Miller arrives

Well, 2 days before Miller was to arrive, we had the boat scheduled for a haul out. They literally pick the entire boat out of the water with some slings and a crane to allow you to do work on the bottom/paint/etc. Well, during the survey, we couldn’t get 2 of the sea cocks to close. Additionally, the depth sounder was bad (however I think the owner new it as he had a replacement on board). He agreed to have the sea cocks serviced and depth sounder replaced prior to close.

I spoke to Mike at La Paz yachts and asked if we could hold off on the service until I arrived. I thought it would be a good experience to go through the haul out process with an experienced captain as well as be on hand to observe the work (after all, this is Mexico). We scheduled the haul out for Friday morning, 8:30. The work would take 2 hours, back in the water before lunch……….not quite.

Servicing the sea cocks went as planned, unfortunately, the depth sounder was a challenge. It was the same size, just different style. To make a long story short, we had to shave the blocks on each side of the hull down, sand out a little bit of the hull itself, and cut the “ears” off the wing nut to tighten down the sounder. Then we had to epoxy the old holes, sand and paint. Due to this, we had to postpone putting her back in the water until 8:30 the next morning. Thus, I spent the night on “the hard” in the boatyard.

At around midnight, I heard Metallica and Guns and Roses blaring from a fishing boat down on the dock. I couldn’t believe I was in Mexico hearing a bunch of local Mexican fishermen cranking Metallica at 12am! I wanted to say something however thought that it was just payback for all the times I did the same to others. Regardless, I got to bed at 2am.

The next morning, the boat went in the water as scheduled however 2 of 3 valves were leaking. After several failed attempts to stop the leaks, it was decided to pull the boat back out of the water and replace all 3 valves. Although I’m glad we did it, we didn’t bet the boat back in the water until 2pm. No, we’re not done yet.

As I went to start the engine, something felt a little squirrelly with the transmission. We couldn’t get it in gear. Not a problem, we’ll just have Mike shift manually from one of the lockers under the cockpit (if you saw the size of these lockers, I was thankful that I was the “Captain” and could send him below). We got the boat back in the Marina around 3pm and began to take apart the pedestal to determine the problem. It turns out a piece of plastic broke off a bracket that held the cable in place for the shifter. At this point, we had to leave to pick up Miller. I made the decision to stay at the marina with Mike and work on our problem in order to have the boat ready to go out the next day. Miller arrived around 4pm via cab and we continued to work on the boat until dark. With some duct tape and 2 coat hangers, we got it working. Miller and I both crashed out early that night.

The next day we woke up at 5:30 and were on a van heading for Las Arenas by 6am. We were going fishing for Tuna and Dorado (Mahi Mahi). I’m not going to tell you about the day, except for the fact that our guide Jorge was great and the fishing was better. Please see the pics, enough said.

We were scheduled to push off Monday however a strong northerly came in and we thought it would better to hold off departure until the next morning. This worked out perfectly as the wind switched direction and we were able to catch the ebb out the following morning. We sailed the entire way. I’ll need to fill in the location later as I don’t remember how to spell the place! Tomorrow, we head north to swim with the seals, more later!