We got up about 7, had breakfast did our devotions, listened to the net, and then I started to do an oil change. Our plan was to get the bottom cleaned, do an oil change and be out of the marina by noon or thereabouts, with a short 10 mile jaunt to Balandra (on Isla Carmen). The bottom cleaner was supposed to be at the boat by 9 am. At 10 I called and was told he would be there in 10 or 15 minutes. He showed up and went right to work. It is kind of expensive here. $1.50 per foot, compared to $1 a foot in La Paz or other places I have seen. Almost as much as San Diego. This is not too surprising, I don’t believe that any locals actually use this marina. Everyone we saw that did not work there was a gringo. The price to use a mooring ball was $1/foot per day or $2.50 per foot per week. Oh and while you could anchor here, it was really frowned on.
In any case I started into the oil change. I have (had now) an electric pump and collection tank for doing the oil change. Unlike a car, you don’t drain the oil, you suck it out via the tube for the dip stick. So, I started. It seemed to work and after about a half hour (it takes a while to pull 6.5 quarts of oil out through a straw) figured it was done and pulled the oil filter off. Promptly getting an oily mess to flow down the side of the engine and engine room. I tried to suck up as much oil as I could out of the filter hole and then the bilge of the engine room. Eventually giving up and wiping the oil up. In the mean time, I poured a gallon of fresh oil into the engine. I cleaned up the mess then checked the oil level. Way too high, and dirty. OOPS, I finally figured out that while the pump motor worked the pump did not, and I had not managed to remove very much of the old oil before I added the oil to the engine.
At this point, I needed to leave and come back and start over. I also needed to pay for the bottom cleaning at the shop. So, I ran into the marina and paid for the bottom cleaning, found out where to get rid of the oil and went to the market to check on oil as I did not have enough to do another oil change. They did not have the oil I wanted (15W40), but said they would have it at closing time (7 pm) so I had to come back.
I went back to the boat, and we had lunch, followed by my taking the oil out of the engine again.
I used the manual vacuum pump and pulled about 8 quarts of oil out of the engine. We poured that into the electric vacuum pump tank and closed all the vents on it. I poured the 5 quarts of oil that I had left into the engine and checked the level, and it looked about right. By this time it was about 4 pm.
We took the old oil and stuff to the fuel dock and got rid of everything. Actually the cost was reasonable (5 pesos per liter). Then we took the dinghy over to the main part of the marina and got a couple of beers at the market and went up to the captains lounge to do some internet stuff for an hour or so, then headed out to the Tripui hotel and restaurant for dinner.
We had fajitas, Renee’ had chicken and I had beef. The price was a little on the high side, but there really were only three options for restaurants here, the market (kind of like a 7-11 only higher priced, and nice sit down restaurant at the marina (we had diner here the other night, and it was pretty pricy) and the Tripui hotel. So, we had our fajitas. The food was pretty good, (not great) the atmosphere was excellent, and the service pretty good as well. Finally at about 6:30 we headed back to the market, and had to wait until almost 7:30 to get the oil. We then went back to the boat and decided to take showers and go to bed.
Not exactly what we had planned.
If you want to know where we are, click this link:
https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking
But, hey! You’re retired so what’s the problem…?