Author: Neil Scheuerlein

Published 04/26/2025
Up at 6 am, breakfast, bible reading and showers. Then gather the laundry and get up to the parking lot where the laundry lady picks up at 9 am. Then we did some repair work on the insulation in the engine room. It is all metal foil over foam with tape to keep it in place. The foam is glued in place, but needs a little help occasionally.
Then I took a look at the battery charger that is supposed to charge the engine start battery. I found that it has two fuses that were both blown, I was headed to the parts store for new ones, but asked our neighbor if he had any, which he did. Score! It works! I have been dealing with this for quite a while. 
Reneé, Julie and I toured the power cat on the side tie at the end of the dock. This is MV Doublewide with Bill Fleenor on board. The boat is huge, there are only two cabins but both have walk around queen size beds, it is very large with a regular household kitchen style refrigerator etc,
Then Reneé went to the store. Afterwards we had lunch and looked for things to do.
I updated the blog, I had attempted to do that a few days ago and could not update the pictures, turned out it was due to an update on their end. Kyle (our son) helped identify what the issue was for us and got around our problem. So, I was able to update it.
I checked engine hours since the last oil change and of course it is time to change the oil in the engine. It is supposed to be done every 250 hours, and we are at 246). Of course we had the issue where we lost 3 quarts of oil and had the oil leak, but the next thing we are going to do is run across to San Carlos and that will be at least 12 hours across. So, probably ought to just do it.

 

Published 04/26/2025
Up at 2:30 and underway heading to Santa Rosalía. The moon rose a little before we got up so we had a little light to work with. We want to get to Santa Rosalía before 4 pm, and the only way to do that is get underway by 3 am. Breakfast and bible reading underway.
We had almost no wind all day, very calm, flat water. We arrived by 3:30 and got checked in. The boat next to us is SV Catharpin Blue Julie and Keven Hornback we have been chatting on No Foreign Land (an app) and Facebook for about a year. Finally got to meet! Down the dock from us is Vanessa and Joe Munday on SV Mundays off. There are several other boats here that we know. Which is somewhat surprising as there are only about 20 slips total here. We went to the micro brewery for dinner and beer, and company.
Finally we headed off to bed about 8:30. A very long day.

No pictures today.

Published 04/26/2025
Up about 5:30, we went to bed early. Breakfast and underway by 7:15 am. Very calm. Bible reading underway.
I have been noticing that our autopilot tends to not quite get us where we want to go. It is marginally “OK” but tends to wind up about a half mile to starboard over about 5 miles tracking. Today was a perfect day to address this. Flat water, wind around 3 knots, 5 miles off shore. So, I called Raymarine tech support and asked for help. Thy said “swing the compass” I said how? And they walked me through the process to do that, now I am checking It is doing much better now! That took about a half hour or so.
Now, about the speed through the water probe….. it is an Airmar DST 810, marketed and recommended for my Raymarine Axiom chart plotters. Well, it reads low probably about 1 knot, based on the GPS speed. Since it is a paddle wheel that depends on water causing it to spin, I am not looking for it to be 100% accurate, but the true wind speed calculator in the chart plotter uses the speed through the water. I don’t know why it doesn’t have an option to use the speed from the GPS, but oh well.
In any case, the directions for calibration direct downloading an app from Airmar to calibrate the probe. I can’t find it on the App Store, and when I go to the webpage for Airmar, I sometimes get to the AppStore and a message that says not available for download in your area. (We are in Mexico, so that might be it?).
I called for help, and was told the guy that knows this stuff is out today, try back tomorrow, but that he usually asks about software updates on the phone. I was at 18.3, and the latest is 18.4, so not very far out of date. I updated the software and was able to download the app. Now I have to go through the process of calibration, the first step requires the boat to be still (not what we are doing now). So, it will wait for this afternoon.

Published 04/26/2025
Up at 6:45, breakfast, sourdough cinnamon rolls! Then watched the service from Gracepoint in Savannah. A short call from my mom, we talk periodically. We have seen two of the boats here in the anchorage leave so far this morning, we are down to three boats.
The plan for today is shrimp cocktail for happy hour and bbq’d steak for dinner. One thing about the bbq is that it is a stainless steel bbq and it sits on the rail. If the wind is blowing at all, it cools the outside a bunch, and makes it effectively not work. I have tried using an umbrella to divert the wind away from it. I have also used the lighting button to bypass the regulator and put more propane into the bbq so it will heat up. I have a thermometer that shows temperature inside the bbq, and while it does not have numbers it has three colors and a line half way through each, blue, yellow and red. I have seen the needle pointed at the middle of the yellow zone (using the bypass button) and then I let the button go and the wind blows and it goes down into the blue zone. This makes it very difficult to actually get a decent cook of the meat. Today should be more calm and the bbq should work.
We have been chatting with Joe and Vanessa Munday (we met them in 2020 in Santa Rosalía and we have seen Joe in Savannah, we have also seen them in Mazatlan etc) and also another guy who has an Island Packet boat (same manufacturer as ours) here in the Sea, he and I have been chatting for a couple of months we connected on Facebook and have been playing tag through this season just missing each other by either a day or two or a days sail away from each other. Both of these boats are going to be in Santa Rosalía by Tuesday or Wednesday. We expect to be there late Tuesday.

We had shrimp for happy hour, and then split a pork chop for dinner (huge!). Janice (husband Colin) from SV Kaya a trimaran came by and chatted for a few minutes. We got showers and turned in early.

Published 04/23/2025
Up at 5 am, underway by 5:45. We both slept well, and we got underway and did our bible reading while sailing (we sailed for a few minutes with the engine off). The start of the day had been much as predicted for wind. That is, almost none. Then we expected some wind, up to 12 – 14 knots from the west, instead we got 12 or so from the north (behind us). We had a small swell also from the north. Some where in here the wind shifted and was coming from the south west at about 12 knots, this was when we were able to sail for a bit. Then the wind dropped to nothing again, actually less than 1 knot. So, motor back on, jib sail put away, and we continued. This was about 1/2 way to Puerto Don Juan. Then the wind started coming up and continued going up (Windy the weather app had predicted no wind for this part of the sea and time of day), finally getting to about 27 knots. Of course it stayed above 20 knots as we got to where we were going to turn into Puerto Don Juan. This made it difficult to get the main sail in, finally we got in and found a spot to anchor. The mainsail was not put away correctly, a real mess, but it was mostly out of the wind.
Even in here we had 12-15 knots as we anchored. This harbor is protected and considered a hurricane hole. In 2023 there was a hurricane in this area and about 22 boats were here with no damage. A couple of hours later, with no wind I put out the main sail and rolled it up again.
We watched a movie after dinner then bed.

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