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Now onto Pleasure: Well, we think it's pleasure in a twisted sort of way! We have been back over a month and a half now. We love reading and hearing from our friends coming down the West Coast this year and are following everyone's progress with a smile on our faces, as we were there ourselves a year ago. It's really been alot of fun and some of those people are already in Mexican waters! Wow!
We have been very busy working on our wee little boat. We hauled Kestrel in early October to do the bottom. The yard "Estilleros" right next to Marina Palmira is excellent with a wonderful manager, Enrique, and a very expert lift operator, Rigo. Plus the guys working in the yard were all very helpful and work extremely hard, especially in the heat. We were seeing mid 90s in the days when we were in the yard, which makes for very hot working conditions. We had to disassemble the steering quadrant, drop the rudder, pull the prop, and propshaft in order to get the propshaft checked for what we thought was a possible bend in the shaft after we ran over "squidly", our line and jig, last July. It took two days to get everything disassembled and when we took the shaft to the shop, it was only off about .002 of an inch, not enough to warrant a fix. But we have piece-of-mind now. We did the bottom ourselves, but in the future, I think we will hire the work out, because it was very hard in the heat and working with the toxic bottom paint is an awful job especially when you are sweating up a storm. It would have been about $40 more to hire the yard to do the work -- well worth the price. Next time.
Once we got Kestrel back in the water, we had some other important chores to do: Fix the leaking water tank, hook up the saltwater pump, repair the main and jib, pull out the refrigeration system, replace cockpit drain hose, and fix the starter battery ground wire. No refrigeration, you ask? Well, we've been without since we returned in mid-September. It's really not that bad and you learn to do a lot of makeshift stuff. Cheese can be stored in a container full of vegetable oil, eggs last several weeks unrefrigerated, we get more creative with canned foods, we use powdered milk, contrary to popular opinion mayonnaise keeps unrefrigerated as long as you don't contaminate it so we use squeezy bottles, I'm learning to cook just enough for the two of us to eat, no leftovers, fresh vegetables become a main staple including beans for protein. We do miss fresh meat, though, and in this heat it is not advisable to even buy meat and bring it home unless you plan to cook it right when you get home. We have been cheating, however, and we've been using a neighbor's fridge to store fresh meat, so we still get fresh meat once or twice a week. Now, you ask, what about COLD beer? Well, right now, since we are in the marina, we just let the store keep the beer cold and buy it as we drink it -- that way it's always cold -- that goes for pop too! Once we get away from the dock, tho' that will be another story!
Actually, Jay is helping some friends, Keith and Lesley on Rollercoaster, sail their boat up to San Diego. They are leaving about the 4th November. While Jay is up in San Diego, he will be shopping for a new "thermal electric" portable fridge. Our current icebox is used for our canned goods now. The portable fridge makes more sense to us as our icebox is not well insulated and we really don't need all the room of the icebox -- so the thermal electric unit will keep the items more cold and it will be a smaller area to keep cool. The crew on Rollercoaster going up the coast expects it to take about two weeks to transit up the Baja Peninsula against the winds and currents. Leslie is content to stay at home on Kestrel rather than do the "Baja Bash" up the coast.
The latest "get Kestrel ready" project was the re-inforcing of the stringer under the mast compression post and the adjacent bulkhead. Did you get all that? Good! Let's see if I can explain -- the mast rests on deck. The mast compression post is inside the boat and is a wooden vertical beam which runs from the ceiling to the floor structure. The stringer is the cross-member under the floor and under the compression post and rests on the hull of the boat. This whole structure takes the load of rig which holds the mast up.
On Kestrel, the stringer was only taking the load at two points at the turn of the bilges. There were gaps and the fibreglass taping which connects the stringer to the hull was dry and peeling. The whole thing was sagging, maybe as much as 1/2 inch from the original days of being built in 1973. Also the fibreglass taping on the adjacent bulkhead was in as bad or worse condition. So we ground away all the old taping and paint, loosened the rigging, jacked the whole structure up about 1/8 inch or so, filled in the gaps with epoxy putty so the load will be distributed throughout the whole length of the stringer instead of at two points, and retaped the stringer in place as well as the bulkhead. It's easy to write it out in a paragraph, but it took us two full days of work. Oh yeah, and we neglected to say we cut in three new access holes (thank you Pedro the carpenter) into the cabin sole so we could access the stringers. (This also means we have MORE storage!) So hopefully the mast compression post and structure will last another 25 years plus some. It's definitely a much stronger structure now than it was.
Islander Yachts built the fibreglass hull and deck, which is laid up very nicely. Yacht Crafters finished out the inside of the boat, and our guess is they were the ones who taped in the cabin structure to the hull. The taping job throughout the boat is marginal, with what looks like not enough "resin", so the tape was dry and would not stick to the hull or the cabinetry work. And now 25 years later, the tape is separating at several places. We have a couple more stringers to do and at least one more major bulkhead. Yes, Kestrel, we're gonna make you like new yet! :-)
Alright, alright, enough of this technical boat repair stuff, you say. We are planning on departing for Mazatlan probably a few days after Jay gets back from San Diego. We are really looking forward to getting back out on the seas again and doing some more exploring. It will be somewhat sad to leave La Paz, as we've been based out of here for nearly a year and we have lots of friends to whom we will have to say adios. La Paz has been a great haven for us and we highly recommend this clean, working Mexican city, which is also the state capital (Baja California Sur) to anyone planning on cruising here or planning to visit a Mexican city on vacation. You'll get a taste of the true Mexico in La Paz.
When get to Mazatlan we are planning a land excursion up to the Copper Canyon, which is like the Grand Canyon, but bigger. There are still native Indian tribes which live in the canyon so we are looking forward to the trip. We are also excited to see and experience Mainland Mexico and Central America while we venture on down to Costa Rica.
On that note, we will bid our farewell until the next newsletter.
Cheers and happy home repairs to you!
Leslie & Jay