Category: 2020 – 2021 Season 2

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:

1. The refrigerator, we will get that looked at in Mazatlan, the marina office said they will get us a refrigerator tech to the boat.
2. 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.
3. The water heater (which stopped leaking??)
4. Wind speed instrument (this stopped working at the beginning of the trip from Topolobampo)
5. 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??

As we really need to get to Mazatlan in time to get Covid testing done and get on the plane by Feb. 3 to fly back to Sacramento for the skiing trip with the kids and grandkids, we are planning to leave and sail south. Somethings we need to do is get fuel, get drinking water (our water maker still has issues). So, we checked the weather, Tuesday WINDY, VERY. Wednesday through Friday not so much, Saturday Windy. So, we looked out the window, by noon on Tuesday, the water was flat calm, smooth. Almost no wind at all. But we are about 7 miles in from the Sea here and somewhat protected. 

By late afternoon the wind had started to come up, and by 7 pm or so, I turned on the instruments to check the windspeed, bouncing to 40 knots. Which is VERY windy. We are thankful we are in a marina. In the meantime, we walked to the store and got a few supplies. I worked on the blog, which required going up to the office to get on WiFi. I was able to publish about the last 2 weeks worth of posts and pictures. We had a quite dinner and as the wind calmed down a bit, we got some sleep. 

Wednesday we got up at 7:30 with plans to get underway by about noon. We walked out to get water and check the fuel dock. Double checked the price of fuel and height of the dock to see where we needed to have fenders in place. We have an option, either take the boat to the fuel dock and deal with figuring out how to get the fenders high enough to block the boat away from the dock, or take Jerry cans to the gas station and carry it back to the boat and pour it in. Both are somewhat difficult, and for once the cost of fuel here does not have the added dockage fees. We have paid as much as 12% for docking the boat while getting fuel. While that sounds high, consider the fuel docks in the states. Typically the fuel at the dock is about $1 more per gallon than at the gas station. Which is between 25 and 33%. We are still deciding which way to go with this, and waiting for the wind to come down a bit more. It is not horrible, but still bouncing around 10-15 knots. 

As we are still thinking about this, and doing the last minute stuff, Omar came back to tell us that the port is “closed” that is a determination by the Port Captain. Leaving Port with a closed port results in Fines, and issues with the authorities. NO THANKS! So, we will stay here until they open the port. Maybe while we wait we will get diesel.  

We woke up and it was calm, and Predict Wind (the weather app we use) said it would be a great day to head south. I walked over to the fuel dock to check out how to approach with the boat to get fuel and Renee’ filled our water bottle for drinking water. Our water maker is still not making great water, it is acceptable, but not great so we get drinking water from the store. About that time Omar came and told us the port was closed and we could not leave, as in not even go get fuel. So, back to plan B and carry jerry cans. Oh well.

 

We got up at 7am, had breakfast and Renee’ took the laundry in while I worked on trying to figure out what is going on with our water heater. It has a small intermittent leak. First I vacuumed all the water out and tried to see where it was leaking. I thought perhaps it was the safety valve, as it is as I said intermittent. But that is not it. I checked the cold water in and hot water out lines and did not find it. Finally I called for help. Probably a significant reason I did not find the leak is that I did not want to fix it. The marina fixit guy was down, and looked at for awhile, and said, “the water heater leaks”. So, I looked online for a replacement, and checked with other Island Packet 445 owners on how to take the old one out and get a new one in. The problem is that the water heater measures 16 inches W x 22 inches D x 16 inches H, and the access hole is 17.5” by 11.5” (actually about 1” smaller in both directions as that is the measurement of the plate that goes in the hole. So, the situation is that the water heater leaks about 2 gallons per hour, and as built there is no shut off valve for it. So, we installed one, and will have to be careful how we use the water heater for the time being. This is a boat water heater and it is heated by the engine when it is running (like the heater in a car) and by an electric heater when on shore power. We have to keep it turned off when the water is turned off, and we will have to keep the water in it when the engine is running, which means keeping the water pump one while motoring. I found the heater on line for about $500, but the hard part is not finding and buying the heater but getting it to the boat. It weighs less than 40 lbs, and will be delivered to our sons home in the Sacramento area and will fly back to the boat with us as luggage. The other issue is how to go about getting the old one out and the new one in. I asked other IP445 owners if any had done it and how, and one replied that he did it about 3 years ago in St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands). He described the cut that he made in the settee and how he used aluminum blocks behind it to rebuild when he was done. I plan on taking a bunch of pictures as this is done. I also sent an email requesting help from the factory on how this was supposed to be done.

Regarding this trip that we just completed, we were very blessed to be able to see God’s handiwork every day, both in the mountains, and canyons as well as in the people. We saw the missions and we saw a very gracious people. We took the time daily to read the Bible, we are in the process of reading through the Bible in a year, we have missed one day so far, we were late for breakfast and our tour guide was a little bit early, then we forgot when we got back at the end of the day. As an example of the people, our taxi driver here in Topolobampo sent a series of GIFs via WhatsApp this morning that were all christian with great meaning.

At the end of the day, I have tightened all the fittings on the aft head pump (which has been running periodically) and I think I slowed down the cycle, I tightened the spring on one of the hatches that was drifting closed, the isolation valve for the water heater has been installed, and the laundry has been done. I have also gone through all the pictures from the last week. The kitchen faucet screen has been plugging gradually for some time, and it (of course) is not obvious how it comes apart for cleaning. Well, I finally thought about where we bought it (Lowes) and looked through the receipts until I found what brand it is (not labeled above the sink, and about 3 hours work to get at from the bottom) then looked it up on YouTube to find out how to disassemble and clean it. That is done too!

As a note, the reason that some of these things have not been done is that they are way harder to do than the same thing in a house. For example the cycling head pump is a similar problem to the toilet running in the bathroom that you jiggle the handle to and it stops (for awhile). In this case it is a vacuum pump. The hoses and fittings got dislodged when I had to move the vacuum tank a little bit to install the new batteries. To access the vacuum pump the following had to be done:

1. The table has to be put up
2. The cushions on the port settee all have to be moved out of the way, in this case to the forward stateroom.
3. The bottom of the settee makes into a full sized bed, and this must be pulled out.
4. The cover over the compartment that the pump is in has to be removed (just pick it up)
5. All the stuff in this compartment has to be moved.
6. The vacuum pump is under a cover in this compartment (made by a previous owner, I believe). This cover is a marvel. It has two small supports one forward and the other aft in the compartment. The top piece has two screws that go through the top into the aft support. It also has three screws that go down into the vertical wall of this box. Because of the shape and location of the access to this compartment, there are no screws that go into the forward support, Also because of the size of the cover and the size, shape and location of the access and the compartment, one of the two supports must be removed to get the two pieces of the box out of the compartment, which must be done to access the pump. Oh, and a retainer for the batteries sticks into the compartment and “just” fits above the lid to this box.  Note that to remove the support for the lid to this box and then to reinstall it, two screws must be removed/installed while holding the cover of the box out of the way.
7. So, now it is out of the way and I have access! Roughly a half hour to get that far in.

There are about a half dozen hose clamps and 8 screws into the top of the pump that hold a rubber diaphragm in place. I tightened all of them, but really don’t want to go too tight, as, oh yeah, we can’t get parts here!

Then put it all back the way it was when I started. (A 5 minute job with an hour of access!). By the way, I have been down to this pump 3 or 4 times, and there are supposed to be 11 screws to hold it all together, 3 for each support (1 missing from each) two through the top into the aft support (both are there) and 3 through the top into the side panel (1 missing here as well), so there are 3 out of 11 screws missing, and I don’t have any of the right size.

Finding stainless fasteners here in Mexico in these small ports is very difficult and while it can be done, most of the time, sometimes you just can’t find them. As an example I point out that I spent 3 days looking for the right size bolts to fix the hatches and finally got the right size, but the head of the bolt was too big, so I had to go back to the states and get Allen head bolts. Those hatches took the better part of a year to get fixed, with multiple trips for parts some I thought I needed and some I actually did need. It included not one or two, but three trips back to the states to get parts. The problem with not using stainless, is that we are sitting in sea water, which means that there is salt in the air. Most of the time, I don’t just want stainless steel fasteners, but type 316 stainless steel. This is much more expensive and hard to come by in the states, much less Mexico.

Regarding the three hour estimate for access to the bottom of the sink, I believe I wrote about that way earlier in the blog, I am not sure exactly when it was, but it was a matter of a couple of weeks finding out how to drop the box above the engine and access the bottom of the sink. In the process I broke one of the engine room lights, so a plumbing job that would take about an hour (maybe 3) took about 3 weeks and turned from a plumbing issue to electrical and re-insulating the engine room. Working on things on a boat is just hard.

Well, dishes are done, that required either using the hot water heater or heating water on the stove to do the dishes, we elected to heat the water on the stove. No automatic dishwasher here. The clothes came back folded (not the way we do it, but sort of good enough) but they had to be put away, we had 5 loads of laundry that got done today, and it all fits in the various cupboards and lockers, but it has to go a certain way to get it in. It is now after 8:30 pm, and we are going to go up and take a shower here in the marina. Good news they put a door on the shower the week while we were gone!  It is all good and I will try to get this all published tomorrow!

One last thing, had to check the weather! It still shows that tomorrow is very windy (too windy for our taste) and that it will be good for Wednesday through Friday, so we are going to leave Wednesday about noon for a 240 or so mile trip at 5 to 7 knots. 48 to 36 hours.  If we sail more it will be slower, which is what we plan to do. Oh, and yes I need to get diesel before we leave. OOPS! Omar the guy here at the marina doesn’t work tomorrow, oh well, we will figure something out. We have enough fuel, but I really wanted to top off before we headed south.

We got up at 7 am, had breakfast at the hotel then back to the room for packing. Then out the door and across the street to the station to get on the train.

Pretty uneventful, but it is nice to be in first class. Even nicer to be traveling during covid, in that well over half of the seats are empty. When we go to the bar car to see the sights, it is only moderately crowded. The car where our seats are is arranged in 6 sets of 8 seats, pairs facing each other on both sides of the car. The row behind us has a faintly of 6 or so taking up that many seats. The row in front of us has a couple on the right side of the car, taking up 2 out of 8 seats, the row in front of them also has 2 taking up 8 seats etc. Oh, and we have two seats out of 8 in our row as well.  The seats are high backed with headrests and arm rests and tilt back quite a ways. Each side of the car has a table with sides that fold down making it plenty comfortable. There is a pair of bathrooms in each car, and a unisex bathroom in the bar car. As I have said we are in first class, and we are at the back of the train. The bar car is at the back of the train and we are the first car forward of that, there is one more first class car ahead of us, then the dining car with upstairs dining and view. Forward of that car is a bar car for the executive class, then a couple of executive class cars and then the luggage car to separate economy from the executive cars. Forward of the economy class are the two engines pulling the train.

The service is pretty good, either lunch or breakfast is included in the price of the ticket, and lunch is served in the dining car. We elected to have lunch, and it is the same menu as the trip up. One of the waiters finds us on the train, and gets our order then will go get our lunch made up. The order was taken at about 10:30 and lunch will be about 1 pm. We were in the bar car seeing the sights when he found us and brought the menus. Lunch will be in 4 courses again, and all non alcoholic beverages are included in our tickets. We had coffee in the bar car in the comfy swivel seats there. The front half of the bar car has low swivel seats arranged with two facing each other and a small table in between. There are about 8 or 12 of these seats and then the bar with the bar tender. The back half of the bar car has bar stools around the outside and windows that open all the way around. There is a bar to hold drinks at the windows, and another bar down the middle to hold drinks as well. Other than the fact that the temperature is in the 40’s, it is a great place to hangout and see the sights!

We have had a couple of stops since we got on the train, it started at Creel, and we got on at Divisidora. The family that was behind us has disembarked and I think that there is one other couple in this car with us. Like I said there is a pretty low number of people in the train. As a snack we had one of the grapefruit from the day before, very juicy and sweet.

One of the nice services they do on the train is have the steward(ess) come and tell all the passengers about upcoming things on the trip. For example we were just told about the “most important part of the trip” and that we should go to the bar car to see it. This particular part of the trip has the train going through several short tunnels and then a much longer tunnel in the last tunnel, the train drops several hundred feet and makes a 180 degree turn inside the tunnel, then when it comes out of the tunnel, it makes another 180 degree turn as it crosses a bridge. We were able to get pictures on the way up and video on the way down. Also, as this is the “most important part of the trip” virtually all of the first class passengers were in the bar car, all of about 25 of us! There are 96 seats in first class.

We just had lunch. Served in 4 courses, first course was a tamale, second course a broth, third course chicken breast (I am not sure when we have had chicken that was that dry) and finally a desert of a small chocolate pie with ice cream on it. About an hour for lunch. Not like we have a schedule to keep.

We had cell service for a few seconds, long enough to find out that our conversation a month or so ago on Satellite, while free to us cost him $35 for 6 minutes. We still have some figuring out to do as to exactly how to use the satellite phone to the best advantage. It was charged as an international call. What is bad about that is if we had called him, it would have been deducted from our free 150 minutes per month. Like I said we have some figuring out how to use this best.

After lunch and a nap, we played a game of rummy 500. Well okay, we use the same rules but we don’t keep score, as we wind up being too competitive. This is a good compromise for us. We also had the last of our expensive beer.

Earlier in this blog I mentioned that we had been told we needed lots of small bills. We had several thousand pesos in 200 peso notes. Which we had sort of thought of as small bills ($10 each). We also had a few 100 peso notes ($5 each), 50 pesos notes ($2.5 each)and some 20 peso notes ($1 each). Probably a dozen or more of these bills smaller than 200 pesos. This was no where near enough SMALL bills. We had several lunches that were less than 200 pesos, including drinks. So, how much do you leave for a tip? What about when you go to the store to buy a bottle of water? (30 pesos) or you want to buy a thing that someone made like a basket and it is 80 pesos. There was only 1 ATM that we saw, and our experience with them is no small bills, so we did not try. So, should you contemplate taking this trip my suggestion is that you bring about 5000 pesos ($250) in small bills less than 100 pesos each. Also don’t be afraid to carry coins of 1, 2 or 5 pesos each.

We got up around 7 am, had breakfast (with a very good view), then out to our tour.  The driver had met us at the bus, given us his card and described his tour. What I liked about him was his command of the English language. Yes, we are in their country and I am the one “at fault” here for traveling in their country without learning the language, but I still appreciate the effort to cater to all languages.  In any case, he was on time and had a GMC Tahoe to drive us around. He said we needed something like this for our planned trip. 4 wheel drive and a comfortable seat.

Our first stop out on the tour was a small grocery store for him (Roy) to get a drink, and the second was another small store to get gas. Roy said there was a small town on our route that had gas with regular pumps, and was a little cheaper, but the last time he used them he got water in the gas and spent a bunch of money getting the truck fixed. This “gas station” delivered the fuel from the tank in the back yard of the store to the truck with empty water bottles about 5 liters at a time. Biggest advantage I saw with this is the ability to see if there is water in the fuel.

After this we drove for a while, and stopped at a little restaurant/store and used the bathroom. We saw a few armored cars going the opposite direction from us, Roy said that they were from the gold mine on this road, the mine is owned by a Canadian, they used to use helicopters and planes to move the gold, but after an accident where they lost the plane they switched to armored cars.  Then back on the road (we will get back to this restaurant later). We saw a man on the side of the road in one of the towns we drove through selling bags of grapefruit. Three to a bag for 20 pesos (about $1) we got a bag, but did not eat any on this day.  The grapefruit are grown at the bottom of the canyon where the climate is “tropical”, and if you have ever grown citrus you are aware that it has to be hot for oranges and lemons to grow and hotter for limes and grapefruit. Roy said that the temperatures in the canyon in the summer time reach 50 degrees Celsius (about 122 degrees Fahrenheit) so the locals typically have two homes one on the bottom of the canyon and one up on the rim. They have goats, it is too hot for them on the canyon floor.

We drove and saw great views and then we turned off the main road and went into a small town, then out the back of the town and up a mountain. VERY steep, about a half mile out of town the pavement ended. We drove about 20 miles further on the dirt road, details below. Roy said that this road went all the way to Los Mochis on the coast.

We drove further out on the road and then off the “main” dirt road onto a side street of it. From this point it was about another 20 miles or so to get to the lookout point. We stopped at a small shop along the way, and while we were stopped Renee’ went in to look at what was being sold, and I talked to Roy about where we were going.  He described the point and I used an app called MAPS.ME that works offline (we had very intermittent cell service all day. The app said that we had 8.4 miles to go to the lookout point, and that it was a 4 hour walk or a 2 hour drive. I should point out that Roy said, no it should only be 40 minutes or so, or about 12 mph! He was pretty accurate. This road was not something to be taken lightly. That it was a “maintained” road would not be completely inaccurate, but it had no gravel, a couple of signs along the way, and not much else. On occasion there were cliffs on one side or the other of the road with no barrier. Because of this, we really did not want to talk to Roy as he was driving.

This lookout point was the highest point overlooking the canyon. The city below us was Urique which was on the floor of the canyon. Roy told us that he does a tour to this town, but that it requires an overnight stay in town.

He told us some of the history of the area, showed us a hotel or two that were really nice, one that has a winery (Renee’ got coffee in the bar), and a mission. We saw sights and views that were breathtaking, and finally it was lunch time.

We stopped at the restaurant where we had used the bathroom on the way out, and Roy suggested the “Aqua-Chile” we thought what the heck lets go with that. It was served in a large stone dish with three legs. Pretty spicy, and was a cold dish of shrimp (about 20 or so) cilantro, cucumber and fresh red onions. This was an excellent lunch. As Renee’ has pointed out several times, the food is more than half the reason to travel!

After lunch, it was about an hour or so more to drive back to our hotel, and we said goodbye to Roy and went to our room and relaxed for awhile before dinner. This tour was supposed to take about 5 hours, Roy picked us up at 9 am and dropped us off at almost 3 in the afternoon, we were satisfied with our tour!

Dinner was at the hotel and was pretty good, not as good as lunch but still worth the price. Then off to our room and bed. This is our last night away from the boat. Tomorrow is the Chepe train back to Los Mochis.