01-Jan-2012 barra de navidad, mexico.
As 2011 comes to a close I sit here at six a.m. listening to some sort of techno trance music playing on a nearby beach loud enough to mistake it coming out of speakers on our own boat. Without that pesky sleep in the way I'm able to think about the past year and all that we as a family were able to accomplish. Our number one accomplishment as far as I'm concerned is that for another year we've managed to live life exactly the way we want by doing the things we want to do. That's no easy task for anyone.
It was a big year for us, no doubt. We started out still way back in Rio Vista, California, with a one year-old and Ali one month pregnant. It would still have been easy to throw in the towel on this whole complicated, difficult, frustrating, boat lifestyle that we'd envisioned for ourselves. But we didn't. We moved the boat to San Francisco, continued to get next to nothing done on the boat project list, and then miraculously sailed out of San Francisco Bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and took a left.
While Ali flew on ahead to Puerto Vallarta with Ouest on her own I dropped the dock lines and single handed the boat a thousand miles south without major mishap. Soon after that Lowe was born and we had two Mexican babies living aboard. We split time living in Puerto Vallarta, the boat, and Sayulita, before moving back aboard full time when the weather chilled a bit.
And finally we went cruising as a family of four. So here we are at anchor in Barra with ecstasy club music thumping away in our heads. Ouest is sleeping while Lowe is teething, and feeding, in Ali's tired arms. I'm sitting on the couch typing away and thinking about what 2012 will bring us. Lots of ideas, no set plans. But I do have a vision.
Randomness: Lowe's first tooth officially popped through today, I beat the S&P 500 by fourteen percent in 2011, we have grass a foot long growing on our waterline, and a boat dragged through the anchorage today and then ran aground three times.
02-Jan-2012 barra de navidad, mexico.
Turns out we sort of jumped the gun on the big grocery stock up the other day as we still have no strong inclination to leave. We like Barra. It's a nice local feeling town that is just the right size for walking from one end to the other with a two year-old in tow. We've eaten at at least ten different restaurants and despite none of them being overwhelmingly good none have been too disappointing either. Ice cream shop, French bakery, OXXO, and a couple of hardware stores and we're pretty well taken care of these days.
The anchorage here isn't half bad either. All the cruisers we talked to before coming here made it sound as if the lagoon was just a disgusting cesspool of bugs and mud. I think they all said the water was disgusting. And while I'm not really inclined to dive in the locals sure don't mind it one bit. They waterski, tube, and banana boat through here all day long.
Anyway, we're not putting down roots, but we're not exactly rushing out of here either.
03-Jan-2012 bumfuzzle.
SAIL magazine contacted me a few months back. They said they were putting together a blog site and wanted Bumfuzzle to be one of the six or so bloggers that would be a part of it. And the gig would pay a little bit too. Not much mind you, but enough to buy the kids a new pair of flip-flops every couple of months.
I turned them down. I told them I had already made fun of their magazine, as well as all the other cruising rags, so many times that I would feel like a total sell out if I joined in. They wrote back that they understood why I couldn't stand sailing magazines, but that this would be different. Sure there would be advertisers, but the writers would be real sailors writing whatever they felt like about actually sailing. So in other words there won't be twenty posts in a row reviewing boats that none of your readers can afford? No gear reviews for gear that only some jerk-off that's never done anything but outfit boats that don't leave the dock would be interested in buying? No thinly disguised "articles" that are really just advertisements for charter boats? Okay then, sign me up.
So anyway, SAILfeed.com launched a couple of weeks back. So far the other writers seem interesting enough. Not being too interested in sailboats myself, other than whichever one I happen to be living on at the moment, I've found a few posts a bit boring, but I know I'm a little weird as far as that goes and I know many of you reading this would enjoy them. So please, by all means, go and read.
So far I've only posted my regular Bumfuzzle blog posts to the site, but I got to thinking that since my day to day ramblings often don't include anything remotely sail related, that maybe I could use some input on things to write about occasionally. In other words I thought I'd ask if you all have any questions or topics that you might like to hear my take on. I've never been interested in doing that sort of thing here on Bumfuzzle because as I've said in the past we sort of consider Bumfuzzle to be our diary, and twenty years from now I know I won't give a toss about any of the normal FAQ things you see on all the other cruising blogs out there. But now I've got a different place I can post that crap. So if you want to hear about something shoot us an e-mail and let us know. Or better yet, go to SAILfeed, click on one of our posts, and leave a comment with your suggestion.
03-Jan-2012 barra de navidad, mexico.
The other day I was in the taxi with Ouest when she pointed at something and said, "Papa, papa." The taxi driver looked up surprised and asked, "Español?" Ouest does seem to hit all the right inflections on Mama and Papa to sound just like the little Mexican she is.
We discovered that the hotel we use for the dinghy dock and pool doubles as a spider monkey torture chamber as well. Maybe torture is a little strong, but man, whatever possesses people/businesses to purchase and keep wild animals in cages on their properties? This particular monkey enclosure looks as if it has weathered many a hurricane and just hardly survived. One monkey lives inside with absolutely nothing to do all day. Sweet little thing too. Not really knowing what to do for him we just bought a couple of bananas and let Ouest feed him. Fortunately she's too young to understand the cruelty of his situation.
We are currently embroiled in the midst of teething hell. It seriously sucks. Lowe is normally the most chill kid on the block, but the past week or so has been brutal. One tooth is all the way through so we keep hoping for a couple of days respite before the rest come pounding through the gum line, but so far there is no rest. He's gotten really good at grabbing anything within range and violently shoving it into his mouth like some sort of wild animal.
Hey, I tried to tell her but she wouldn't listen. Live and learn Ouest, live and learn.
I love this picture because while Ouest was bending down to pet this adorable little puppy she didn't realize that she'd gotten in Lowe's range. Once you are within an arms length of that boy you can expect to have something pulled out. And man you can hardly believe how strong his grip is.
04-Jan-2012 barra de navidad, mexico.
Average life expectancy in Mexico is seventy-six years old. Meaning that I am officially middle-aged. It's seventy-eight in the States so I'm thinking of moving back there for another year.
This morning when Ouest woke up Ali went in to her room and told her it was my birthday. I was in the front cabin with Lowe but I was looking back to Ouest's room when Ali told her. Suddenly her head popped around the corner of her door, she looked at me wide-eyed and said, "Cake!?"
Spent the day bumming around Barra. Got laundry done. Ate tacos, drank Pacificos, swam, fed a monkey, all the normal things one does on their birthday.
05-Jan-2012 tenacatita, mexico.
We motored out of Barra this morning in calm water and hot still air. It's only a thirteen mile jaunt around the corner to Tenacatita so it should have been simple enough, but halfway I realized that the batteries weren't charging. Scratch that, they were charging, but slowly. And while the Amps were going in the Voltage wasn't rising, it was stuck at 12.0. A peek inside the engine compartment confirmed that it was a loose belt, or actually two loose belts. The engine driven fridge belt assembly had practically worked it's way off the mount which also explained why the fridge was taking so long to cool. Anyway, once settled in I climbed down, tightened everything back up, and we seem to be running good again.
06-Jan-2012 tenacatita, mexico.
Well I thought we were running good again, but apparently not. The fridge is running great now, but the batteries aren't being charged properly. The voltage during the charging won't reach above 12.4v and drops to 12.0 when the engine is shut down after two to three hours. I've got two guesses at the moment. One, the starter battery is bad. That's the battery that the alternator is run through first. Two, that the alternator is bad. Seems more likely that the problem lies in the alternator itself, but seeing as I don't really know anything about the internal workings of an alternator I can't really say for sure.
I believe that in addition to simply charging the batteries that it must have some sort of built in regulator that tells it when to stop pumping full juice in. So maybe that is the culprit. Again, I don't really know. Troubleshooting and Google should help provide some answers tomorrow. If I can't get it squared away in the next couple of days we'll have to make our way back to PV a little sooner than expected.
We set Lowe up with the Jenny Jump Up today. We couldn't find any good place to hang it so we eventually gave up and just screwed it right into the ceiling brace. While we were hooking it up Ali asked, "Why couldn't they just make this thing gender neutral." Answer being, of course, that most parents would rather go out and buy a blue one than put their boy through the embarrassment of a hand-me-down pink one from his sister. Sorry Lowe, I said most parents.
07-Jan-2012 tenacatita, mexico.
So I isolated the starter battery today and went to fire up the engine. Nothing. That battery, despite reading 12.2v couldn't even begin to turn the engine over. Normally this would be evident easily enough because the starter battery and the house batteries should be isolated from each other, joined by a voltage relay, but that relay stopped working a while back and we've just had the whole system piggy-backed since then. So obviously finding this out was a big help. I disconnected the starter battery from the whole system, connected the starter to the house bank, and we were back in business. Of course I've said that before. I still think when we get back to civilization I'm going to pull the alternator and have it checked out. Something just doesn't seem right to me.
Oh, and the Xantrex battery bank monitor is always showing .4v lower than actual. This is a new development as well. What the hell?
Lowe's second tooth is through on the bottom. We are hoping that this is the beginning of at least a few weeks of pain free happiness for Ali and I. Yes, and for Lowe too.
Ouest's talking is finally beginning to make progress. It's funny how kids learn words that you don't even realize you use that much. "Me," is the word that comes to mind. One day she just started saying it all the time, and in the right context. All right so that's not such an impressive word, but she has also started saying "thank you," completely on her own and without any prodding from us.
She has also become a voracious reader. We begin reading before she even gets out of bed. We read before her nap and before bed time. And now, better than all that other reading, she has begun grabbing a big pile of books, sitting down, and flipping through each one of them page by page. Oh how I long for the day when she can sit down with a book and read for hours on end. Know what I'm going to do with all that free time? Use the bathroom all by myself without anybody else in the room or lying on the floor talking to me through the louvers in the door.
We went in and hung out on the beach today, had lunner at the only restaurant, and then went out to dinghy home. One thing about cruising in Mexico is there are a lot of beach break dinghy landings. This is something, surprisingly, that Ali and I almost never had to deal with on our previous sail. I'm not sure why that is, but here on the mainland Mexico coast we get to contend with swells that have traveled thousands of miles and are determined to break right on top of us. Today there were almost no waves so I just walked us out through the six-inch breakers and prepared to hop in the dinghy and take off. But before I could a wave reared up and broke right on the front of the dinghy soaking all of us through and through. We've got to work on our form a bit.
There were only a handful of boats here last month but today I counted nineteen in the anchorage. Fortunately it's a big bay with good holding and is well protected.
08-Jan-2012 tenacatita, mexico.
This is why everyone cruising in Mexico has a dinghy with wheels. That's two hundred and some odd pounds of dinghy there. No problem for Ali and I back in the day, but the four extra legs and feet aren't really helping much right now.
Life aboard is a bit of a challenge right now. Lowe has really been having a hard time with the teething and his sleep has been pretty horrendous. In a house this is tough but bearable, on a boat it is brutal. Nobody, except Ouest who thankfully sleeps right through most of the worst of it, is getting any sleep. Ali bearing the brunt of it. It's easy to forget sometimes that the positives far outweigh the negatives in this chosen lifestyle, especially with two young ones.
But they do. Today we went in for our routine swim. Ouest is hardly two and is every bit the water baby I always hoped she would be. And when she got hungry she told us she was all done and was ready for fish tacos. So we walked over in our bare feet, sat down in the shade, ordered two beers, one jugo, and a plate of fish, rice, and tortillas. Ouest scarfed down her food in bites taken in between running off to see the dog hiding underneath a truck or to fill her bucket with sand while singing some unintelligible song to herself. And Lowe ate and then fell peacefully asleep in Mama's arms. All within view of our home. It's hard to complain about that.
09-Jan-2012 tenacatita, mexico.
Tenacatita. Busy mornings filled with kids' breakfast, play, and Lowe's sporadic naps. Afternoons spent on the beach and in the restaurant. Nights playing on deck as the sun slips underneath the hills, one last kids' meal, and bedtime stories.
Today we hung out with friends we last saw in San Francisco. Their seven-year-old took Ouest by the hand and played with her for a couple of hours. Ouest loved every second of it.
10-Jan-2012 tenacatita, mexico.
I dove in today with scrapers in hand and found that it was amazing this boat moved at all when we left Barra. The bottom was a giant mass of growth. Hundreds of pounds of fist sized plants, quite beautiful actually, had attached themselves to our fifteen or so year-old bottom paint. Wish I knew what kind of paint it was, I'd Tweet a complaint to the company. I mean really.
Fortunately I'd bought the biggest scraper to be had at Home Depot, unfortunately my in-laws weren't able to find our snorkel gear stashed away somewhere in their cabin, leaving me with an ill-fitting mask and snorkel and no fins at all. Scraping a boat this size sans fins is quite an undertaking I must say. While down there I also found that one of the two big nuts on the prop was loose. It would have been the locking nut I suppose, and there is a pin in place behind that, but I was still glad to make that discovery and get it tightened back up.
We spent the rest of the day on the boat because of a big swell that had come up overnight making the beach landing a bit hairy. Actually I went in alone just to drop some garbage off and do a little hand laundry. Nothing but kid's pajamas in the laundry and kid's diapers in the garbage. This is our life.
Ali spent her day more or less trying to pacify Lowe. He's been on the fussy side lately with his teeth coming in and although they are through now there hasn't been much of a reprieve. Hard days that leave both of us longing for nightfall.
About six months ago Ouest fell and hit her mouth causing her tooth to go dark gray. We went to the dentist who recommended seeing a specialist for a root canal. No thanks. Bum friends unanimously said do nothing and sometimes they come back. Well, we're getting close, it looks a ton better than it did just a couple of months back.
11-Jan-2012 chamela, mexico.
The plan was to get an early start this morning, so what did Ouest do, slept until eight-thirty. Oh well. We finally upped anchor and left Tenacatita. We pointed the bow north again and motored out in calm seas and four knots of wind to Chamela. It was an uneventful morning. Just the way we like it. Lowe napped and Ouest played quietly.
Of course the calm onboard couldn't last forever. I mean, we were motoring a whole thirty miles, something had to go wrong. We were all up front when we heard a loud knock. I scooped up Ouest, ran to the back, took a quick look over the side and confirmed we had both water flow and prop wash. So the knock wasn't the shaft coupler for a change. Good. Down inside a quick glance at the instruments showed normal readings for cooling water temperature and oil pressure. Good. Nothing obviously wrong so far. Grab the engine compartment door and lift. Poof, nothing but a cloud of smoke.
"Um, Ali, we've got a problem."
I throttled the engine down and started waving away the smoke. It was a full minute before I could see anything. And fortunately what I found wasn't as scary as the smoke would have led me to believe. The belt for the refrigeration compressor had somehow come off, throwing black rubber all over the compartment and smoking like a Taco Bell employee on break.
Nothing else appeared to be wrong, the belt was already off (at that point I figured it had broken), and the engine was fine, so on we went.
Now the problem of course is... Guess. Right. We don't have an extra belt. No, I've got no idea why we only have one. Both Ali and I can remember in specific detail buying this belt, because we had to go back to the store twice to get the right one. One. Who buys one belt? We do. Now we've got until about two o'clock tomorrow before the fridge gets too warm and everything inside starts going bad.
This afternoon we went ashore and showed the belt to the first guy we came across. He indicated that there was a place right up in town that would have it. We started walking to town but it was too hot and too far so we gave up, circled back, and sat down for beer and fish tacos instead. Tomorrow is another day.
I should mention that when I say fish tacos I don't really mean fish tacos in the traditional sense. Along the mainland coast you don't find fish tacos on a lot of menus. Instead I mean a filet of grilled fish served with rice, vegetables, hot sauce, and a big pile of tortillas. Fish tacos.
Sea sickness. We've been giving Ouest between a quarter and a half of a dramamine pill in her juice before we head out on any passage lately and we haven't had any sickness. As for Lowe, he seems to have been born for the sea. He doesn't care a bit and never seems sick in the least. I've been taking a pill before most passages as well. Mainly because I seem to spend so much time with my head down in the engine compartment. Nothing will make you sick faster than climbing into a hot engine compartment on a rolling boat. Ali has been fine with nothing.
Ouest has never seen a trampoline before and boy was she nervous. She didn't seem to trust that it would hold her and insisted on crawling.
12-Jan-2012 chamela, mexico.
This morning I went in to town to try and track down a belt for the refrigerator. A typical automotive style belt. I walked up through town which is just a shabby little place laid out all along one road about three blocks inland from the ocean, back behind the dunes. I stopped three or four times to ask directions and kept being told "Toques, Toques." I didn't know what that meant but everybody else did and they kept pointing the way.
Eventually I stumbled on El Toques. A house on the end of a long dirt road, over a one lane bridge that I somehow managed to meet a car on every time I crossed it. The cars never slowed. The auto parts store consisted of one room about eight feet by eight feet, but just like in every auto parts store there were belts lining the walls right up against the ceiling just like the wall paper borders that our mothers all put up in the kitchens back in the eighties.
Of course there were no perfect matches, so I bought the three closest and went home. Turned out only one was big enough, and just barely. I stretched it on but knew it wouldn't last, and within minutes of running the engine it was toast. Back to the store later on in the afternoon for the next size up and back to the boat again. This time I also dug around and found my spare alternator belt to replace the one that was a little too stretched out on there now. With everything back together again we fired her up and, success.
An hour later, while Ali was laying Lowe down and I was in bed reading with Ouest, the engine suddenly died. I ran out and opened up the engine hatch to find one big mess of coolant. The coolant hose I have to remove to replace the alternator belt had popped right off. I know I had tightened it, but obviously not enough, and as if to teach me a lesson, it was the only hose in there with only one hose clamp on it.
What a day. Honestly, it feels as if not a day goes by lately without at least one negative boat issue cropping up. I seem to remember writing more than once in the past, "Boats. Never again."
On top of all of our woes, a guy on a neighboring boat flagged me down last night and asked me if I could do him a favor. He broke two ribs when he slipped and fell a couple hours south of Puerto Vallarta. Then in the ensuing trip his boat wouldn't do over 2.5 knots. He was sure that his prop needed to be scraped or that it had been fouled. He needed me to go under and scrape it for him so he could continue to Barra to see a doctor. So today I dove down on his big fifty-four footer and found, well, nothing. There were some barnacles on the prop, but nothing major and there was nothing else hanging off the boat. I scraped it off for him, but suggested he may have some other problems because that shouldn't have slowed him down even a half a knot. For that bit of business his big Polish wife served me a plate of some sort of apple pancakes and I couldn't leave without a big bottle of Sangria. Personally I would have been happy with just a little bit of good karma onboard my own boat.
I make it sound as if I'm the only one doing anything around here, but while I'm off gallivanting around town Ali has been hog tied with two kids that seem to need full attention twenty-four-seven. We need a vacation from this vacation.
I went swimming tonight after the kids were asleep and found the water to be full of phosphorescence. As I swam the green lights exploded off of my fingers and as I kicked my legs left long streaks of radioactive green behind me. Pretty cool. I remember sailing to a specific bay in the Spanish Virgin Islands for this, and now I just stumble upon it here.
13-Jan-2012 chamela, mexico.
So what would the problem of the day be on this fine Mexican Friday? We woke up with no problems, everyone was in a good mood and ready for some breakfast. Seeing as how the fridge didn't get very cold the night before because of the engine overheating issue we decided to fire up the engine this morning and cool it down.
All was well for the first half hour or so, then we both started to think, "Does something sound different?" Pretty soon it was obvious something was making a weird, sort of indescribable background whistling noise. I went to shut the engine down while Ali clicked the refrigerator compressor off. The instant she did the noise was gone. Okay, so what's wrong with the fridge compressor? I hopped in to take a look and about the only thing I can tell is that it appears to be empty of refrigerant. There is a sight glass and looking inside of it I can't see a thing. Looks bone dry.
So I got out the manual to see if there was anything I could do. Reading that only assured me that I couldn't do a damn thing about it. All sorts of special tools are involved with valves and pressures and all the rest. So even if I had been able to locate a big can of refrigerant I wouldn't be able to do anything with it.
Okay, so now what? We took a look at the weather and saw that we've got maybe a thirty six hour weather window to move north in light head winds before they strengthen for a week straight. We've no desire to be stuck in Chamela with no refrigeration for a minimum of a week, so tomorrow we head north.
We've got so much to do in P.V. that it hurts my brain to even think about it. This has been one heck of a shakedown cruise.
13-Jan-2012 twenty-five months ouest, five-months lowe.
Ouest and Lowe,
I can no longer keep up. You two have buried me and we're only just getting started.
Lowe, you are growing uncontollably. You're a big boy, strong as an ox and bored as can be. I promise to buy you some standing and walking toys as soon as we get back to Vallarta. For now you'll just have to continue to yell at us for carrying you around all the time or for simply laying you on the floor.
We get laughs out of you these days with rasberries on the belly and neck. Big toothy grins and silly giggles. Yes, toothy grins. You sprouted two front teeth this month, and not in a very manly manner either I must say. There was lots of crying. Most of it from us. You reach out and grab anything and everything that comes within range of your hands. Mama's hair is a perpetual favorite. And you are a talker. Your sister never was, but man when you wake up at five in the morning you make darn sure everyone on the boat can hear you and knows what a good mood you are in.
Ouest, you're constantly changing. Mama and I just look at you in wonder. Wondering where our little girl has gone. I swear if you were talking you'd pass for a four-year-old the way you walk, run, jump, and trot like a pony everywhere you go. You're Papa's girl. You spit off the side of the boat like me and you try and fix things on the boat like me. We're going to be great buddies.
But you do love your mama. You got your first mole this month. That tiny little dot just popped up on your right wrist bone and you are so proud of it. You've shown it to me dozens of times and made it clear to me that it is just like Mama's.
Anyway you two, we're having fun. You're both big, healthy, and strong, and we couldn't ask for anything more. We love you.
14-Jan-2012 punta ipala, mexico.
We got underway early this morning with five knots of wind, and for most of the day that's all we had, motorsailing in calm seas with an annoying swell bobbing our nose up and down. And that's about all there is to say about our fifty mile trip today. And for that I am thankful. Nothing broke, the kids slept for long stretches at a time, we saw a few dolphins and a whale, we anchored, we ate, and it was still only five o'clock. That's a successful day aboard Bumfuzzle.
Tomorrow we round Cabo Corrientes again. Let's hope it is as forgiving as it was last time.
15-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Well we're back. Beaten up, but not beaten. We motored north around the Cape today without any problems at all. Light headwinds all day. We pulled back in to Paradise Village in the afternoon with a boat project list a mile long. Some things more important than others, but man would it feel good to get this list rattled off so we could start a new one all over again next month.
Cabo Corrientes on a nice day.
16-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
We did some rearranging today. Ouest got the boot from the big bedroom, and now Lowe is in. Where does that leave Ali and I? Scattered around the living room like throw pillows is where. Eventually one of the rooms will be reconfingured a bit to include a second bed, but right now Lowe is just too young to be sharing a room with Ouest. He'd be waking her up all night long. And we do not want to mess up that girl's nighttime sleep routine. Seven-thirty to seven-thirty is almost too good to be true.
17-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
The boat list begins. Today I started on the battery issues, cleaned the bilge, and met with the welder to design new davits. The bilge has been something bothering me forever. There is just a ton of gunk in there because the cockpit lockers actually drain from outside into the engine compartment. So stupid I can't even comprehend, but something that won't be properly fixed until we haul out and I can go to work on all of our through hulls, including adding them in for this. Anyway, to really get the bilge cleaned out required me to contort my body, twist my neck, and reach as far as I could with my left hand's middle and index fingers, then extricate myself with what little I had grabbed, throw it away, and repeat. I was filthy by the end of that one. But hey, I did manage to grab that fuel pump I dropped down there months ago.
The welder and I came up with what I think will be a much happier solution for me. Right now I hate the dinghy davit system because it requires so much stinking work. The new set-up will make lifting the dinghy, with motor still attached, much quicker and easier. Making the thought, "Should we put the dinghy in the water for just this one night?" a question of the past. It will also allow plenty of room for solar panels whenever we get around to that project.
Meanwhile Ali has been on a rearranging and throwing crap out binge. I'm one of those people that even after a year or two on the boat still have to open three drawers in order to find a pair of scissors, so to up and rearrange everything on the boat is just plain cruel. But hey, stuff is going in the garbage too, and in my mind that's always a good thing. We're both happier with empty drawers anyway.
18-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
I don't know what happened to our day, but it's over. We played with Ouest's friend for a while, took the bus to town and shopped a bit, came home and made tacos, went to the beach and the playground, showered, and went to bed. Not a lick of boat work.
We're taking the view now that there will never be a simple family portrait picture taken of us so we may as well just goof around with the process as much as possible. This is what happened tonight when we told Ouest we were going to jump in the picture. She found it utterly hilarious, and we found it hilarious that she couldn't seem to get off the ground. Ali either for that matter.
19-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
The kids' nap schedules aren't jiving right now and I can't tell you what a crimp that is putting in the boat project list. At least that's the excuse I'm going to use today for the lack of progress around here.
I did plug away on the bilge cleaning again. The reason for all the bilge cleaning is that at some point in the past one of the steel fuel tanks was cut out and replaced with a plastic tank. Well when they cut that steel tank up apparently they didn't take much care in cleaning up afterwards and so sitting in the furthest recesses of the bilge are piles of rusting metal. And the big problem with that is that these piles tend to smell like mulch when they are sitting in water, which the bilge always is because of the shaft. It's not a dripless shaft. Not by a long shot. So anyway, that's the bilge issue. Not to mention the always non-functioning, or half-functioning, or for brief moments totally functioning, bilge pumps themselves. I've always had an extreme dislike of bilge pumps. It's almost as though they aren't meant at all to be in water.
Ouest set the table for lunner today. She did a really good job of it too, but my favorite part was that she couldn't resist tucking in to the black olives while she did it. By the time my family sat down to a taco dinner when I was a kid the black olives would be just about gone. It's funny the things that we pass on to our kids.
20-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Lowe is growing up fast these days. It seemed to take forever for Ouest to reach this age where with Lowe it feels like he was born yesterday and today he is sitting up in chairs and grabbing anything that is in sight even if in sight is five feet away.
He started out on top of this blanket and within seconds was underneath it wrapped up tight as a mummy. I'll be amazed if he isn't crawling in the next couple of weeks. As it is now he can cover the distance of a room in under a minute doing nothing but rolls.
It's strange for me to look up out of the engine compartment and no longer just see one face staring down at me. I foresee having a lot of "help" on the boat projects soon. Today Ouest and I worked on a project that included both of us using our spanners at the same time. Soon it'll be time to get Lowe a set of tools too.
When I say I've got a list a mile long of little projects to get done this is the sort of project I'm referring to. It doesn't mean much in the functioning of the boat, but when it comes time to drop the anchor it means a lot. Was that a hundred feet or a hundred and fifty?
21-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
We rented a car and took off this morning to try and get a few things done around here. AutoZone, Wal-Mart, a different AutoZone, the marine store (closed), Home Depot, AutoZone a third time, and finally a late night Wal-Mart diaper stock-up. Phew.
The good news is that AutoZone tested our alternator for us. I watched them hook it up to the machine and then just seconds later watched as a series of red failure notices popped up on the screen. Basically nothing was working. Which I had pretty much deduced already as it had only been charging between eighteen and twenty-two amps and the voltage didn't seem to be being regulated properly either.
That doesn't sound like good news, but here it is, the guy took a look at his computer and said, "Did you know this is for an El Camino? We have one of these in the back." Now I realize that an auto alternator is not what we should really be using. Ideally we'd have a high output marine grade alternator on this engine. And I may have just gone and ordered one of those up today if it hadn't been for this El Camino alternator. The exact alternator that has been on our boat for the past fifteen, twenty years, only costing thirty-two dollars. Thirty-two bucks and we're charging again. Hey, if nothing else we just bought ourselves some time.
During one of the day's outings it was just Ouest and I. We were driving along when I noticed a group of cops up ahead in the median with an actual radar gun and speed display. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I've never seen traffic cops in Mexico doing actual traffic cop things like busting speeders. Even after all the driving we've done in Mexico I'm not sure I know what the speed limits are. But I was in a pack of cars cruising along at a slow speed as we had all seen the cops well ahead of time. Which is why it was so shocking to me when one of the cops suddenly burst out into the road screaming at me to pull over. Literally screaming.
It took me a while to get over and stop. Probably a hundred yards. And yes, I could have easily halved that, but why make it easy on them? He finally came puffing up all red faced and still yelling. I heard, "Blah, blah, blah, telefono, blah, blah, blah." He was claiming that I had been talking on a cell phone and driving.
This is funny in so many different ways. First off, as we all know, Ali and I despise telephones. Haven't owned one in nearly a decade. So right there you can be pretty darn sure I wasn't on a phone. Secondly, I may be a gringo, but I've dealt with so many road cops in my day that even if I had been talking on a phone this guy would have withered in the sun long before I gave up a single peso. And thirdly, talking on a phone is illegal? That's the funniest thing of all. Ninety nine percent of children under the age of ten can be found with their heads hanging out the car window like a poodle. A majority of pick-up trucks can be seen carrying passengers in the back on plastic picnic chairs. And every bus driver in town has his cell phone permanently glued to the palm of his hand. Talking on a phone is illegal. Yeah, and so is driving a car with a cracked windshield right?
This particular cop caved quickly when I told him I didn't have a phone. "No telefono?" Nope, nada. "Telefono?" he asked imploringly while holding his hand up to his ear. No, no telefono. He laughed and turned around. Next.
While driving today I looked in the rearview mirror and caught Ouest staring at me. It took a second for our eyes to meet and then the smile that beamed from her hit me right in the chest. I could physically feel that smile in my heart. My girl is the best thing ever.
22-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Finished the chain painting project today. Oh, who am I kidding, I finished painting, but three hundred feet of chain is still laid out on the deck. Maybe day four will see that one day project completed. Maybe.
Crawled down in the engine room today and got to work. Installed the alternator and took a look at the refrigeration. Oh, who am I kidding, the alternator is hanging there with me one bolt short of completion. Store will be open tomorrow. As for the refrigeration, I did look at it. Looked at it and then walked away from it. I did buy a boatload of refrigerant and a cheap little gauge, so we'll see what I can make of that thing on my own once I read the manual and figure out just where the hell I'm supposed to hook that gauge up to.
Welder should be out tomorrow to nail down our plans for the new davits. I'm pretty excited about having that project complete. A proper davit system makes my life soooooo much easier when we're out at sea.
I took Ouest to the pool this afternoon. I've mentioned how much she loves the long and incredibly fast water slide there. Today she started trying to get me to let her go down it by herself. This is what I mean by fearless. I half relented and let her sit on the slide itself instead of my lap, but still between my legs with me holding her. Then right before we hit the water I lift her up on to my lap. She screams with delight the entire time. And the second we pop up from our dunking at the bottom she starts yelling, "Me, me, me! More, more, more!" The whole pool crowd is usually watching by our second trip down.
I'm already feeling anxious to move on. Paradise Village is a necessary evil, but once the boat work is close to done I just want to get out of here. We've got two weeks before another family holiday, so hopefully we'll have things wrapped up and ready to roll by then.
23-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Tonight my computer blew up again. I don’t know what the heck happened really, but all of a sudden it shut down and wouldn’t boot back up again. I did all the techy stuff and found some sort of Journaling error that according to many, many google searches has only been known to be solved by either doing some crazy coding stuff that I couldn’t begin to understand, or by buying this hundred dollar program that would solve it in one click. Okay, fine, if I lived in the States. But I don’t so I’m screwed again.
25-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Lowe has had this little dry cough for a month now. It only happens when he is crying, so we just let it go. But it had finally been long enough so today we took him in for a checkup and lo and behold, he’s got nothing wrong with him. I don’t know why we bother. Kids are tough. It was funny watching how Lowe interacted with the doctor though. He laid on that table holding his feet and smiling ear to ear. Meanwhile Ouest cowered behind me not sure whether to believe us that this trip was for Lowe only. I’m not sure what brought on her fear of doctors, but she has definitely got it.
Lowe weighs eighteen pounds now. Holy crap, at that rate he’ll weigh three hundred and ninety-two pounds when he turns sixteen. And today at Wal-Mart while doing the next big sailing stock-up we even had to buy baby food. I don’t know how I’m going to afford feeding two kids except that I’m going to have to give up eating completely.
Went to the marine store today as well. Picked up stuff for a whole bunch of projects that I’m sure to not have time for. Bought a bunch of oil too. I wish while I was in the States and had access to buying this sort of thing at retail I would have figured out a way to carry a fifty gallon drum onboard. Oil is too damn expensive. That and caulk. Retail price about six bucks a tube, Mexico price twenty-five. But of course this is why people go so crazy buying crap before cruising south and then later realize they didn’t need half of it, thus throwing away all the money they thought they were saving in the first place.
26-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
We are currently stuck in purgatory. Hell is trying to get Lowe to sleep. The poor kid just won’t do it. He’ll fight sleeping all day long, maybe getting half an hour despite hours of attempts. Night time is slightly better, but Ali’s still not getting a lot of sleep on that end either.
But then there is heaven. Our little girl is moving out of diapers. Today was her first full day diaper-less and she did great. She’s been wanting to wear undies instead of diapers more and more and now she is pretty much shunning diapers completely. We’ve had a lot of accidents in the past week or so as we’ve slowly transitioned, but today we made it until five o’clock before the first missed toilet. Hell she even told me she had to go while we were running an errand in the car and then waited patiently for me to get her to a Pemex. She is extremely proud of herself and loves the clapping and cheering she is getting from us. It’s funny watching this huge smile curl up out of a very serious face at the first sound of tinkling. It’s even more funny that I’m writing about this with such enthusiasm. God the things that make us parents happy.
I had the starter battery tested today and it checked out just fine. Which leaves me kind of in the dark as to why it wasn’t able to start the engine the other day on its own. For now I’ve hooked it back up while I continue to troubleshoot this whole big mess.
The biggest mess being that the new alternator isn’t charging and I haven’t the foggiest idea why. I mean it’s only one wire, it’s not like I could mess that up. Nothing ever really gets finished on this boat.
Ouest and I were at Home Depot today. When we were leaving I put her in the car, turned around, and there was my welder standing three feet away. “I was going to go see you. Yadda, yadda...” He didn’t seem the least bit surprised to run into me in the HD parking lot at nine in the morning and just talked as if we had planned to meet there to discuss tubing diameters. He’s building the davits for a little under a thousand bucks but he was going to stop by to ask me today if it was all right to use a thicker tubing that would cost thirty dollars more. That’s only three percent over his quote. I already liked Salvadore, but now I trust him too.
At Wal-Mart today we bought out their Skippy Natural Peanut Butter. Thirteen jars in total. And we feel like we totally scored.
27-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Took off the davits and the lifeline pulpit at the back of the cockpit today. The boat looks so nice and tidy like that. Too bad we can’t leave it alone.
Also went to the pool and went for an evening walk. That’s our entire day.
28-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Ouest has changed so much in just the past week or two that Ali and I can hardly believe it. Ali looked at her tonight and said, “It’s sad.”
What’s sad?
“She’s growing up.”
First off there is the little girl underwear. Underwear! We went all day long today without an accident. She’s really got this figured out now and is doing a great job of telling us when she has to go, as opposed to us asking her every three minutes. Although when we do ask her it is sort of funny. “Ouest, do you have to go potty?” A little crease forms between her eyes as she contemplates the question. “Mmmm, no.” Three minutes later same question. “ Same crease between the eyes, “Yap.”
That’s Yap. Not yes, not yup, not yep. Yap.
Then there is her playing by herself. All of the sudden she is totally cool with that. She especially likes to play with her cars. She lines them all up like they are in a parking lot, then moves them one or two at a time to the other side of the room and does it again. Or out on deck they get parked underneath the lifeline netting. It’s all very deliberately done, and also done with amazing regularity these days. Tonight we were on the beach and she was off in her own little world shoveling sand into one bucket and transferring that to another bucket. That’s when Ali said it was sad. She also turned to Lowe and told him he needs to grow up a bit so they can start playing together.
And while she is still a ways behind on the talking front she has taken up singing. She sings to herself all day long. “Morrow, morrow, love you, morrow.” Good ol’ Annie.
Oh, and her swimming. She does these swan dive belly flops all day long now. It seems she spends half her time at the pool with her head under water. She’s practicing floating on her back now too. Without any prodding from us. Good fun.
Then there is Lowe. He is inching ever so close to crawling. He can already get wherever he wants to go by rolling, but now he’s starting to push too. Roll, push, grunt, roll, push, get tired and plop face down into the floor, roll, push. Getting closer to sitting up unassisted too. Looks as if he’s going to have a big couple of weeks coming up.
On the boat front it’s slow going. Nap times aren’t coinciding very well these days meaning that it seems someone is always either asleep or in the midst of being put to sleep. And when they are up there is always a million things to do with them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, just stating the simple fact that the kids come first and boat work takes a back seat. Way back.
29-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
Today we were at the resort here with Ouest and a friend of hers. The two of them had a bucket of sidewalk chalk and proceeded to draw little faces, flowers, and hearts on the sidewalk. Soon after I saw a security guard eyeballing us with his walkie-talkie out. And not long after that a manager was nearby acting nonchalant. When we left the security guard followed us, thinking he was being indiscreet, back to the boat.
I put Ouest down for her nap and then walked back up there with a bucket. Every trace of the kids’ fun had already been washed away. And this, folks, is Paradise Village.
Another full day filled with miscellaneous public toilets and still no accidents. My girl is a peeing rockstar. And that will be the last word on the subject for at least a week. I swear.
A while ago I uploaded the entire circumnavigation section of our website as an ebook to Amazon. Basically the first four years. I’ve been meaning to do the VW trip next but haven’t gotten around to it yet. In the meantime people have begun finding and purchasing the Sail Around the World logs so I thought I may as well mention it on here.
Full disclosure: this is just an exact duplicate of the website. The full thing, minus a couple of the random links or whatever. Nothing extra. The only real reason I did this is that it doesn’t really take much effort on my part and I thought some of our readers might enjoy having it to take along on their Kindle. Whatever, it’s $2.99, about a buck of which is mine to keep, and the link is here for anybody so inclined. Bumfuzzle Web Logs
And as long as I’m on the subject again, if you’ve read the book please take a moment to go and review it on Amazon. Sales are rocking, and believe me, with the boat project list we’ve got going we’re going to need each and every one of them.
30-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
This morning some Bum friends came out to visit us while on vacation. With them was a disk I ordered a few days ago to fix my computer’s hard drive. We originally met this couple through the website and when they were down here on holiday a couple years back they actually went with us to act as our witnesses when Ouest got her Mexican birth paperwork done. So they hadn’t seen Ouest since she was still in the seven pound range. We had fun catching up with them and Ouest warmed up to them quicker than I’ve ever seen her with anybody.
Unfortunately the DiskWarrior didn’t work and my computer is still out of commission. I eventually decided to just erase the hard drive, reformat it, and start fresh. But I couldn’t do that either. It’s now looking like my one-month-old hard drive is dead. Man are some things easier to take care of in the States.
Later on in the afternoon we met with another couple of Bum friends. The two of them are headed around the world in their VW bus. It’s not a splitty, but still pretty cool. Looking inside it both Ali and I got nostalgic. That really was a fun way to travel. We’d go back and do it again in a minute. Anyway, we had fun hanging out with them for a couple hours sharing stories and seeing a lot of ourselves in them. They met and married at basically the same ages as Ali and I and are now setting off on an around the world adventure at the same age we originally took off. We had a lot in common.
One funny exchange we had with them was when they asked if Ali ever drove the bus.
“Once in a while,” was her reply.
Once in a while. Actually it was twice in a while. The first time was when we were buried in the sand on the beach and I was at the back of the bus pushing. That time she drove one hundred yards. The next time was when I was inside a gas station and a tanker truck needed us to move. That time she pulled forward about thirty yards. That’s one hundred and thirty yards over the course of sixty some thousand miles. Math here: that is .000001% of our trip.
“Once in a while,” she says. Yeah, and I cook dinner once in a while too.
31-Jan-2012 puerto vallarta, mexico.
With this boat and these two kids I’m coming to the realization that sometimes it is just easier to pay somebody to show up, perform their specialty, and leave. As opposed to me diving into the project without a clue, taking the bus to the store, coming back, realizing I have the wrong part, taking the bus again the next day, working, getting stumped, spending the night on Google, making one more trip to the store, working, thinking I “might” have it fixed, and calling it done.
Today I brought in a refrigeration guy. For forty-five bucks he filled the refrigerant on the AC system, found a leaky valve, replaced it, and best of all showed me every step along the way. He’ll be back in a couple of days to do the engine-driven refrigerator. Money well spent.
