Boat Projects

A few pictures from the last two days of intensive boat project work.

Rani provides scale for our storm jib, which flies only as high as the first spreaders.

The dinghy was quite badly damaged around the bow where the tow line pulled through the plastic, putting a big hole in the bow where the eye was, another in the front of the gunwale, and a tear in the port gunwale aft of the bow.

Fortunately, Rani managed to buy some polypropylene rods from a company called Sabic in Coquitlam, B.C., while she was up north last month. We did not anticipate using them before we left for the Marquesas but " C'est la vie"!

Using a small soldering iron to fuse the broken bow eye plastic piece back in place.

Starting by melting a groove around the broken piece, which has been pushed into place.

Melting a polypropylene rod into the groove. The iron is a bit too small for the job and it was slow work.

The repaired bow. Note the eye has been moved up a few inches because the repaired section is too weak to hold it. The gunwale damage is too large to repair by welding as the plastic was lost during the accident. The tube through which the painter was led is visible and has been repaired and reinforced with plastic welding rod.

The gunwale aft of the bow had a tear, which has been repaired with welding rod.

The bow eye is now backed by some aluminum scrap we bought at a window manufacturer.

Filing the plate we will use to reinforce the bow.

Marking the plate for rivet holes.

Plate riveted in place. We will cover this with something soft to protect Ladybug from bashes.

Autopilot cantilever bracket made from PVC pipe and lined with a wood plug to back up the socket. The white and silver plate in the background will hold this pipe and was fitted to hold the autopilot at the right height and distance from the tiller. The duct tape is just in place until the glue dries. 

A few pictures from Bonanza Beach

Here are a few pictures from our recent visit to Bonanza beach. The lovely moth landed on the lines that hold our solar panels. The lines are only about 1/8 of an inch in diameter.

Moth on the rigging

Rani has decided she needs some upper body toning and has decided to work the windlass to bring up the anchor more often.

Rani bringing up the anchor.

We were delighted to hear our friends Frank and Cheryl from Serendipity hail us on the VHF and we joined them at anchor off Bonanza beach.

Enjoying some wine on the beach with Frank and Cheryl of S/V Serendipity

Kurt and Nancy arrived a few days ago, after we checked into Marina Palmira, bringing with them some Polynesian cruising guides that Rani had ordered as well as additional spices and some presents of dried fruit and books. Kurt also gave us a lesson on celestial navigation including how to calibrate and use our plastic sextant. He also wrote up a guide for us on  how to take Meridian sites. We plan to follow his advice and take noon sites each day on passage, so we are prepared in case we lose our GPS and electronics in a lightning strike. It will also be fun to do things in the traditional way.

Day sailing with Nancy and Kurt

Kurt is clearly happy to be back on the water.

Rani's new lycra anti-jellyfish suit, sewn by Katty in La Paz.

Unfortunately, we had a small incident involving the propeller and our dinghy tow line. The engine and prop are fine but the force tore off  the front of our little plastic dinghy. I will try to plastic weld things back together and back this up with aluminum sheet.  We will replace the tow line with a floating one.

Dinghy towing eye from our Walker Bay.

We have revised our estimated departure date from La Paz, to the end of the first week in March. This will give us time to finish most of our projects including installing the autopilot, fixing the dinghy, repairing the jib, and painting the chain.

Bonanza Beach, Boat Cushions, Blood, and Bird Shit

We are back in La Paz again after a rolly few days anchored off Bonanza Beach. We chose to spend our last few Sea of Cortez "island days" in Bonanza because our good friends on S/V Serendipity were resting there after a 3 day crossing from Puerto Vallarta.

This anchorage on the east side of Espiritu Santo island is, as we soon learned, open to refracting northerly swells. We anchored in close to the beach well inside a reef that guards the north east entrance. At all but high tide, the reef knocked down the worst of the swells, but a 15 knot northerly wind made our stay a bit rolly. Visually, this is a lovely anchorage, with two miles of sand and dunes framed by volcanic hills of red and black rock and a granite headland immediately to the north. We spent 3 days here walking on the beach and sharing pot luck dinners with Frank and Cheryl. We also made the first two boat cushion slip covers and with a few tweaks and some Velcro tabbed straps to hold things together they look quite decent. Pictures to follow.

Yesterday I had my second Mexican dental experience. Much better than the one last spring where a Guaymas dentist drilled out two old fillings, breaking a molar and putting in fillings that lasted less than two weeks. The broken molar that I had repaired in Canada had become infected below the gum line and could not be saved, so the very competent English speaking dentista (female dentist) extracted it. Unfortunately their compressor was not working well, so the drill that she used to cut the molar before removing it kept slowing and stopping and the whole debacle took more than two hours with much blood loss. We went out to see the carnaval parade after this but my heart was not in it and Rani kindly took me home early.

I woke up at three in the morning with the blood still trickling into my mouth to the telltale splat of bird shit arriving on our cabin roof and the enhanced bass thump of Mexican dance music from the malecon. From recent experience I know how hard bird poop is to remove if left for a few hours, so I went on deck and scared away the little night heron that was perched on our windex at the top of the mast. A few minutes later, Rani came on deck in a very bad mood - much like a small sleepy bear awakened during hibernation - as I scrubbed the poop off the dodger, sail cover, cabin hood, solar panels, and side decks. My explanation that I could not sleep anyway due to the bleeding and the booming carnaval music did not fly and she informed me that normal people do not stomp around at night cleaning bird shit by flashlight.

Today was better and I managed some porridge for breakfast. We worked on the boat cushion covers and prepared for our guests, Kurt and Nancy, who arrive tomorrow. We will put Ladybug in a marina for a week to entertain our guests and to do the final projects and provisioning before we leave for Polynesia.

Trekking with Chris

As most of my friends will acknowledge, I am a pretty good hiker. Trekking with Chris, however, has put a whole new meaning to exploratory hikes and sometimes leave me wishing for the well trodden trails of the northwest forests where I used to roam with the Cowichan Outdoor Group.

In the Baja heat we venture into the desert, scramble up scree encrusted hills, hop rock to rock and dodge the prickly bushes and cacti in the steep arroyos where rain water once tumbled down the mountains. The anticipated three hours become six and we return with wearied limbs covered in spidery trails of dried blood. Chris rarely complains despite suffering more than his share of this abuse ( he rarely  pays attention to that old addage “look before you leap” ).

Dos Amigos on San Gabriel beach

Off on an adventure!

Making new friends on Bonanza Beach

Puffers can be cool too!

John with staff

Multitude of life under rocks

John lifted some rocks in the tide pools on the southern end of Bonanza Beach and we were amazed at the number of sea stars, cucumbers, worms and shells hiding in the cool shade and shallow water. Writhing masses of brittle stars reminded us of a brood of vipers. Speaking of vipers, John warned us about the poisonous jabs of the pretty cone shells. Having spent a few years in the Marshall Islands, he has seen his share of exotic shells and seems well informed of their deadly interaction with the naive beach comber.

Brittle Star hiding under the rocks

Shells living in the rock pools of Bonanza Beach

I should have warned our friend John of sv Time Piece before we invited him on a cross-island hike on Isla Espiritu Santo.The first leg of the trek from San Gabriel Bay to Bonanza Beach was an easy hike through a well traveled arroyo but the return leg was a detour directed by Chris.

Along the way, Chris invited John to follow him in his "Thelma and Louise" leap off a large dune. Unfortunately, I did not catch the action on my camera, so Chris repeated this twice for my benefit and had a prickly landing on the third attempt. John used his safety training skills to extract the cactus spines from his foot.

Let's follow the coyote trail

But, first, let's go up this dune and jump off the top!

Woweeeeee!

Oweeeeeee!!!!

Chris ran into this beastie at his third run down the dune :(

“ We can climb over that gray looking ridge and come down into an adjacent arroyo which should bring us back behind the bird colony”. It sounded easy enough but what we did not foresee was that there was another ridge beyond the first and traversing those hills would be hard work in the afternoon heat. In this instance we decided that following Chris was not the best idea, so John and I decided to mutiny and scramble down  instead of following him up the second ridge.

We think he ran up to beat us to the dinghies as he managed to disappear rather quickly from view. While hopping along the rock slides and crawling down crumbling sandstone scree, we amused ourselves by inventing stories of encounters with wild cats and near death escapes that we would later recount to our very own Captain Bligh.

"We just have to go over one more ridge , honest!"

Cardon Cactus in arroyo

Rani's cave

Boats beyond the frigate colony

 Finally our arroyo opened into the salty flats behind the mangrove sanctuary of the nesting frigate colony.

Dinghy transfer 

To his credit, Chris rowed out to Ladybug to fetch us all a can of cold beer when we emerged onto the beach, battered and bruised. And he towed John's dinghy from the beach into shallower water, probably to ease his conscience.

Pictures from the Islands Near La Paz

Rani has promised to post an entry in the next few days. Until then, here are a few pics from recent trips to the islands north of La Paz.

Sally Lightfoot crab at Bonanza Beach.

View south along Bonanza Beach.

Goats rub their horns on certain trees. 

Free Spirit anchored off the mangrove lined lagoon at San Gabriel anchorage.

Ladybug arrives in Lobos anchorage.

Furling the jib slows things down and makes it easier to maneuver under sail in an anchorage.

Ladybug inspects the toys in the 'garage' of a mega-yacht.

Chris and John climbing near the Raza anchorage.

John Spicher and Chris resting after the climb. Rooster and Hen islands in the distance.

To balance the dinghy we now sit back to back on the main thwart.

Navy vessel approaches after dropping off an officer on Time Piece. We have been inspected twice in the last few weeks.

Masked men and guns - The fellow who is waving took down our vessel particulars and one of the masked men came on board with him. He was very interested in our boat and Rani invited him below - machine gun and all.

Chris inspects a large shell midden.

This cave was occupied many years ago and has its own shell midden.

Beautiful patterns of peeling bark.

Rain!

The day we arrived in Mexico in mid November it rained in the night. Since then, we have not seen a drop until today, although we passed near a shower that produced a rain-arch on one passage. It comes as something of a shock when you wake up here to overcast skies and doubly so when these are accompanied by drumming rain and rumbling thunder.

We have rigged a tarp to collect rain water in anticipation of doing this often in the tropics. The results so far are not spectacular - we have collected enough water to brush our teeth, but the water is rich with fragments of blue tarp. I think we will either need to make a custom tarp to collect rain or try to use the boats scuppers to collect run-off. (The deck has high bulwarks, which will trap the run-off from the cabin and sails if we block the scuppers that drain over the side).

Rani tells me she loves the sound of rain - it takes her back to being a little girl in India. She would run outside, dancing and twirling, the drops landing heavily on her head. Sometimes the rain would come so quickly and heavily that the parched earth could not accept it immediately and everything would flood. And then the worms would come out and make it hard to get back to her house as she had to walk on tip-toes to avoid squishing them. My early memories of thunderstorms take me to my parent's bedroom where I must have ended up hiding under the covers and counting the seconds between light and crash.

Being in a sailboat in a thunderstorm with that big metal pole poking up toward the clouds is not an entirely relaxing experience. I take heart that there are 6 other boats in the anchorage some with quite a lot taller masts...

Baja Sailing

One of the things you sometimes hear during coffee hour at the cruiser's club ('club cruceros') in La Paz is that there is never a decent wind for sailing among the islands in the Sea of Cortez. Like the Gulf and San Juan islands in the Pacific North West, the winds here in the winter seem to be either light and variable or strong from the north. The joke about Gulf Island Sailing where every boat you see has their mainsail up and their motor running holds quite well for this area, too.

However, we have an advantage that few of the Gulf Island sailors have and that is that we rarely have a deadline. Nor are the tides here a huge issue until you enter the estuary channel leading up to la Paz, where currents regularly flow at a couple of knots. So with much patience, it is actually possible to sail almost anywhere here. Going south is perhaps the simplest, since with a 20 knot 'Norther' behind you, you can easily do 50 miles in daylight, if you don't mind rolling around in the short sharp seas that build up during these winds.

Around the islands north of La Paz, the winds can be challenging. The Lorenzo Channel that separates La Paz from the islands has its own wind. A vortex can form in the pocket west of this channel where the winds die out and a big choppy swell from two or more directions makes it virtually impossible to sail. With northerly winds it is sometimes possible to sail far to the west to avoid this pocket of trouble, but this adds four or more miles to the passage between the islands and La Paz.

Our trip yesterday was not entirely typical, since we were able to sail through the pocket of calms off the Lorenzo channel. We left Raza anchorage with a light Northwest wind blowing and ran south with the wind behind our starboard quarter, ghosting through the calms in the lee of Rooster and Hen islands. Two boats were under sail about a mile offshore, one hoisting its spinnaker as we sailed out of the bay. About an hour out, the wind died out and then shifted into the southwest. Several sailboats motored past in both directions and the two boats that had been sailing took down their sails and ran south to La Paz under motor. The southwest wind held for a couple of miles, but as we approached the Lorenzo channel and cleared the south end of Espiritu Santo Island, we could see a train of white caps marching down the channel from the opposite direction. I hurried to the mast and put a reef in the main. We then slatted around in the hiatus between the wind systems for half an hour.

When we finally reached the channel wind, it was on our port beam and Ladybug hiked up her skirts, leaned her shoulder into the sea, and took off like a young colt. A large 1970's IOR race boat that had motored past us earlier rolled out her jib (Rani says we shamed them into sailing) and we sailed in company across the channel, leaving them as we turned into the Lobos anchorage. Lobo means 'wolf' or 'sea lion' and it is a common name for rocks and points in the Sea of Cortez. There is a small rock of this name off the anchorage that welcomed us with a musical accompaniment of bellows and grunts.

Lobos anchorage was filled by a multi-million dollar mega-yacht, behind which two masts could just be seen. We beat into the anchorage, sailing under the stern of the big yacht, where the 'garage' was open, displaying a raft of kayaks, jet skis, and other aquatic toys. The transom of the yacht opened out into a ramp, up which the toys could be hauled and loaded before getting under way. Our friends George on 'Susie' and Charlie and Sharon on 'Castaway' were the two sailboats in the anchorage and we sailed upwind of Castaway, jibed, and ran down under main alone, so we could best determine where to anchor. The big yacht occupied so much of the anchorage that we ended up beating back up to a point inside of it, just off a sand shelf and about 300 feet north of Castaway. We dropped the anchor in 14 feet of beautiful emerald water and a few hours later, a full moon rose over the anchorage as the sun dropped behind the hills across La Paz Bay.

Sea Socks and Sail Covers

Just before leaving Nova Scotia to move to BC, I paddled for a week down the coast in a river kayak. This was a wonderful trip, but some of the open water crossings were rough and because the boat has no bulkheads and I cannot 'eskimo roll', I realized that had I capsized, my chances of survival were low. To improve the odds on such trips, I decided to make a sea sock. This is simply a large sock-shaped bag that you sit inside while paddling. It fits around the cockpit combing and prevents water from entering the rest of the boat if you capsize. I bought the materials for this - coated Cordura - over the Web and have been carrying it around ever since - first across Canada to Victoria, and then onto Ladybug and down the coast to Mexico. I never made that sea sock, but yesterday, we finally used the material.

Friends who have spent much time in the tropics have warned us that the intense sun can do a number on your sails even if you keep them covered. Most of our canvas is more than 10 years old and thinner and less opaque than it was when new, so we decided to line our main sail cover with the burgundy sea sock material. We cut the material into 3 pieces and sewed these on the inside of the sail cover using the special sunbrella-specific UV resistant thread that Rani brought down from Vancouver. This thread is thicker and waxier than anything I have used before and did an excellent job without the issue of twisting and jamming that has plagued previous canvas projects. Our little Singer Featherweight handled the job without an issue, despite having to punch through 5 to 6 layers of material in places - testimony to the fact that good thread and a sharp needle are as or more important than your sewing machine's power.

The northerly winds have died down today after 2 or 3 days of rough weather outside our snug harbour. We are running low on water, butter, eggs, and fresh vegetables, so will sail south toward La Paz today.

Tuning the Rig

Our friend, John Spicher on Time Piece commented on our rig being a bit loose - in particular our aft lower shrouds (the wires that run from the first spreaders down and back) were so loose that the mast might be in danger of pumping (oscillating), which could cause a dismasting or failure in the long run. John brought over a tension gauge and measured the tension in all of the wires but the forestay, which is covered up by the roller furling foil. The tension ranged from 13% of breaking strain on the back stay (and by extension, the un-measured forestay) to as little as less than 4% (off the scale of the gauge) on one aft lower shroud.

To tension the shrouds, you twist a threaded turn-buckle a couple of turns at a time, alternating on each side and sighting up the mast each time to make sure things are straight and true. Befre we started, we went around the inside of the boat, tightening the bolts on the chainplates, which transfer the loads from the mast shrouds to the hull, via various bulkheads.

It took about two hours to undo all the wires that prevent the turn-buckles from losing their adjustment, tension all 10 wires, and re-affix the locking wires. Thanks to John we now have a nice evenly tensioned rig with between 11% and 13% of breaking strain on each wire - more tension being on the back and fore stay as well as the primary shrouds (the ones that go all the way to the top of the mast). Hopefully this will get us across the Pacific and back.

Post from our radio

One of the options that Blogger offers is the ability to post an entry via email. We will use this while en route to the Marquesas to provide passage updates including our position. The posts will be brief and text only because we will be sending them via a HAM radio link, which provides speeds similar to late 1980s dial-up modems.

There are dozens of HAM radio operators around the world who provide the gateway from radio sets to the Internet that makes this possible. To connect, we find a HAM station that is fairly near us (we are currently using stations in California and Texas, for example). Each station can respond on a number of frequencies and the one we choose is dependent on how well radio waves propagate at the time of day that you are communicating as well as the distance to the station from your boat. Sometimes it is just not possible to connect at all. We have had luck with daytime transmissions and usually try to connect early in the morning and just before sunset. We also use this service to send and receive short text emails to a special radio email address and to download weather forecasts and raw weather data (GRIB files that show wind speeds and surface pressures).

Ladybug is currently anchored in San Gabriel bay on Espiritu Santo island north of La Paz. We went on a lovely long hike yesterday to Bonanza beach and back via the valley behind a lagoon. Saw one goat and many frigate birds who nest in the lagoon. The baby frigate birds are now mostly adolescent and harder to tell from their parents. We had to move the boat away from the nesting site later that night because the birds decided our boat needed re-painting. The new fridge is working well and drawing only about 12 amp hours per 24 hours in the cool Baja winter airs, so we had cold beers on our return the the hike - woo hoo! (After 3 years cruising here with no fridge this is a real treat.)