Published 3/18/25
Up at 6:30, breakfast (cereal) listened to the service from Savannah, TN. Then got my tools together and went after the solenoid valve on the propane system. Of course I don’t have that spare (about $189 at West Marine), and no they don’t have it in Puerto Escondido, or Loretto, or probably Santa Rosalia, all our next stops in the next week or so. They probably won’t have it in Puerto Peñasco either, but it can be had in the US almost anywhere. For example, West Marine in Phoenix, or San Diego they have them in stock, just walk in and get it. So, we will be 4 hours south of the store in Phoenix, the question is can we get it delivered, to where we will be when we get there, or will we have to make an 8 hour drive (round trip) for this part? One way or the other we will have it fixed in a couple of weeks.
In the meantime, I did find an old used solenoid valve in the spare parts on board. While it does not work, I was able to take it apart and get it stuck open so that it will pass the propane, this means that we don’t have the safety/convenience of being able to easily turn it on/off from inside, but we can still cook. So, we will have to go on deck and open the valve then cook, then close the valve. At least we still get hot meals.
Things to note we live on the ocean, so EVERYTHING rusts, I was unable to take the screws out of the installed solenoid valve, as they are steel (not stainless steel) and they were very rusted. It was good that we had a couple of old valves to work with. One of the screws that I took out (I thought all 4 were stainless, but perhaps one was different) when I screwed it back in the head came off, as I said EVERYTHING rusts.
After lunch we got the kayak down and went ashore. We took a hike to the other end of the beach and up the ridge to look south to Isla Partida, we thought about waling along the ridge to the west, but the wind was really blowing and the walk did not look safe. So, we came back down and walked up into the canyon and looked to the west and north from the other side of the island. Then back to the beach and kayak. Once back on the boat we had a break then defrosted the freezer.
This is something that has to be done periodically, it is not automatic like freezers at home. We move everything from the drawer fridge to the Yeti (everything in the Yeti gets to sit out (bread and stuff like that. Then everything in the freezer moves to the drawer fridge and we turn it off and run a fan into it, This time we are also using a blow dryer. As the ice melts and drains down to the bottom we run the pump to send the drains overboard. This takes a bit more power than normal (especially the blow dryer, so we started the generator. Added benefit, we will have hot water for showers. This sounds like a long process, but it only takes a little more than a half hour or so.
