We got up early and were ready to get underway by about 8 am. We had gotten diesel the day before, Jerry cans from the fuel dock in carts with help from Omar the marina guy. 47 gallons back and forth a couple of times.
Anyway we had the boat ready to go and dropped the lines as the port captain announced that the port was open on the radio. Issues this morning, the back light on the chart plotter at the helm is out. Which means effectively we can’t use it on deck. Oh and the refrigerator is not working well. This promises to be a very quiet trip from here to Mazatlan. About 230 miles, NO wind. We got out of Topolobampo,, and turned south. Flat calm water, I engaged the auto pilot from below, and checked when it expected us to get to Mazatlan, which was around 3 pm. Good it will be daylight when we get there. Bad, it is at low tide, and the harbor master has recommended coming in at high tide,
We had lunch on deck, and then dinner. Somewhere along the way, I pumped out the holding tank, then started the water maker. We filled the water tank and shut down the generator, and checked the expected time to get to Mazatlan, still around 3 pm. What makes this odd, is that normally 7.2 knots is about as fast as we go, ever. To get there by 3 we had to average about 7 knots. This is pretty hard to do, but since we were running on the engine and there was no waves, or wind, we did the trip in about 30 hours. Probably our longest distance yet in one trip at 230 miles, but not our longest passage by time. We watched the sunset and then turning to the east saw the moon, and just kept going. We saw a whale, but no pictures, and we had the typical seagull’s circle the boat several times, we even had one land on the top of our mast. This bird decided to perch on the wind direction pointer, we have two of these, one goes to an instrument on deck the other is visible from the cockpit. The pointer that does not go to the instrument had two little flags that show where there is no wind (about 30 degrees off the stern to port and starboard), now it only has one the other hit the deck.
Along the way, Renee was making an effort to schedule Covid tests. She found a clinic which allowed online registration. She struggled through the only Spanish site to schedule the appointments…initially on Saturday (because the clinic is closed on Sunday). Then she realized that Saturday being 4 days prior to travel may not work. The test results may not be accepted. She communicated with the clinic by way of Whatsap and successfully changed them to Monday. Now we have to hope we get the results in 48 hours as we fly out on Wednesday.
Once we got to Mazatlan, we anchored near an island in about 20 feet of water. We got on the phone and called support for Raymarine (chart plotter, and instruments). The various numbers we had for refrigerator techs and the marina to double check our slip. Then had happy hour then dinner and went to bed about 7 for me, and 8 for Renee’. A very uneventful trip. Things that don’t work now:
- The refrigerator, we will get that looked at in Mazatlan, the marina office said they will get us a refrigerator tech to the boat.
- The chart plotter back light. The Raymaine place in Puerto Vallarta said the chart plotter would have to be sent to the states for repair, but that it was too old to get fixed. Instead they said call “this guy” he works on this stuff, but he is hard to understand. So, I called Victor Gonzales, (who speaks some English is very soft spoke and might have a speech impediment as well, as in very hard to understand) and he is Puerto Vallarta. He says he may be able to fix the back light. But he does not work on the instruments.
- The water heater (which stopped leaking??)
- Wind speed instrument (this stopped working at the beginning of the trip from Topolobampo)
- Boat speed instrument (this is the little wheel under the boat that spins, we still have several GPS’s that give boat speed)
This is life on a boat, what is broken today??
