Catching Up, Part 4: Return to La Paz

Ok! Part four of updates, and then hopefully I can return to a more regular style of blog posts. I know I keep saying that. *sigh*. Without further ado:

gorgeous weather in La Paz
gorgeous weather in La Paz

The summer brought some intense weather shifts, including some of the first rain we’d seen since our arrival in La Paz in February – I guess I should have been tipped off by the cactuses and tumbleweeds, but the amount of precipitation here still took me by surprise. Once the season shifted into high summer however, the heat of the day combined with the extremely warm water (sometimes it would be 38º outside and the water would be 23º, warmer than most swimming pools!) made for some crazy meteorological events. We were treated with regular lightning storms and sudden shifts in wind speed and direction, not to mention a couple of hurricanes that narrowly missed us.

In this photo, a storm cell is crossing nearby to the south. At the time this photo was taken, the wind was blowing briskly towards the cell, but about five minutes afterwards the wind abruptly died and then within two minutes was blowing probably 40kn in the opposite direction! We were caught unprepared, and several items blew off the deck and I had to dash out in the RIB to retrieve them.

 

*sigh*. pay attention to polarity, Drew.
*sigh*. pay attention to polarity, Drew.

 While I was in Canada, I ordered a low-power Fit-PC3 computer to build into the walls of the TIE Fighter. The Fit-PC3 is a 12v-native computer very light on power consumption – set up with an internal SSD drive, it draws only  6w (1/2 an amp) at idle. I paired it with a two-terabyte external drive that automatically spins itself down when not in use, and am quite happy with the results.

Unforutnately, when I went to install the machine I didn’t pay close enough attention to the polarity of the power supply, and hooked the power connection up backwards. Immediately there was a flash and a pop and suddenly the air was filled with the acrid smell of burning electronics.

electronics repair on the new inboard computer
electronics repair on the new inboard computer

Fortunately I’m no stranger to electronics repair, and with a bit of research and an email to the manufacturers of the Fit-PC3, I learned that the component that had exploded was a simple ferrite bead, meant solely to keep stray radio-frequency energy out of the computer. This bead is just a failsafe, sort of like a fuse, and I could just ‘jump’ over the section with a bit of wire for the time being. An hour or so with the soldering iron, and the computer lives.

…of course, that computer also now lives in a cupboard with a strong radio. I still need to track down a replacement ferrite, as I’ve seen three crashes so far when I’ve keyed up the mic on the ham radio on certain frequencies.

 

a swarm of bees overtakes the TIE Fighter!
a swarm of bees overtakes the TIE Fighter!

One morning as we left the boat in the RIB to go for coffee, we realized we’d forgotten something at the main boat so we turned around. When we arrived at the TIE Fighter, we found the boat swarming with bees! We estimated around 10,000 honeybees in the air around the boat.

Not knowing what to do, we went for coffee and solicited opinions from a few other cruisers, who brought to light one very important point that we somehow hadn’t thought of… if the bees were to get inside the boat, they might not want to leave! We had to return to the boat immediately to close up the doors and windows, hoping that they hadn’t already moved in.

 

the bees, landed
the bees, landed

When we arrived back at the boat, the bees had landed… but outside. The internet tells us that this means the queen bee is somewhere in the middle of the literal pile of bees on the boat. We figure they were stacked six or seven deep in this photo! Fortunately, they decided that the boat wouldn’t make a great spot for a new hive, and within an hour or two of this photo they’d all moved on.

 

Miya's dirty knees from painting the decks
Miya’s dirty knees from painting the decks

While I went back to my day job schedule, Miya undertook the massive task of painting the TIE Fighter’s decks with anti-skid paint. We had collected a large pail full of white sand from a nearby beach, and then sifted and washed it, allowing it to dry overnight in the boatyard on a clean sheet of plywood. In the end though we decided that we’d get a better-looking result from “marmolina”; fine crushed white marble available at the local fereterias for about $0.50/kg.

 

the lights of 16 de Septiembre
the lights of 16 de Septiembre

The celebration of 16 de Septiembre (Mexico’s Independance Day) came along, and rather than hole up in our little box on the ocean, Miya and I decided to brave the crowds and go see the fireworks display. The display lacked a certain… safety standard? that we had grown accustomed to in North America – the main celebration was in a town square flanked on three sides with two-story buildings, and the fireworks were launched from the roofs of those buildings, exploding directly over the square!

 

more generator maintenance, this time cleaning the carburetor
more generator maintenance, this time cleaning the carburetor

Our Honda EU2000i generator has given us incredibly reliable service for the past four years or so, but apparently one should not leave it for a Mexican summer with a third of a tank of gasoline… when I went to start it up for the first time in many months, it would not start. I quickly realized what the problem must be, and using this very well-written step-by-step howto, I tore the generator apart and cleaned the carburetor. Just like that, the little Honda purred back to life.

 

Miya swimming with a school of something (sardines? herring?)
Miya swimming with a school of something (sardines? herring?)

The heat of the summer was intense and constant, and often we had to spend the hottest portions of the day in the water just to maintain our sanity! The underside of the TIE Fighter made for a convenient gathering space, and using a series of ropes and floating toys and platforms we created a place of refuge from the afternoon sun.

In this photo Miya is swimming with one of the schools of fish that regularly gathered under the boat. Actually, if I go looking I bet I have a video that might show the situation a little better:

Crazy how you can see them avoiding the anchor line! We’d like to identify the species of fish, and then see about catching some for grilling or pickling.

avoiding the heat under the TIE Fighter's wing
avoiding the heat under the TIE Fighter’s wing

Miya found an inflatable toy at one of the swap meets; three inflatable bladders joined at the center by a square of mesh, forming a floating recliner. This, paired with a Canadian Tire ‘Party Platform’ that we picked up on clearance just before leaving Canada in September 2011, formed the seating portion of the underwing. You can also see my Traynor TVM-10 cordless rechargeable guitar amplifier in the nets above, hooked up to an iPhone and playing appropriately chilled house music down into the watery tunnel.

flips off the TIE Fighter
flips off the TIE Fighter

Of course, with freshly-added antiskid on the topsides, the boat herself – having a good meter of freeboard – made an excellent water toy. Miya had only really learned to swim in the last year or so, but managed to learn to dive in one day!

 

 

She was so impressed with her diving that she decided to try her first-ever backflip off the boat also… to a little less success.

 

Mal serenading us on his banjo
Mal serenading us on his banjo

One of my absolute favourite parts about the cruising lifestyle is the willingness of the participants to pick up new musical instruments and throw themselves into learning. Our friend and neighbor Malcolm, an Australian vagabond living on ‘Wind Pirate’, picked up a banjo in a trade with another boater and within days was plucking away.

 

driving the long, lonely highway from La Paz to San Diego
driving the long, lonely highway from La Paz to San Diego

When we heard about the Wasteland Weekend festival in California, the idea immediately spoke to both of us – a four-day party in the desert, sort of  like Burning Man but more Mad Max themed, if that even sounds possible. With our Wilderness First Responder first aid certifications, we figured if they were interested in having us on as volunteer medics we’d kill a few birds with one stone; go on a road trip, pick up some much-needed supplies from the states, get some practical medical experience and go to a rad party! We rented a car and prepared to head out… but of course, what with it being hurricane season, a tropical storm had formed south of the peninsula and was threatening La Paz. We couldn’t leave the boat unattended until we were sure that it wouldn’t turn into a hurricane.

Fortunately, the system weakened, but not before dumping rain on southern Baja – and if you haven’t seen what a major rainstorm does to a desert, it’s a crazy thing indeed!

In this video, we have been stopped by a washout – the road in front of us has been replaced by a river of brown water flowing at a pretty fast clip. We watched as a compact car was swept a few feet sideways – but in the true spirit of “drive ‘er like a rental“, we decided to take the risk and we crossed. If you watch closely you can see water come up over the hood of the car at one point!

 

Wasteland Weekend 2012
Wasteland Weekend 2012

We arrived late to Wasteland Weekend but wasted no time whatsoever getting into the groove of things. Having come internationally we had no weapons to defend ourselves from the mutant / zombie uprising, and so we decided that we were clearly ‘wasteland aristocracy’ and as such had no reason to carry large weaponry of our own.

 

meeting the Party Hard Corps, fellow wasteland nobility
meeting the Party Hard Corps, fellow wasteland nobility

With this thought in mind it wasn’t long before we ran into some kindred spirits, fellow patricians of the aftermath, with whom we shared libations and cheer. The Party Hard Corps crew are a fascinating group of partiers, gamers and drinkers from the midwest, who like us traveled to the desert for a few days of debauchery.

 

winning the archery competition
winning the archery competition

There were many (semi-)organized events, including robot battles and jugger matches, but the one event I was most looking forward to taking part in was the archery competition. The rules were fairly simple – scoring was based on points awarded for your five arrows to a mannequin about thirty paces down a range. I was relieved to find they had bows available for loan, as I hadn’t owned my own bow in many years.

There were three divisions, for different sorts of bows: recurve, compound and crossbow. I can say proudly that out of about forty or so competitors, not only did I win the recurve division, but I also had the highest score over all three divisions – 28 out of a possible 30. The prize was a little disappointing however; a large black t-shirt. Not my size and I refuse to wear cotton t-shirts. In retrospect I should have taken the shirt and re-gifted it to one of the Party Hard Corps guys or something.

In case you’re wondering, we did stop at an archery supply store in San Diego on the way back to Mexico, purchasing two bows so that we can practice on the beaches. At some point in our travels we met a guy who swore by iguana meat; as we get further south we’re thinking maybe that might be a good source of free protein…

 

professional medical attention at Wasteland Weekend 2012
professional medical attention at Wasteland Weekend 2012

Our medical shift was Saturday night from 10pm until 4am – arguably the worst possible shift if your goal is solely to party, but we got enough of that in during the previous night and the Saturday afternoon, and as both the new jacks on the scene and late to the party to boot, we were happy to help out and glad to feel useful. We were surprised at how few emergencies there were, to be honest – the partygoers seemed to self-regulate very well, and aside from a few scalds from fire-show screwups and a few cuts and scrapes, we weren’t actually very busy! There was always something going on, but we never felt overwhelmed.

 

Miya at the San Diego Zoo, riding an eagle.
Miya at the San Diego Zoo, riding an eagle.

After Wasteland Weekend, we had a couple of days to spend in San Diego – we slotted one of those days to provisioning and shopping, but the second day was spent touring the San Diego Zoo. This was something Miya had wanted to do ever since we left Vancouver but somehow we hadn’t found the time during the two months we spent in San Diego back in December 2011. Many photos were taken, but surely if you’d like to see a photo of a giraffe you can find one on Google Image Search. 😉

 

Scott from s/v Sojourn displaying a feat of flexibility
Scott from s/v Sojourn displaying a feat of flexibility

After a long but uneventful drive back down the Baja Peninsula, we settled back into our routine by immediately having people over for another party. In this photo, Scott is demonstrating his ability to do a full split!

In the foreground of the photo, next to our friend Mike, is one of Miya’s margueritas, made in the “proper Baja style”. For a perfect Baja cruiser marguerita, combine:

  • one part decent tequila (100% agave only, José Cuervo is NOT acceptable!)
  • one part triple sec
  • one part freshly-squeezed lime juice

That’s it; serve with ice cubes if you have them. Do not blend. Do not rim with salt. Do not use lime bar mix or Fresca. Do not add simple syrup. Mix and enjoy!

 

catching fish and shrimp in the party platform
catching fish and shrimp in the party platform

Whoops – we left the party platform deployed under the boat while we were in the states! When we pulled it up, the side-pockets were full of life. If you click on this photo, you can clearly see the large fish at the top, and several big, transparent, shrimp-like invertebrates swimming around in the captive pool.

 

the new addition to the family!
the new addition to the family!

There’s a really sad story here – but before it was sad, it was a very happy story. We adopted a scraggly little Mexican street kitten and added her to our boat-gypsy family. I’ll tell the story of little ‘Alice’ in another blog post.

 

zombie walk La Paz 2012
zombie walk La Paz 2012

It turns out that the ‘Zombie Walk‘ phenomenon is wider-spread than we’d previously thought, and La Paz actually played host to an entire horror-themed film festival entitled ‘Morbido La Paz‘. There are few things that Miya and I like better than an excuse to get dressed up and silly, so we put together the best zombie costumes we could with our limited boat resources and shambled out into the town.

Best part: wandering around for at least an hour looking for the meet-up point for the zombie walk, soliciting help from the other boaters over the VHF radio and getting drastically contrasting reports of where to find the rest of the undead. Fortunately when we finally did find the other zombies, we found to our surprise that instead of the expected dozen or so fellow walkers/biters, we found a huge herd of probably two hundred! We moaned and shuffled our way through the night in search of cerebros

 

Alice assisting with the refrigerator build project
Alice assisting with the refrigerator build project

One of the things we brought back to La Paz from San Diego was a long-coveted item – an icebox conversion kit which would turn our little built-in icebox into a proper refrigerator, complete with freezer! The kit cost an arm and a leg, and came as a box of parts and a series of cryptic instructions, including a bunch of crazy tool requirements. I had to track down someone in the boating community who would be willing to loan me an industrial vacuum pump and a set of refrigerator manifold gauges. As it turned out, none of the tools were far away and even though the build took much longer than expected, our friend Bill on s/v Wandering Puffin was a huge help in getting the system up and running.

Now, for the first time since moving aboard in 2009, we have the ability to store food for longer than a couple of days at a time! What a huge step forward… though admittedly so far my favourite use of the fridge is making ice cubes. Sill though – just because nothing in our world can ever be completely normal – the fact that our fridge is a top-loading icebox means that we’re forced to use an expensive vertical ice cube tray.

going-away party at the Libertatia apartment
going-away party at the Libertatia apartment

One of the sad facts of cruising life is the realization that no matter how much you like your new friends, everyone is traveling, and sooner or later we all have to pull up the anchor and move on. This photo is of some of our friends from the summer; Malcolm and Lowell left on s/v Libertatia for California, arriving recently in San Francisco, and Mike and Nia left La Paz for Mazatlan in their boat s/v Azul, making it across the Sea of Cortez without incident… and without an engine!

Well, I think that pretty much brings us back up to current. More updates to come soon!

Catching Up, Part 2: Boatyard

Round two of this set of blog updates, this is the chapter I like to refer to as “Dust, Pain and Exhaustion: Oh God, Not Another Boatyard”, or perhaps “How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Part Four”. It was a couple of months of hard labour in unpleasant working conditions, but we got through it and have a stronger, faster, more capable boat as a result.

 

first time hauling out on a trailer
first time hauling out on a trailer

We hauled out at ‘Talleres Navales Bercovich’, under the supervision of the main boss, Abel. That’s not Abel on the trailer – that’s Mark, or ‘Tarzan’, who was a great deal of help to us tracking down materials and figuring out random problems.

 

you're going to back us through that?!
you’re going to back us through that?!

The guys in the boatyard were extremely capable with their equipment, and managed to back us through about a hundred meters of very, very cramped quarters between many other boats being stored for the summer months.

 

we must have hit the rocks at some point
we must have hit the rocks at some point

Once we had the bottom powerwashed and the boat blocked, we got started – clearly we had hit the bottom at some point. Whether it was dragging anchor in Tsehum Harbour in Sidney BC, or maybe when we dragged anchor in the A9 anchorage in San Diego, at some point we tore a bunch of fiberglass off the bottom of the rudder and the skeg on which it was hung. Time to grind it out and patch it over with new glass.

 

Miya grinding fiberglass in the sun
Miya grinding fiberglass in the sun

Miya took on the topsides as her main project – there were dozens of places where the 25-year-old fiberglass had cracked from expansion or been worn through or damaged, and each of those spots would have to be ground out, fiberglassed, sanded, faired, sanded, primed and painted.

 

building the base for the new forward hatch
building the base for the new forward hatch

We picked up a very nice new bathroom hatch at Second Wave, a used-sailing-gear store in Seattle, but I had never yet had the chance to properly install it. The old hatch coping had to be cut away, and a new lip had to be fabricated approximately one inch smaller than the old one, and then the whole thing would need fiberglassing for waterproofedness. This was a task I had been looking forward to for over a year!

 

you should really click this photo
you should really click this photo

Working in a boatyard quickly drops your standards – at the end of a day of grinding fiberglass a shower is critical, but this is what we had to look forward to… two inches of stagnant water and a large dead cockroach. If you were lucky you got to the showers before the sun went down – as soon as the site cooled off, the mosquitoes would descend in a cloud!

 

Miya laying up fiberglass patches
Miya laying up fiberglass patches

Miya continued to work on fiberglass patches, while I worked on structural patches on the hull. We had to make several trips to the marine store for more epoxy resin – we went through three large gallon-sized tins of resin (and accompanying tins of hardener), each costing about $180 USD.

 

fixing bubbles and blisters under the waterline
fixing bubbles and blisters under the waterline

You can barely make me out in this photo, but I’m working away under the port wing, patching ground-out blisters and bubbles in the hull fiberglass. The garden is still going strong at this point; you can clearly see the carrots growing out the rear window.

 

the rudder, removed for repairs
the rudder, removed for repairs

Eventually I realized that the rudder had more damage than previously thought, and it made a lot more sense to remove it to work on it. It also made sense to spend time overdrilling all the previous mounting holes, filling them with epoxy, and re-drilling them, giving the hard-working rudder a much stronger connection to the fitting hardware.

 

the damaged swing-keel
the damaged swing-keel

The swing-keel on a Searunner trimaran is simultaneously one of the best and worst features of the boat. It’s the best feature, because it allows us to float happily in one meter of water, but if the keel gets damaged it’s a real hassle to pull it out to repair it. The binnacle (the pedestal the steering wheel is mounted on) has to be completely removed, which means disconnecting the steering, the engine controls and a bunch of wires.. and then you have to drag the filthy thing up across the decks and lower it to the ground for repair. Our keel, being waterlogged from breaks in the fiberglass, weighed about 200kg!

 

our boatyard friend Doug
our boatyard friend Doug

The boatyard was apparently quite quiet while we were in residence, though there were a few longtime denizens to spend time with – shown here is Doug from Snug Harbour Sails, a salty old sailor who would come visit with us regularly and made the time in the boatyard markedly more bearable.

This photo was also taken shortly after the sun drove me a little bit nuts, and haircut one of two occurred… Miya helped, but mostly it was me sitting under the boat with the clippers removing the bulky weight of hair that was nothing but a liability in the yard.

 

grinding pointy nails off the ceiling
grinding pointy nails off the ceiling

Project after project slowly got done. For instance, those pointy nails in the ceiling of the bathroom, the ones that punctured both Miya and my head on numerous occasions? TERMINATED.

 

whoops, another bit of rock damage found
whoops, another bit of rock damage found

The more time you spend looking at the bottom of a boat like the TIE Fighter, the more damage you realize you have to repair. Looks like another bit of rock-rash here that’ll need to be ground out and fiberglassed.

 

the end of another long, hot day
the end of another long, hot day

At the end of eight-to-ten hours of hard labour, punctuated by the occasional break to jump in the nearby ocean to cool down, there’s very little that can be done besides crashing hard. In this photo you can also see the ill-fated broccoli plant on the right side of the garden, attempting to take over the rear cabin… we never did get any broccoli crowns from that plant.

 

Miya planning our next destination on our day out
Miya planning our next destination on our day out

At some point we realized that if we wanted to continue being sane, rational humans, we’d need to take a break from all this work. We packed up our things and took a shuttle bus back into La Paz, where we spent the day wandering and doing our best tourist impressions, much to the delight of the locals. Many margueritas later, we stumbled back into the boatyard.

 

cutting big holes in the deck
cutting big holes in the deck

During our time away, we paid a visit to Sea Otter Jimmy, a local with the same make and model boat as ours (though in MUCH better shape!). Jimmy’s boat, s/v Sea Otter, had four more deck hatches than ours, giving him a tonne more wet-storage space for line, cleaning supplies, beach toys or whatever. We were jealous, so we took a bunch of measurements and decided to cut hatches into the TIE Fighter.

My tan is getting deeper and deeper…

 

a tiny sample of our nightly guests
a tiny sample of our nightly guests

The mosquitoes in the boatyard were TERRIBLE – and the TIE Fighter, having no sealing hatches (not that you’d want them anyway, the boat would become a sauna), was the idea place for them to congregate. Miya visited the fabric store and returned with this sheer fabric, which she made a series of overlapping mosquito screens with, hot-glueing them to the walls of the cabin around the opening to our berth. Several iterations later, we finally had our first good night of sleep.

This photo is just the ones we found dead at the bottom of the mesh at the end of the first night!

 

laminating the new keel, using rocks
laminating the new keel, using rocks

When I finally got around to grinding out the problems in the swing keel, as I ground around the edge of the keel the laminated plywood suddenly jumped apart, leaving me with a giant, heavy, waterlogged, delaminated mess. It was time to face the facts: that keel was finished, and a new one would have to be built.

I went to town and found a place selling plywood – I had six sheets shipped in, cut them into the shapes I needed and coated them liberally with epoxy glue, then laminated them all together by weighting them with heavy rocks while the glue dried. I also destroyed our angle grinder during the “shape the newly-laminated raw keel into a foil shape” stage of the construction.

 

freshly glassed new hatch covers drying in the sun
freshly glassed new hatch covers drying in the sun

The hatches for the newly-cut wet storage lockers are here drying in the sun, fiberglassed but not yet sanded or painted. I was pretty proud of my carpentry work on these – the hatches fit really nicely, and the extra locker space is definitely appreciated.

 

powerwashing off the old paint
powerwashing off the old paint

A month in, I finally convinced the yard that the best way to take off the old paint would be to rent me their largest power washer, which I knew would take the previous coat of (non-sticking) paint off, leaving the previous coat of (very good) two-part epoxy primer behind. The power washer was 7,000psi – compare if you will to the strongest power washer available at Home Depot being 4,000psi!

Also notable in this photograph are the second boatyard haircut, taking my hair down from the #4 clippers to the #1 clippers, or 1/8″, and the fact that all the hard labour has kicked in and I’m looking a lot more ripped than before the boatyard. 😀

 

the paint on the topsides came off easily!
the paint on the topsides came off easily!

Sadly, I was very much correct about the paint on the topsides coming off with the power washer… but with the exposure of the grey primer came exposure of dozens – no, hundreds – of new problems with the fiberglass. It didn’t help that the power washer also tore away any weakened fiberglass, probably creating at least half of those new problems, though it was pretty clear that those problems would have surfaced sooner or later anyway.

You can also see a bit of brown in the bottom right of the photo – Miya spent days on end repairing all the damage to the bows done by dragging the anchor chain up over the edges of the bows. We finally have a bow roller now, and will get around to installing it sometime in the near future.

 

...though powerwashing exposed a LOT more fiberglass problems
…though powerwashing exposed a LOT more fiberglass problems

With all the new patches, it almost seemed like we would have been ahead of the game to strip off the entire deck and replace the fiberglass, but it was a bit late for that – not to mention the price of fiberglass and epoxy in Mexico is prohibitive!

 

many of the newly-exposed patches
many of the newly-exposed patches

Another shot of the deck with all the new patches opened – before powerwashing we were pretty sure we were almost done with ‘glassing the deck! It would have saved a lot of time if we’d been allowed access to the power washer much earlier on, but there wasn’t much point in getting mad about it.

 

pulling out the propellor shaft
pulling out the propellor shaft

One of the big under-the-boat tasks was to replace the cutless bearings, rubber sleeves that hold the propellor shaft steady and perfectly aligned. Unfortunately to do this you really need to remove the propellor shaft, and I’d never done that before. Here Mark is heating up the propellor shaft coupling with a torch.

 

Miya's nickname in the yard: "Lady Polvo"
Miya’s nickname in the yard: “Lady Polvo”

Miya’s constant sanding, sanding, sanding of the deck earned her the nickname “Lady Polvo”, where ‘polvo’ is spanish for dust or powder. The more we sanded, the more we had to jump into the ocean, which you can see about twenty meters behind Miya.

 

how to destroy a brand-new cutless bearing
how to destroy a brand-new cutless bearing

Once the replacement cutless bearings were acquired, the old worn-out bearings had to be removed. This I accomplished without much hassle, but when I went to put in the new bearing it seized halfway up the shaft – no matter how much I hammered it, it just wasn’t going back in. I had the bright idea of heating up the stainless steel strut to make it expand and free up the brass bearing sleeve, but the end result was that the rubber part of the bearing separated from the brass part, rendering the bearing unusable. Nuts – that was a waste of a hundred bucks.

 

Miya diligently patching the deck
Miya diligently patching the deck

Miya, stalwartly continuing to patch all the deck problems. She was at this all day, every day, for weeks.

 

the rudder, fully repaired and re-hung
the rudder, fully repaired and re-hung

I finally finished up the patching and repairing of the rudder, and eventually we tracked down a new rubber gasket for the steering assembly – the black rubber bit in the center of the photo is actually the boot from the gear shift of a Mack truck, found at a place called “Diesel Professional” in La Paz!

 

a month in, and she looks far worse than when we started
a month in, and she looks far worse than when we started

It can be difficult to keep your spirits up when you’ve been working your fingers to the bone for over a month, and the boat looks far worse than it did when you arrived… but in reality she’s much closer to finished.

 

the interior of the boat is starting to get less habitable
the interior of the boat is starting to get less habitable

…although now that we had to tear apart the kitchen to access the steering gear to reattach the rudder, there was a domino effect throughout the boat, and the normally tidy interior just kept getting more and more cluttered with tools and equipment.

 

many of the fiberglass patches complete
many of the fiberglass patches complete

This is the deck, two steps away from being finished. All of the brown patches are epoxy thickened with a talc-like powder, turning it into a fairing compound that flattens nicely and is very easy to sand. One more round of sanding, then a splash of primer, then another quick sand and she’d be ready for her final paint job!

 

the new swing-keel shaped, glassed and primed
the new swing-keel shaped, glassed and primed

Sadly I didn’t take more photos of the swing keel during the construction process, but needless to say I was several long days under the boat with a large industrial-size angle grinder and an eight-inch 60-grit sanding disc, shaping the plywood laminate into a smooth foil. Two layers of 8oz fiberglass over the whole thing, then a PVC tube glassed into the pivot point to protect the wood, and finally several coats of industrial-grade two-part epoxy primer, and we’re left with a swing-keel that should last for the rest of the life of the boat.

 

the deck, primed, sanded, washed and ready for paint!
the deck, primed, sanded, washed and ready for paint!

Once the fairing was sanded and the primer applied, a quick sand to make it all smooth and it’s time to wash down the decks in preparation for the first coat of her final paint job!

 

installing the new radar reflector
installing the new radar reflector

After seeing all the big freighters and fishing boats offshore, we realized that our little wooden boat probably didn’t show up all that well on radar, especially with our little metal ball-type radar reflector mounted six feet off the cabin roof. We did a bunch of research and settled on an EchoMax 230 reflector, that I mounted just above the staysail stay. Apparently this will make us look HUGE on a radar screen!

 

TIE Fighter with a fresh coat of (cheap) paint!
TIE Fighter with a fresh coat of (cheap) paint!

Once all the prep work was complete, the painting of the boat went very quickly, and we were done within two days. The bottom was taped and painted by the yard, but we rolled on three coats of latex-based housepaint quickly and efficiently.

In retrospect we probably should have just bitten the bullet and paid for the more expensive two-part epoxy paint. House paint is cheap and non-toxic, but it never really hardens completely, and you’re left with more of a latex “skin” over the entire boat. Time will tell if this was a nightmare decision, but currently in the dry southern tip of Baja it is working out acceptably – there have been a few instances of the paint becoming tacky in wet weather though, and I am a bit nervous to see what will happen in damper climates, like the rainy season of Costa Rica.

 

wiring the binnacle so that we can remove it easier next time
wiring the binnacle so that we can remove it easier next time

As I mentioned, removing the swing keel requires removing the binnacle, which in turn requires cutting a bunch of wires. Rather than ever have to deal with that again, this time I added terminal blocks and ring terminals to all of the wires, so that they can be easily disconnected and reconnected. I’m a big fan of well-organized wiring!

 

Miya painting the bootstripe
Miya painting the bootstripe

The last step to painting a boat is always the boot stripe – a quick splash of color parallel to the water line. Jim Brown, the designer of the Searunner trimarans, says that a boot stripe can make the difference between a home-built backyard boat and a jaunty yacht, and so for the past two paintjobs we’ve added a grey stripe at the end. I am extremely fond of how this looks.

 

I did a poor job repairing the minikeel; live and learn
I did a poor job repairing the minikeel; live and learn

Apparently when you repair a keel you should use more fiberglass and less filler, as I discovered painfully when we finally got the boat ready to be lifted up and put back in the water. My repairs just didn’t stand up to the pressure of lifting the whole boat – this was actually good to find out; if we’d been lifted with a travelift this error never would have come to light, and then next time we ran aground we’d be faced with a much larger problem. The trailer was pulled away and we spent an extra few days in the yard grinding and fiberglassing.

 

back into the water!
back into the water!

FINALLY, two months to the day since we’d been hauled out, we were back into the water. Of course, there was a strong wind blowing and as we drifted away we were blown right back into the shore, forcing the boatyard owner and his employees into the water, fully clothed, to help push the TIE Fighter back out into open waters before she ground onto the rocks… ahhh, memories.

More to come…

 

Catching Up, Part 1: Pre-Boatyard

OK! So! It’s been over six months since the last posting, and I’m finally just now finding myself with enough free time motivation to update the blog with what we’ve been up to. Miya and I just returned to La Paz after a month-and-a-half whirlwind “vacation” back to Oklahoma and Vancouver, respectively, culminating in a return to the Black Rock Desert for the incredible Burning Man Festival.

Regardless, we’re back now and I haven’t updated since March, so it’s time to bring you up to speed about where we’ve been. There were four distinct chapters to the past six months: pre-boatyard, boatyard, post-boatyard and traveling back to the first world. I’ll break these parts up into four pasts just to keep things logical.

So! Without further ado, here’s some photos from the pre-boatyard chapter.

 

dehydrating fruits and veggies
dehydrating fruits and veggies

Miya picked up a food dehydrator online in San Diego and started drying fruits and vegetables. It’s a lot of work, but the results are worth the efforts. Flashing forward a few months, Miya’s mother actually bought me a hand-cranked apple peeler/slicer, which is something I’d been envying for a long time now, and Miya just dried the first batch of Red Delicious apple slices, which we’ve been eating all weekend.

 

another gorgeous sunset in La Paz
another gorgeous sunset in La Paz

La Paz certainly has no lack of natural beauty, and each evening we’re treated to a spectacular sunset. It’s gotten to the point that we’re not easily impressed anymore, which is both amusing and sad; it’s strange how quickly you can acclimatize to any situation, and no matter how otherwordly, sooner or later anything can become “normal”.

 

Miya fishing near the Isla Espiritu Santo
Miya fishing near the Isla Espiritu Santo

We did manage to pull ourselves away from La Paz for a few days, and spent an amazing ten days or so living in anchorages on the Islas Espirtu Santo and Paritida, just north of La Paz. Uninhabited, the islands are beautiful rocky deserts surrounded by blue waters teeming with fish. Here Miya is pulling in one of her trolling lines – the colors above her are the woven hammock we found in La Paz.

 

dinner acquired!
dinner acquired!

Aside from trolling from the TIE Fighter when we’re underway, Miya also enjoys trolling behind the inflatable dinghy when we’re exploring, and in this case she landed some sort of fish that we have never managed bothered to identify. Is it a bonita? Who knows! It was delicious.

 

another sunset, from an anchorage on the Isla Espiritu Santo
another sunset, from an anchorage on the Isla Espiritu Santo

Certainly sunsets at anchor in the city are beautiful, but they’ve got nothing on sunsets in (nearly) empty anchorages out on the islands! This was taken in the northernmost anchorage on Isla Partida. Not shown is the 35kn winds that picked up after midnight – we had a 15kg ‘Delta’ anchor down, but I jumped into the dinghy in the pitch black night to kedge out a second anchor just in case… we’re able to anchor the TIE Fighter very close to the shore due to her shallow one-meter draft, but when the wind picks up the rocky shoreline starts to look terribly dangerous…

 

the anchorage in daylight
the anchorage in daylight

The anchorage on Isla Partida in the daytime – nowhere near as scary in the daytime!! Funny how howling winds and pitch black with no moon can turn even the prettiest tropical anchorage into a scary place. Here we could swim to shore and hike up into the hills, which were riddled with sandstone caves, some of which showed signs of being inhabited hundreds of years ago.

 

dinner with greens from our garden
dinner with greens from our garden

Summertime brought excellent growth to the garden, and Miya explored the local grocers to feed us with the best things she could find… here is avocado, tuna, eggs, potatoes and peppers served on green lettuce from the garden.

 

another round with the dehydrator
another round with the dehydrator

Nothing quite like harnessing the sun to help with food production!

(sure, that’s what I like best about this photo… the dehydrator… right…)

 

I... well... joined a volleyball team.
I… well… joined a volleyball team.

Leading up to “Bay Fest 2012”, a call would regularly come over the VHF radio – “Volleyball practice today, 5pm, no experience necessary!”. Back when I was a young pup I enjoyed beach volleyball every summer at camp, so it wasn’t too great a stretch to think I might enjoy it again. Despite not having volleyed, bumped or spiked in well over twenty years, I got back into the routine very quickly and greatly enjoyed the activity.

 

Miya as the demonstration-babe for a safety seminar
Miya as the demonstration-babe for a safety seminar

During Bay Fest, one of the seminars was put on by our friends Rob from s/v Keetya-1 and Will from s/v Shaman – they enlisted Miya to help with their “Safety Aloft” session, teaching us the basics of working safely on a mast.

 

our friends Tim and Meredith from s/v Luckiest, and Jody from Avatar
our friends Tim and Meredith from s/v Luckiest, and Jody from s/v Avatar

The end of Bay Fest was a big costume party blowout, but very few of our new friends had costumes – this wasn’t a problem, as both Miya and I travel with a big tickle-trunk of costumes each. We were able to costume Tim and Meredith from s/v Luckiest, though Jody from s/v Avatar already had his own costume planned out.

…and that brings us up to the 2012 haulout, which I will have to present as another blog post.

 

San Diego, Round Two

We were in San Diego for almost two months, but that time seemed to blow past us at an extremely accelerated pitch. Our ‘Cruising Permit’ (the customs paperwork allowing the TIE Fighter to remain in the US while being a Canadian-flagged vessel) would expire February 1st, so we had to hustle if we wanted to get all the pending projects completed before we left for Mexico, where everything would be an order of magnitude more complicated!

When we originally cleared customs in Port Angeles, Washington back in September, the customs officer asked how long we’d like the permit to be – we laughed and told him that we intended to be in Mexico before Christmas. He nodded and said

“I’ll just give you a couple of extra months anyway, just in case you run into bad weather…”

I guess he must had some experience with that sort of thing…

Anyway! On to the photos!

San Diego at sunset with fog rolling in downtown
San Diego at sunset with fog rolling in downtown

San Diego, despite being a bizarre mix of old-money Republicans and impressionable young military personnel from the midwest, had its moments of beauty. Click this photo for the full-size version; check out the sunbeams reflecting off the mirrored buildings and through the early evening fog bank!

 

a frankenstein part I built for the water maker
a frankenstein part I built for the water maker

At no point did we expect that the water maker install would be simple, but I have to admit I  was expecting all of the parts to be readily available. That wasn’t really the case, and I had to build this fitting to attach the product water feed to the tank inlet, while also adding a vent line so that the water maker water feed will never see more than 3psi in back pressure – apparently that would irreversibly damage the water maker membrane, which is a very expensive replacement.

 

the remains of the impeller
the remains of the impeller

One night just before Christmas, just prior to having the water maker up and running, we decided to make a run to the fuel dock to fill up our water tanks. We made it out of the A9 anchorage and around the corner a few hundred meters when suddenly our engine alarms started screaming…

We blew the seals on one of our freshwater pumps on the way down – it was still working, but leaking coolant. I had a guy in San Diego rebuild the pump ($50 instead of a $400 new pump), but when I reattached the pump I didn’t properly bleed the air out of the coolant lines. A brand-new impeller was just spinning away with nothing to pump, and it was destroyed within minutes.

Mostly I’m impressed with myself, that I was able to determine the cause of the problem and fix it within about an hour, without having to call for help or even consult any manuals. That kind of thing really helps with a person’s confidence in taking their vessel far offshore.

 

 

the bridge to Tiajuana
the bridge to Tijuana

As it turns out, Tijuana is a $2.50 public-transit train ride from downtown San Diego, and so we decided to take a brief day trip south of the border. Tijuana is everything that I dislike about Mexico, condensed into a single city – a stark contrast to La Paz, which is absolutely nothing like it.

 

a spraypainted "zebra"
a spraypainted "zebra"

Between hundreds of shopkeepers (all bafflingly selling the exact same items for the same prices) yelling at us to come into their stores and restaurant owners offering cheap tequila (followed by “I’ve got something for your nose, amigo!”), there were random street “displays”. This one, a burro spray painted with zebra stripes, was apparently available for tourists to take their photo with… for a fee, of course.

 

laundry day
laundry day

The first step to arriving in a new city is to figure out where the basics are coming from – internet, showers, groceries, laundry, etc. Most of the facilities were a good five kilometres away from the anchorage, however, so we made the most of our time and split up the tasks between us. This is Miya, with all of our laundry packed into a series of heavy dry bags and our collapsible pull cart, headed for the laundromat.

 

one of the acrobatic mackerel
one of the acrobatic mackerel

In my last post, I began by describing hundreds of tiny acrobatic fish hurling themselves at the side of the boat. Later that day I discovered that several of the fish had leapt into the dinghy! The internet told us that these fish were mackerel, but unfortunately it also told us that you should never eat fish that you’ve found dead; there would be no way to know how long the fish had been dead. Pity I hadn’t looked into the dinghy earlier, these little guys would have made for a delicious breakfast.

 

Miya at the masthead
Miya at the masthead

One of the biggest projects I wanted to have completed before leaving offshore was the ham radio install. This required several trips up the mast; one to affix a temporary backstay (length of steel cable holding up the mast) to measure the length of the new antenna, one to take down the temporary backstay, and one to affix the new backstay.

After hoisting me up the mast with our largest winch, Miya decided that it would be easier for both of us if she went up and I manned the winch.

 

the pelican mafia
the pelican mafia

The pelicans in San Diego were pretty much completely unafraid of humans, and would regularly surround our boat during their fishing expeditions. A few times they almost appeared threatening…

 

yup, it's grand
yup, it's grand

When we realized that the Grand Canyon was a short-ish eight-hour car ride away, and that we’d be unlikely to be anywhere near as close to it every again, we decided to take a few days and go on a road trip. Despite the cold January air, the canyon was everything that television and movies made it out to be: a very large, very beautiful hole in the ground.

 

pretty steep drop there
pretty steep drop there

 

obligatory awful tourist take-our-photo shot
obligatory awful tourist take-our-photo shot

This is us enjoying the last moments of  warm sunshine, just prior to the sun falling below the horizon and sending us sprinting for the car and warm sweaters. The desert gets COLD at night!

 

heiroglyphs in the painted desert
heiroglyphs in the painted desert

The canyon was nice, but to be honest we preferred the drive through the Painted Desert and the strolls through the petrified forests. If you click this photo and look right at the centre, you can see the 6000-year-old drawings on the side of this boulder, known as “Newspaper Rock”.

 

continuing our world tour
continuing our world tour

Miya and I have a habit of visiting places with identical names to larger, more famous places; in 2011 we visited Moscow and Paris, both in Idaho.

 

salvation mountain!
salvation mountain!

Salvation Mountain, at the entrance to Slab City (as seen in the movie “Into The Wild”) was probably the highlight of the epic January road trip. The life’s work of a devout born-again Christian artist, the mountain is made from found materials, mostly dirt, hay bales, wood and leftover paint… lots and lots of paint.

Slab City was fascinating as well, though less photogenic – a squatter community in the desert, completely off the grid and self-reliant, on concrete slabs left over from an abandoned military base. I could see myself spending time there, especially if it were with a group of like-minded adventurers.

 

Rich recording voiceovers
Rich recording voiceovers

Following the trip to Arizona, we jumped a plane and headed to Vancouver to help throw Sequential Circus 10, an event series that I’ve been throwing (well, with the heavy assistance of a group of close friends and dedicated volunteers) for the past five years or so. In this photo, Rich Hamakawa is recording voiceovers (in the booth, the vocal talents of France Perras) for use as the introductions on each of the podcast recordings. Sitting in the TopFloorUnderground studios with good friends and a bottle of nice tequila is a fine way to spend an afternoon.

 

photo by Luke Szczepanski
photo by Luke Szczepanski

I have to admit, we do throw a helluva party. This is Drew ‘Vespers’ Betts performing for a packed dancefloor. All of the performances at Sequential Circus shows are live acts.

 

another excellent photo by Luke Szczepanski
another excellent photo by Luke Szczepanski

Much fun was had by all – thanks for the great photos, Luke! Much more of his most excellent work can be found on his Flickr site.

 

Miya working on the garden
Miya working on the garden

Back to San Diego and back to the grind – with only a few short days left until we left, I had my hands full with important travel-related boat projects, like finishing the water maker install and getting the ham radio up and running and retrieving up-to-date weather info. Miya took advantage of the boat being in “project mode” to make a mess on the deck, building her custom garden boxes. It’s worth noting that Miya’s blog, http://www.thenomadist.com, has lately been far more up-to-date than my own. 🙂

 

installing the through-hull for the water maker
installing the through-hull for the water maker

The hardest part of the install was the through-hull that needed to be installed below the waterline. Normally this would require a haul out, but we decided to try it in the water. I plugged the new brass scoop fitting with a small softwood plug, got all the tools and fittings ready, and then did the unthinkable: I drilled a hole into the bottom of the boat directly into the ocean!

I figured that given the balmy San Diego weather the water would be warm enough to do the install in just my swimsuit, but once I jumped in I quickly changed my mind and switched to my wetsuit. In the end verything went smoothly, and overall we only had about four litres of seawater pour into the bilge.

 

project day, viewed from above
project day, viewed from above

The project days were fruitful, and if you click into this photo you can see many of them on the go – the flippers on the deck from the water maker install, the detritus from the garden construction, pillows out on the bow nets to air out, the blue bins of winter clothes out in preparation for cold offshore nights, the new Achilles dinghy and the old Zodiac dinghy alongside our venerable folding “beater” row dinghy… so much going on in this photo!

And that brings us to the end of January! One more blog post to go and I should be actually up to date and back to posting about things as they happen, instead of posting about them two months later…

 

Weather Window!

scraps of life in Neah Bay
scraps of life in Neah Bay; a washboard and genuine hardtack!

Lovely and quiet as life in this tiny, remote coastal fishing village has been, after eleven days it’s somewhat of a relief to finally pack up the boat and prepare to leave Neah Bay for the open ocean. The NOAA weather forecasts for the next few days show a favourable window, with the gale-force southerly winds that we’ve been experiencing for the past week subsiding and slowly giving way to gentle northwesterlies, which combined with the dominant currents should give us a safe and quick offshore passage south to San Francisco. We have enjoyed it here, but we’re looking forward to being back in an anchorage with easy access to more modern amenities than a rustic general store – and somehow nobody managed to mention the fact that Neah Bay is a “dry community” in any of the cruising guides! I can’t wait to have a frosty pint at a yacht club bar in SF.

The sprocket for the steering system came in with unbelievable swiftness – funny how parts shipped from the US to Canada always seem to take a few extra days, while shipping this hunk of metal from Canada to the US took less than twenty hours from the confirmation email! With the help of our new local diver/fisherman/handyman friend Daren Akin, we had the sprocket cut to fit and installed in a matter of hours, and since then the steering has been working far smoother than before.

howling winds in the anchorage
howling southerly winds, all day every day

The weather has been the most stressful part about living in Neah Bay; the return of predominantly northwest winds comes as a huge relief as we wondered whether or not we’d missed our window to head offshore this year at all. For the past few days the winds have been howling day and night – during the day we seem to get gusty winds in bursts of about a half-hour of 25kn winds every two hours, but after dark the winds have been rising to much higher. Strangely, it seems like the only time we’ve seen really strong winds – 35kn-40kn – has been at 4am… for three days in a row now.

I’ve been trying a new technique; anchoring from the stern instead of the bows. The benefit is that the TIE Fighter tends to swing less at anchor, less “sailing” far to the left and right with the wind – but I can’t really take credit for that. The real reason is that I installed the fancy Wi-Fi antenna to the side of the aft cabin, and apparently once the cabin sides are wet from rain there’s no passing a Wi-Fi signal through them. We have to have the boat faced to present the Wi-Fi antenna at the marina a kilometer or so away if we want a signal!

The downside of this stern-anchoring trick is that I have never had to handle a dragging anchor from the stern before – the engine starts just fine, but with an anchor line off the back I would have to be very careful not to back over the line; in an anchor-dragging situation, wrapping a line around the propellor shaft could be disastrous! Combined with the howling winds and rains and utter darkness of the night, I’ve had a rough time sleeping, even with the anchor-drag alarm set on the Garmin GPSMap76cx on the pillow beside my head. I’ve left a second anchor rigged on deck, ready to throw over the side at the first sign of dragging – but to my surprise and relief, the Fortress FX-37 anchor has held through the worst of it, without giving a meter!

Miya trying to bring in a ling cod
Miya trying to bring in a ling cod

We’ve taken advantage of the few days of the fall sun non-rain of the Pacific Northwest to relax, nail down some final boat-readyness projects (at least one project is now literally nailed down) and to explore the areaaround Neah Bay. Yesterday we hiked the little island that marks the entrance to the anchorage and explored a huge, partially submerged barge at the western end of the bay.

Mostly though, we’ve been working through stresses, finding our centers and getting our heads ready for the upcoming step; arguably the biggest step we’ve made so far.

Tomorrow we leave offshore. Within the next ten days, we’ll arrive in San Francisco.