changed, then I called the Casa Gonzalez (This time with no trouble) and made a reservation for tomorrow night. I was sitting at the little bar on the first floor having a beer when Peter arrived back...the Holiday fax machine was down so he had to find another machine somewhere.
We went up stairs and consulted with Dalmo Costa, the airport manager and Peter's friend who had received the fax of our boat papers when the Aduana made their demand. Dalmo said that he thought the Sheraton had a machine so off we headed in that direction. When we got there and the girl in the fax office asked if he was a guest of the hotel, Peter was quick-witted enough to say no, he was staying at the Krystal but their machine was down and they'd told him to come over here. That satisfied her but when she dialed the number she got no fax machine, just some guy in Oregon who knew nothing about the bank. The phone call cost Peter 17,000 pesos. Peter had brought his hand-held radio, so we went out on the beach and called home base. Diane couldn't hear him, but Lois could, so after a lot of relaying we ended up with another Oregon number to call collect. Back to the airport we went where I demonstrated the new USA Direct phones for Peter...he hadn't realized that they existed. He reached the bank and got a new fax number to call so, after a cerveza break in the air conditioned restaurant, we headed off for another try. By this time it was after 2:00 PM and siesta time but we decided to check out a couple of fax offices which Doug from Year of the Dragon told us about. We were in luck...one, a real estate office, was open and agreed to send the fax. This time it went through, or at least it ran through the machine here. She charged him 20,000 pesos. Actually, the little scenario above went pretty well considering that we're in Mexico. In most Mexican villages you have trouble finding a phone, let alone a fax machine.
We went to dinner with Peter and Diane at a place called SANTOS in "Old Town". Had a good meal of beef-ka-bob for a reasonable price.