Overnight, we had some rain, at least an inch, I heard the number on the morning net, but had not had my coffee yet. It was either 1.77 or maybe 4.77 inches.
We found that one of the portholes wasn’t tight, which resulted in water coming in, we also have water coming down around the mast, all this is manageable, but it helps explain how wet the inside of the boat is.
We don’t have any food on the boat yet, so we went out for breakfast, laundry and groceries. All with in walking distance.
Back on the boat, Reneé worked on cleaning, I did some odds and ends and got our beer cooler replacement ordered. It is hard enough in the states to get a part, it is that much harder when you have to figure out how to get it into Mexico. I think Reneé got more done today than I did.
But we talked to the company that watched the boat, the lady who made the canopy and covers, I emailed back and forth about the sails, and I ordered the new beer cooler.
Tomorrow, we will meet with the lady who runs the company that watched the boat, get an estimate for fixing our varnish, (maybe two) and get some work done on the bright work covers.
We went out to dinner again, then to the beach and hot tub. Finally showers and bed.
We stayed in a Drury inn in Kansas City Sunday night. Got up at 5:15 organized, had breakfast and on the way by 6:15. Some good things about this particular chain of hotels:
Dinner is included in the price
3 drinks are included (the beer was lite, so I had a generic gin and tonic)
Breakfast was included and pretty good
First stop gas for the rental car, then a short drive to the airport to drop off the car.
Our luggage is a bunch of stuff for the boat. We had 3 checked bags, the heavy one was 60 lbs, and the checked bag fee was $100, and $100 for being overweight. While that seems expensive, it would have been much more to ship this stuff. Oh, and we used airline miles to fly, so our tickets were very low ($70.64 for the two of us). So, the price to get us and our stuff to Mexico was $270.64.
The only odd thing we encountered on our flight was a delay in boarding the flight from Dallas to Puerto Vallarta, there were several people needing assistance and at least one of the first class passengers at the head of the line, presented a boarding pass for a different flight. That took quite a bit of time to sort out. As a result we were about 20 minutes late pushing out.
When we arrived in Puerto Vallarta, we got right through customs and immigration with no problems. Caught a cab and we were back on our boat around 5:30 or so.
One question that we had was about Sirius XM, we use this virtually all the time. We have a radio in both trucks and the boat, but given a choice, we use the app and listen to a variety of Pandora stations through the stereo as there are no commercials and not even any announcers. This did not work when we were in Mexico last year, but it does this year!! So, as long as we have internet we use this!
Issues on the boat were:
The new canvas covers sag in a few places exposing the varnish
The dehumidifier did not do as well as we expected, so we have some mold to deal with
All the stuff that has been off for 6 months has to get started back up. Somewhat different than a house or an RV, we have had high humidity and salt in the air.
It appears that I may have left my coffee cup in the rental car. (UPDATE, I found my cup, it was in the computer bag!)
There will probably be more things with issues
We got the A/C going, the boat was about 90 degrees, and humid. Then unpacked and headed out for dinner and the pool. We did not get to the pool before it closed. We headed back after dinner, had showers and slept in our own bed. (YEAH!)
This is the post I made on Facebook when we were at the airport in Kansas:
This is the last step in our summer travels. We drove separately and together a total of approximately 35,000 miles, traveled through and stayed in 28 states, used 7 rental cars, and most importantly visited 127 friends and relatives, not counting the people we met this summer. We may have missed someone, someplace, or rounded down on the mileage, but in any case it was a fantastic summer.
Now we can’t wait to sleep in our own bed (on our boat), in Mexico!
The picture below is one of the recent pictures sent by the person watching our boat in Puerto Vallarta.
We got up at 7 am, slowly got around, took showers came back down and had breakfast then walked out and caught the bus to Walmart, where we transferred to another bus to get close to church. We checked at Autozone for a grabber tool. This makes 4 Autozone’s, 2 hardware stores, and Walmart. No success looking for this tool. I am done with it, we will just get it in the states.
We ran the water maker and filled the water tank. We used the dock water, which is supposed to be potable, I am not sure if it is because I don’t trust Mexican water, or that I really don’t like Chlorine in my water, or that I just like really pure water, but we run it through our water maker. We are getting 33 gallons per hour at less than 5 ppm impurities. Which is way better than typical bottled water (I read somewhere that it is typically in the high 60’s). We use a carbon block filter on the water to remove the chlorine before putting it into the water maker, as it is very bad for the membranes.
Island Packet Sailboats have used aluminum water tanks in a number of their models, ours is fiberglass though. Why this is important is that Aluminum tanks (generally) have a life of something less than 20 years and it is a huge job to replace the tank (in the range of $25k). Aluminum tanks also really don’t do well with chlorine in the water. This is not our problem. Our water heater has an aluminum tank, and has an occasional leak. Perhaps that is to be expected.
One question I was thinking about how far have we gone, last season I would estimate 2000 miles +/-. This year, a bit less. 1,600-1,800.
Up at 7 am, plans for today are the sails come down and go off to hopefully get sold. We will do some more deep cleaning today. Still working through the list to get the boat ready to leave for 6 months.
We have continued to work through our list. Checking things off as they get done, some of these things are really easy and don’t take very long, like “pull drain plug from the dinghy”. This one is important as when it rains the dinghy will fill up with water, probably 1 foot deep by 3 feet wide and 10 feet long. 30 cubic feet of water, lets say I exaggerated and it is only 20 cubic feet of water, that is still about 150 gallons of water, or 1200 lbs. Not a good thing to leave hanging on the dinghy supports. It only takes a couple of minutes to pull that plug. Other things like “Sheets/halyards/furling lines stowed”. Which means removing all the lines, was about 6 hours of both of us on deck dealing with all the lines and putting everything away. Again very important to protect the lines from the UV over the summer when no one is using the boat.
Reneé has been busy deep cleaning everything. This is like spring cleaning, the point being we have been living here since October, and the backs of cabinets, and the pockets under the floor collect dust and debris. This is the time to clean it so when we get back in the fall, the boat is clean and ready to go.
Thursday we got our Covid test done to allow us to fly. Fairly easy to setup as it was done in the lobby of the resort. The resort has the team come in and do the testing, as they have guests leaving all the time and this is a service for them, we are in the marina and it just makes it easy, we don’t have to figure out where to get the test done. It was 800 pesos (about $40 each).
Work continues to be done, like the holding tank got pumped out, Ivette is here (on Thursday) measuring and making templates for the various covers for the teak. Mike was here earlier in the week to get the old sails down, and is supposed to be back today (or Friday) to adjust the standing rigging (stainless steel wires that hold the mast up).
While all this was going on here, I have also been dealing with issues in the states, computer stuff for my mother and my uncle. That has taken quite a bit of time as well.
So, early this month we bought a used dehumidifier. I screwed up and broke a piece on the front of it as we were taking it off the other boat and moving it to the Yacht club. I waited to look into what part(s) I had broken until last week. Then found the company and had an excellent interaction with the service and parts department. We had given up, and a few minutes later the person I had been talking to called me back and was able to figure out exactly which parts I had broken! Good news I could order them, bad news two small pieces of plastic a spring and a plastic nut were about $20. Good news they were in Las Vegas and the importer was in San Diego. Bad news the “expedited” shipping was $20 to get them to San Diego in 2 days. Worse news, it was Fed Ex, so they went by way of Memphis. Good news, they made it to the importer on time. Bad news with tax and shipping in to Mexico, it was another $35, so $20 worth of plastic and $55 shipping and taxes. Good news, the parts got to the boat on Thursday and about an hour after I had the parts in hand it was fixed! Better news, we paid $100 for the dehumidifier and even with the $75 in shipping and tax, it is only about half of what the thing cost new, and it is in almost new condition. Oh well.
We had Danny and Robin from S/V “All Set … For Now” over for appetizers and to get to know them. This was Friday at 3pm. After they left we got started working on the last few things on the list. Empty freezer and fridge defrosting and cleaning, replacing the struts that hold the fridge lid up. These are “special” struts. I bought a couple when we first got the boat then found that some were already on the boat. The manufacturer is rather proud of these, I looked up when we bought the last batch,they were special order and we bought 3 of them, the bill was $222.65 including shipping and handling. At this point we have two spares, and we use 4 of them, two for the freezer and 2 for the fridge.
This has been a busy week. But we are on track to be ready to leave Saturday. We fly out at 10 am.
By the way, we have on occasion been cautioned to keep track of the tides, I have included some tide pictures from Puerto Peñasco.
We flew out as scheduled, had an extended layover in Phoenix, (4 hours+) due to mechanical issues for the planes. Finally got to St. Louis and got our rental car (another issue there as the rental company was closed) but we were back in the states. So here are some pictures, and the blog will pick up again in the fall when we are sailing again.
Why we went here for dinner!What was for dinner.One of the pets of the marina.Just another sunsetHigh Tide at Puerto Peñasco 2021-04-27 copyLow tide at Cabrales copyPuerto Peñasco tide chart copy
Cano came to replace the aft head drain hose.He did but the problem still exists.He then cleaned the bottom of the thruhull and yep, the problem still exists.Neil worked on
flushing out the anchor locker and Reneé continued deep cleaning.
After lunch it was beachtime.We sat under a beach umbrella and drank beer for much of the afternoon then back to the boat for dinner.
We have turned off our subscription to Iridium (satellite system and tracking) so, our track is done for the season. We will clear our track next season when we start back up and it will be fresh. Here are some screen shots of where we went on our journey this year.
Track for 2020-2021 seasonTrack for Isla IsabelaTrack for Barra de NavidadTrack for Banderas BayOne of the other guests here at the resort and marinaThe view as we sat at the beach
We had two morning appointments today.Cano, Elizabeth’s employee came by to measure the drain hose he’d need to replace the sink hose in aft head.It is draining very slow.Ivett came by to make templates of the portals and pick up fabric to make covers for them.We also went over some other needed repairs…fastener on dodger cover and zipper on shore power bag.
After lunch we headed out to do some shopping.We took an Uber to Home Depot and then a taxi, driven by Julio, to Auto Zone.Then we walked to Costco.Julio picked us up at Costco and drove us to another Auto Zone and then to dinner at La Puerta Grande.Julio then picked us up and took us to yet another Auto Zone and then home.Why did we go to 3 Auto Zones?I’m glad you asked.We are looking for a tool…a flexible grabber claw thing.Auto Zone carries it but all three were out.We weren’t successful at finding other items either so yuck…our US shopping list gets longer.
