2021-12 (December) – Page 4 – Make Me Laugh Again

Rocks! November 28 – December 18, 2021

Let me start by saying, this is a very long post, and it is somewhat embarrassing to write.

We are on the hard, we had ordered new sails last March, but they were late getting here. Always “just a couple more days away”. Anyway, we needed to be in Barra de Navidad on December 2nd for the Panama Posse seminars this year.

So, we finally said “put the old sails back on, and we will head out from Puerto Vallarta on November 28th”. The sail loft that is getting our new sails had our old ones and told us to only use about 1/2 of it, he marked a spot near the top on the leech to not go out any further.

It is about 160 miles. We really don’t like doing overnight passages, so we had mapped out a couple of stops.

The first one was at Ipala a point about 40 ish miles from La Cruz, the marina we were in. We have been there a couple of times, and it is an adequate anchorage. There are a couple of obstacles in the little bay. There are pangas (fishing boats), fish pens, (netted areas) and, oh yeah there are ROCKS. We got there mid afternoon, and set up to anchor, this means my wife takes the helm, I handle the anchor, she has two phones running the anchor alarms, and an iPad with Navionics running, so she has better detail than just the chart plotter.

I had reviewed the chart before heading forward to the anchor, but reversed the fish pens and the ROCKS in my head. We headed in and were just about to drop anchor when I saw the rocks behind me and slightly to stbd. We turned and moved away from them, but still managed to bounce a couple of times. Reneé misjudged where we were and I could not back her up from where I was.

We found a safe spot to anchor and after getting setup, I went snorkeling to see the damage. There were a couple of chips the size of silver dollars that I saw, but nothing “major” we debated continuing south to Barra de Navidad, but thought about being 160 miles from the nearest boat lift with a potential problem. So, we turned around the next day and headed back to La Cruz.

Of course there was no cell service, and the satellite phone was being finicky so we could not call ahead to the boat yards until we were in Banderas bay. On the way north, we had the normal sailors wind, that is to say it was coming from exactly where we wanted to go, and it was way too fast. We had 35+ knots on the nose with gusts to 48 knots. Our OLD mainsail, has had issues for some time, and as I mentioned before, we could not use very much of it anyway. We had it out straight back to stabilize the boat while motoring into the wind with probably 3 to 4 foot waves. A couple of hours of this, and Reneé said something about the sail and I looked up and saw it was ripped from the leech forward about 4 feet. So, we rolled it in, and kept going. Once we rounded Cabo Corrientes things calmed down and it was relatively peaceful getting to La Cruz. We even saw a pod of whales.

There are two yards here that could haul us out Opequimar and La Cruz. Neither could take us right away, so we headed to La Cruz as they thought they could get us this week, whereas Opequimar needed someone to leave to have room for us.

We were scheduled to haul on Dec 1st, at 3:30 pm, we called about noon to check in. They said there was a problem with the brake on the travel lift, and they were unsure about lifting our boat. As a side note, a friend had posted a picture from San Carlos yard on November 30 (as in the day before) of a boat getting dropped there due to a broken strap. So, we were really okay with the delay. The yard had parts coming on Saturday, and would need a few days to get back on schedule. We rented a car, coordinated with some neighbors to watch our boat and drove to Barra.

When we got back to the boat, we checked in with the yard and we were told that it would be Saturday December 12. We tried to get the old sails down, actually we tried to get the loft to take the old sails down (our new sails are here now!) but due to other work going on they were not available.

Finally, on Saturday 12/12 we got hauled out. The people doing the repair were ready, and immediately ground out the scratches and cut two holes in the bottom of the keel to let the water out, about 5 gallons. I videoed the water draining, I started about 30 seconds after it started for 7 minutes and then watched for a few more minutes. The first estimate from the repair guy after looking and before the grinding was splashing on Tuesday 12/14. Well, that didn’t happen, they have had someone with a heat-gun drying this out for two days so far.

In the meantime, today the sail loft came for the sails. Three guys at 9 am, they took down the jib, then the staysail, then started in on the main. They took a couple of hours off when the wind came up early afternoon, but 5 of them came back and worked until after 6 pm removing the old sail. I think the biggest piece might have been 10 square feet. It didn’t come out of the mast easy. Most of the time one of the guys was up the mast pulling bits and pieces of the sail out.

Right now, the boat is in the yard, we have no sails (yet), the keel is open and draining/drying and we have shore power.

I communicated with Bill Bolin (previous exec at Island Packet) about how much water was in the keel:

My question to him:

Hello, we bumped our keel on some rocks here in Mexico. We got hauled out about 2 weeks later and when they ground down the two worst areas they cut into the keel and water gushed out. Probably on the order of 5 gallons or so. The water was clear, and did not slow to a trickle till it had been running for about 10 minutes. (I have 7 minutes of video and missed the first 30 seconds and it was several more minutes before it stopped).

My question is, about this void, is it supposed to be there, or do I have another issue to look for?

IP 445-11.

Thank you for your time

His response:

Neil, sorry to hear that happened! there is typically a gap between the sides of the ballast material and the molded keel. I suspect on a 445 that might equate to 5 to 10 gallons of space for water to get into. That water would’ve been pressurized coming into the bottom of the keel and would find its way into any nook and cranny. Just need to let it dry out a bit, don’t think you need to force Erin “air in” or anything else. And make a glass repair as appropriate.

Bottom line, the boat is safe, the damage to the keel is repairable, the new sails are here and will be put up when we are back in the water, our pride, well it goes before a fall anyway, so it will recover.

Today (Saturday 11/18/2021), they applied the resin and fiberglass repair to the keel, and we have a tentatively scheduled splash date of tomorrow. We will get some touch up to the bottom paint as well. I have spoken with Mike (the sail guy) and our sails should be on the boat prior to splashing the boat, and will be put up on Monday. He only has workers until 2 tomorrow (Saturday) and the wind comes up in the afternoon. So, next week we should have sails, and the repairs done on the keel. Only issues left are maintenance/normal repairs that have to be done because it is a boat!

On Saturday, the final touch up of the bottom paint was applied and we splashed at 1 pm right on schedule. Total costs for this repair was:

$900 for the work,

$1148 for the Yard

$490 for the inn

About $37 per night in the marina, figure at least a week more than if we had been able to stay in the anchorage. So at least another $300.

So, ball park of about $3,000 for this repair.

Our boat getting set on the hard for the keel work.

A view of how bad the damage was from the rocks, there were a couple of scratches on the the other side as well.

This was taken a day or so later, note the wet spot under the hole, it was still dripping.

1st layer of fiberglass on the other side

2nd layer of fiberglass on the other side

Bottom paint over primer, can’t even tell it was repaired.

Friday December 17, 2021, La Cruz

Up at 7 am, breakfast the net and our bible reading. Then Reneé went to the boat, and I worked on the blog. This is a bit backwards for us, but I have found that the WiFi here in the inn is pretty limited in the late afternoon as too many people are streaming video. So, I have been pretty far behind. We got the bill for importing the sails and the halyards, and for our stay in the Inn. On the boat, the fiberglass repair has been done, now we have to wait for the bottom paint and getting put back in the water (tentatively scheduled for tomorrow about 1 pm). Again, the details about the repairs to the keel are in the post titled ROCKS, and that will get uploaded when all the repairs are done.

At the end of the day, we got our survey completed. John the survey guy sent an electronic copy to me, and I reviewed it and sent back my comments. He agreed with my comments and updated the survey. This did not really change the survey results it was more about details of the boat, like the number of hatches etc. Then we headed up to the Mexican Marine (a local marine store) and enjoyed a drink at their open house. Then back to the inn. An hour or so later John delivered the hard copy of the survey. We coordinated paying for it and will send the electronic version off to our insurance agent to see if it helps us with insurance.

So, for those of you who are not into boating, a survey is like a home inspection, sort of. Before you buy a boat you have an independent survey done, this is done by someone NOT in love with the boat to give a critical eye to the boat and make sure you know what you are buying. Sometimes you pay for a survey and at the end of the survey, you walk away from the deal. It means you pay for the survey (typically $15-25/per foot. The bigger the boat the higher the per foot charge. We got a fairly good price on our survey at $15 per foot, but that is still $675. I think our survey when we bought the boat in San Diego in 2018 was about $1500. Which included a rigging survey and was in a higher cost area. Since we replaced the rigging in 2019, I did not see the value of getting a rigging survey again (and not required by the insurance).

So, the first survey is done to determine whether or not to buy the boat, the insurance company uses the survey to determine whether or not to insure the boat. Typically they require a new survey every 5 years or so. We are at 3 years, so typically would not have to get a survey done for a couple of years. But, the insurance companies have had some significant loses where they had to pay out more than they wanted to, so they have made it difficult to get insurance on boats. The older the boat the harder, the worse condition the boat is in the harder, the less experienced the owner/captain is the harder it is. Etc. We have found quite a few cruisers who only have liability as they basically can’t get insurance on their boats. As we have a loan on this boat, we are required to keep insurance on it. We have changed insurance a couple of times, since we bought our boat. The first insurance company limited us north of about Mazatlan, the current company limits us to about Acapulco which means we need to change companies to allow us to continue south to Puerto Chiapas at the south end of Mexico. I think that the new insurance company will be the last one until maybe we get through the Panama Canal. Oh, and of course each change of insurance includes an increase in price..

This is the plastic engine control cover we can’t see through.

This is a Zinc, a sacrificial anode designed to dissolve (rust) rather than something important. This looks fairly bad when you straight at it.

This is a side view of the same Zinc. You can see it has quite a bit of material left.

Here is a new Zinc on the left, and the old one on the right. BTW, this Zinc is one of two on our bow thruster. When the boat was hauled out they were very easy to get too, when the boat is in the water this is about 4 feet down, and usually attended to by whoever is doing the bottom cleaning, which happens about once per month.

Wednesday December 15, 2021, La Cruz

We were up and listened to the net, then off to catch the bus and get to the Bible study at church. After church, we had lunch at a restaurant on the main road and then walked to Chedrauii a local chain store that is similar to Walmart. We did some shopping then back on the bus and back to the hotel. Then off to the boat and putting some things away and moving things around.

Tuesday December 14, 2021, La Cruz

We were up and listened to the net, then off to the boat. The guys from the sail loft were at the boat by 9 am and started working on removing the old sails. They stoped around 1 pm due to wind issues and started back at 4 pm. In the morning, there were 3 of them working, in the afternoon at least 5. The main sail (that had ripped) apparently had gotten pretty well tied up and as a result it came out of the roller furling in little pieces. Good thing we have new sails here in La Cruz. They will go up after we are out of the yard. There was some work done on drying out the keel, and we got shore power on the boat.

You can see the sail is torn at the bottom, that is not the tear we saw that caused us to put it away.

So one of the guys is up the mast pulling the sail out. This was truly an all day event. the tear we saw while sailing was above his head.

This is a close up of what happens when a pair of pliers are dropped from up the mast and they hit the cloth (sunbrella) for the dodger windows. Yes, it is hole that goes all the way through, and yes it was off the dodger so, no damage to the windows.

There were at least 3 people before lunch and 5 later in the afternoon working on getting the sails down and out

As you can see the sail came down in pretty small pieces.

They started at about 9 am, and this is sunset here in La Cruz, still working..

Monday December 13, 2021, La Cruz

Up at 0700, breakfast, the net, reading the Bible, then I had a list of stuff to get off the boat, and needed to check on the keel, and status on the sails.

Reneé walked over to the gate, and got a package she ordered from Amazon Mexico. Some solar lights for the boat, only took a couple of days to get here. We are still waiting on a package mailed in the states on 11/24. Maybe today, or tomorrow.

I got to the boat and organized the stuff on my list, listened to the weekly call from the Panama Posse, then down off the boat, where I found a young lady using a blow dryer on the keel, blowing hot air in to a hole in the keel. We will see when the work gets done. I am not as worried about speed as I am about the repair being done correctly.

Reneé is shopping, partly for two orphans that we picked up there wish lists in the lounge at the marina. She said she would be back for lunch.