Category: 2025-04 (April)

Published 04/26/2025
Up at 6:30, breakfast, bible reading and then Reneé is taking a walk to the bakery with two of the lady cruisers. I’m going to wash the solar panels. The seagulls love to poop on them. Of course, I have to wait until 9 am, as the water is off until then.
I washed the solar panels, and after Reneé got back we had lunch and walked into town. We went to the museum, we have done it before and it only takes a couple of minutes to walk through, but it is a good walk and view.
After we got back we went to the pub in the marina and met a bunch of the other cruises, played some games and chatted for a while over dinner and beer.

The following pictures are of the preventer system we have for our mainsail. This is a set of ropes that go from the end of the boom to the bow of the boat and then back into the cockpit so that we can hold the boom out.

Published 04/26/2025
Up at 7 (yes we slept in! Breakfast, bible reading and then get into the day. Today we will do an oil change.
Well that oil change is done. There are few jobs on a sailboat I hate more. This one is probably at the top of the list. It is not like a car, there is no way to get a pan under the drain plug, which is why there is no drain plug. So, you ask, how do you get the oil out? With a pump that has a hose that you stick down the tube for the dip stick. First step warm up the engine to make the oil thinner and make sure the “junk” is in solution. Then pump out the oil, 6.3 liters, then take the oil filter off, of course it is screwed in on the side so that you will absolutely spill at least half the oil in the filter under the engine. Next up is put the oil filter back on, then add the oil. Of course it’s a diesel so you have to find oil for a diesel (that took 3 autocrats store to get last time. So, I have the oil. Next up the oil is in a 5 liter jug, but they only fill it to 4.7 liters. No, I don’t have a reason for that. The next thing is to pour the oil from the jug into the engine. Space is at a premium on a boat, so no there is not room to pour it easily. Ok, all the oil is in now do the cleanup. Of course the bottom of the engine room is further down than my arms reach, so, I can’t just wipe up the spilled oil. But I got it done.
Now, what do you do with the oil? We are in a marina and we asked they said bring it to the office and we will take care of it. YEAH!!! That is the easy part. Total time from start to finish 5 hours. What a pain!
After a shower, I took the oil up to the supervisor and it was gone. Probably the easiest part.
Then to Padre Santo (micro brewery) for a beer and waiting for the rest of the cruisers to come up. Joe, Vanessa, Reneé and I played some cards and chatted then around 5 we walked up to the Chinese restaurant at the top of the hill. After dinner back for more discussion at Padre Santo.
We turned in about 9 pm.

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.