Make Me Laugh Again

(posted 06/07/24)
Up at 0630, (we slept in a bit), morning routines, then off to church. Tracy Cain came with us. His wife went home to play with the grandkids, but her father (with dementia) fell and broke a hip, so she is helping there as well.
After church we went to lunch in Bucerías at La Cocina (the red roof near the bus stop). Then went to Tracy’s boat it’s an IP38 from the 1980’s or 90’s. We exchanged ideas, and suggestions his showers appear to drain to a “bucket” in the bilge, we could tell it had a float switch, but didn’t have appear to have a pump. We also noted that he has two dorades.
These are vents that have a box on the deck, they have a “horn” that can be pointed into the wind, this air goes into the box, and there is a drain for any water, the internals of the box is two levels the lower level has a drain, the upper level has a hole that goes into the boat. This keeps most of the water out of the boat. We use styrofoam disks to plug this hole, and have a dehumidifier running to minimize moisture during hurricane season.
In any case, we offered him two discs from our spares, if we could find them easily. We came back to our boat and found them right away. He came and got them and we talked some more. He borrowed our wet dry vac to get the water out of the bucket. He bought a small portable air conditioner and ran it overnight, draining it to the bilge. The drain actually went into the bucket resulting in it being full.
He is moving the AC unit to the counter, so it can drain into the sink and overboard, he will set it to just dehumidify. There’s a lot of humidity already. We have the AC running inside our boat, draining to our bilge, and in the time we have been in Paradise Village the bilge pump has run about 50 times just from the condensation from the AC.
A couple of days ago, we got a message that Ralph de la O was going to be here, so we communicated and he and his friend Greg stopped by for cookies and Ice Cream.

(posted 06/07/24)
We got up a bit later than usual, about 0700, morning routines, but we forgot to listen to the net.
Then flushed the sinks (ran a hose down to clear drains. The aft head drain is always slow, so after it was flushed BTW, it is only slow to drain, when I put the full force of the hose down it takes it all and clears any water standing in the sink as well. I suspect an issue with venting. Then flushed the aft section of the boat down to the bilge. Finally started filling the water tank at about 0910. This means the AC is turned off and all portholes and hatches are open and it is hot and humid on the boat.

I also started the charger on the generator start battery. I have a maintainer that will be hooked up later to hold the charge so that we don’t lose the battery over the hurricane season.
So, at almost the first hour we sprung a leak in the supply hose for thte water maker. It only took 15 minutes to shorten the hose and we are back to filling the water tank.

I put together a charge cord for our autopilot remote. Normally it is plugged into the system and is charged that way, but we turn everything off when we are in port and being dead is bad for the battery. Now it is plugged in for the season. Of course making that cord meant getting the tools out (one cubby, getting a short patch cord from the spare parts another cubby, getting crimps, another cubby, getting a fuse (because I overloaded one) another drawer behind the settee. Because of the battery charge there are two cubbies open as well, so, both sides of the salon almost all cubbies investigated and opened.
We charged the generator start battery (about 10 hours) and hooked up the battery maintainer for it. Then started charging the engine start battery, which will take over night.
The water tank is full, the old water filters are out, the new ones are in, and the pickling solution is in the water maker. We have used 1196 gallons of water since we last filled the tank on 12/11/22. This was the biggest job left on the list.
We are pretty much done until Monday, our last day in Mexico.