Summer Season Prep

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The best part of sailing around the world on the route and timeline that we took was that we were always moving. We took a few months off in New Zealand, but that hardly felt like we were waiting out a hurricane/cyclone season since we had so much to see and do there. Cruising the way we have in Mexico, and now the Caribbean, boat life becomes a little more complicated from a planning perspective. We’d personally prefer to just cruise all year round in nice temps with predictable tradewinds, but instead we’ve got hurricane seasons within unbearably hot and humid areas. We hate being “forced” from our home to wait out hurricane season. We always find fun things to do, but we’d rather those were our choices instead of the weathers’.

Anyway, this season we’ll be leaving Bumfuzzle behind for just a couple of months while we head inland to show the kids around Guatemala. Ali and I had some fun adventures here in the VW bus and are looking forward to more with Ouest and Lowe.

Even though it’s only a couple of months there is still quite a bit to do to get ready.

Ouest, not a fan of reading books on devices, is happy instead to just read the same dozen or so books over and over and over again until we can secure the next round of paperbacks. With how engrossed she becomes in them you would swear each reading was her first.

This nice fourteen-year old cruiser girl plays the open mic nights around town and was happy to spend some time teaching chords to the other kids.

Our nephew Curtis is headed off to the University of Oregon to become a Duck, so Ouest drew him a picture to commemorate the occasion. I like her duck better than that Donald Duck looking character in Oregon.

So, last month I replaced the raw water pump on the generator. Not a difficult task, and since the generator has always worked perfectly for us, I wasn’t concerned when I flipped the switch to start it up again. Of course, it wouldn’t start. Seriously, the only thing the water pump does is drag water up out of the ocean and push it through the engine, so how could that possibly cause the generator to stop working? I should have been able to start the engine even with the pump off completely. There really aren’t a lot of moving parts on these engines, so the obvious culprit was the fuel.

Our diesel tanks had dipped down to about 1/4 tank, so I thought after we filled up I would bleed the system (even though it’s supposed to be a self-bleeding engine). In Utila I got to work on that, but still couldn’t get it to fire up. I cracked the injector lines and thought I had flow, so at that point I was basically out of ideas.

Here in Rio Dulce I called in a mechanic. Sure it was a fuel issue—even though that seemed absurd since the engine worked perfectly right before changing the water pump—we got to work starting at the beginning of the system. The plastic pre-filter bleed valve had broken last year and been replaced by me quickly shoving a screw in its place while fuel shot up in the air. That had held up just fine, but fixing that with a proper new bleed-valve seemed like a good idea. Didn’t solve our problem, but didn’t hurt it. We moved on to the fuel filter on the engine itself. Replaced that and made sure the filter seated firmly on the housing, but that still didn’t do the trick. Then we started cracking the injectors. Only one was getting fuel, and just barely.

Problem was in the fuel injector pump. It took a bit of work to dig that thing out, but once we had it we found that the shaft, that should slide back and forth when the start/stop solenoid hits it, had some rust on it, and wouldn’t slide open to allow fuel to flow. I don’t know enough Spanish to ask how that could have happened. But in the couple of weeks that we waited for the water pump, the fuel pump had managed to rust up. The mechanic took it, and is sending it off to Guatemala City for a cleaning. We’ll try again in a couple weeks.

Cruisers happily flock to the Rio for boat work. We’re having our teak stripped and revarnished. What would be about a gazillion hours of work for me, is handed over instead to four local guys. Our quote for the transom, the doors, everything on the top deck, and a dozen other bits and pieces, is $1100, of which almost half is for materials. They strip the old varnish off, clean it up nicely, and apply ten coats to everything. A two week job for four people.

So far we’re loving these guys. They’re here on time every day, they’re quiet, they work hard, and before they leave they vacuum everything up and leave almost no trace that they were even here. No trace other than nicely stripped teak. We’re excited to see the finished product. I couldn’t be happier either, because I know that there is no way we would ever get this job done on our own.

The kids keep discovering different fruits hanging in the trees, then bring them home to bust them open and find out what’s inside.

Hurricane season prep doesn’t include just the boat. Lowe and I both needed haircuts pretty badly. I figured Lowe would just want a trim, but when we walked in he told me to just take it off. In this heat a buzzed up head feels a lot better than a mop.

At dinner, after stopping by this store, Ali and the kids got into a big discussion about how they could save all these chickens. The plans seemed to revolve around me buying all of them. The bit about what would happen after that was left unresolved. The kids led the way back to the store after dinner, and let’s just say that I wasn’t too sad to find that the shop had closed.

Guapo.

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21 Comments on “Summer Season Prep”

  1. Please think about rechecking the fuel tank level and the generator fuel pick up level in that tank. On our motor home the main engine and generator share the same fuel tank and the generator fuel pickup tube is installed so it will not pick up fuel after the 1/8 to 1/4 fuel level so you do not inadvertently run the tank dry with the generator and leave you stranded totally out of fuel. Just a thought.

    1. So happy that our nephew will be out in Oregon. We were sad to see Pat’s mom move south, but thankfully we have more family up there for us to visit. Go Ducks! 🙂

  2. I’m sure your boat will look “bristle” when they are done. I’m slowly working the paint and varnish projects on my old GB 32. Will probably end up like the Golden Gate bridge… when you get to one end, you go back to the other end and start over! In the mean time we just use it and enjoy life. (We also have the benefit of a boat house to keep it in.)

    1. I’m not thinking it will be “bristle” by any means – as we too, just use it and enjoy life – we will need to make a better effort to keep it up a bit so it doesn’t need to be stripped down each time we do decide to get fancy. They have a few boat houses here on the Rio Dulce, I bet they are reserved for years in advance for this hot and humid rainy season. Good luck on yours!

  3. Will you rent a vehicle for your Guatemala wanderings? Or will you buy something and then sell it once you are back on the boat?

    1. Rio Dulce is small, no rental car companies. We will take the 5-6 hour bus to Guatemala City – uber around there. Then a shuttle to Antigua – walk around there. Then rent a car to see some ruins and Lake Atitlan. Would love to be able to drive all over the country but not doable right now. It’s only a few months.

  4. Hi Pat and Ali, I was in Delray Beach Florida not too long ago and talked with the owner of a 42GB Europa who was undergoing a complete sanding of all exterior teak and seventeen layers of various stuff thereafter. I asked him what the total cost would be and he replied $26,000!! I nearly fell off the dock. They were about halfway through the job and it looked amazing but i had no idea people were spending that kind of money… This scared me away from the older GB’s but hearing your experience gives me hope. Cheers

    1. Oh yes, they pay that much. In Florida we paid $6500 for this same job but done very poorly. Know I’m thinking we should have a few more layers added to ours while we are here. We are only having 10.

  5. Could it be that the next one-name musical star in the tradition of Björk or Cher or Elvis is on the horizon? I can see it now – “One Night Only – Wembley Stadium! OUEST!”

  6. I find myself re-reading books, always the same choice ones. I dont do it to learn more, its like an appetite for the absorbing entertainment of a good book. I have read Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Christo” 4 times, DuMauriers’ “The Scapegoat” 3 times, and “The Lord of the Rings” 6 times. When I was sick but too young to have learned to read, my mother would read to me. I got a love of literature. Thank heaven there were no smart phones, no video games back then.

  7. Too funny! I was quoted $20,000 just to strip our varnish, less than yours, in FL. I’ll spend a very long time on my knees before I pay that.

    1. Wowsers! Even on our Spindrift we waited until we got down to Mexico just to have the old varnish removed as SF Bay they wanted something crazy for just the stripping it off. South of the border definitely.

    1. Yes those would be nice to have. I’ve booked marked them, but the odds of us getting any deliveries or having family lug them down are pretty slim. Thanks.

  8. Where is the selfie of Pat’s buzz cut? Ouest doesn’t have to mail Curtis is picture now 🙂 It is going to feel like 103 degrees for his grad party this Saturday in Minnesota … it will be like you are with us! Love you all.

  9. Ha Ha – selfie. Oh Curtis is definitely getting his picture – he needs to hang it in his dorm for all his friends to see.

  10. Fun reading your posts and seeing the work Jose and crew are doing. Beautiful! Going through boat withdrawals- miss my boat!

    Looking forward to hearing about your over land travels. We plan to do it sometime when we get back.

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