And just like that…. 12.17.10

What a difference a day makes!! Michael woke up this morning and decided he needed to work on the generator. Before starting he took off all of the raw water hoses and blew through them, making sure there was no restriction in the lines. Nope, no problem. We fired it up and as usual, after about 20 minutes it tried to die. But instead of turning it off, he just turned off the Charge setting and let it recover. About every 20-40 minutes it would happen and each time Michael would run into the engine room and look to see what exactly was happening. And time after time he discovered the fuel solenoid was not shutting down, it was wide open which means there was nothing wrong with the generator other than the fact as it was starving for fuel. Hmmm…. He looked through the system and the only possible thing it could be was a restriction in the fuel filter. This baffled him though as it’s an oversized filter and really hasn’t had a lot of fuel going through it since it hasn’t had to strain anything out for 2 years since it has been that long that it hasn’t been working properly. But he decides to replace it anyways.

Everything looks fine and the new filter is installed and….wait for it….wait for it….it WORKS!!! WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!! We’ll keep our fingers crossed this was the fix of the season and hope it continues to provide us lots of power through the years.

Since he’s on so much of a roll he decides to tackle the shower sump pump. Part of his yearly maintenance is to pull it from its hole and clean out the layers and layers of hair that always gets wound around the pump housing. It’s evident though that this maintenance wasn’t done at the end of last season or the start of this one as there is a whole head-full of hair that has wound its way around until it is unable to function anymore. And so begins the not so fun job of unwinding all that hair & cleaning the pump. But, dropping it back inside it’s hole it is revived and pumps the remaining water from the shower sump. WOW….he’s REALLY on a roll!!!

Should he try for yet another fix?! He decides yes and fixes himself a sandwich. Two fixes in one day is something to celebrate. It’s time for a much needed rest & finding out the secret of “The girl who played with fire”, the book he’s reading at the moment.

We got some super good news today too on some other ‘fixes’. Our autopilot reversing pump is on the fritz and after a quick call to the manufacturer, they just happen to have a couple new pumps sitting in the back and they’ll happily ship us one for about ½ the price we could find it elsewhere. They shipped it to Alaska and we waited with baited breath to find out if it actually got there in time for John & Jillian to bring it with them on Saturday when they fly to Puerta Vallarta. And….it made it! Woohoo!!!!!!! We are meeting with them on Monday to pickup the pump and get it replaced before we leave in a week.

Not only that….are you sitting down?! I posted a message about our stolen outboard on our blog which links to Facebook, where a lot of our ‘cruising friends’ catch up on news. Well…Chris & Sandy from S/V Faith responded to the post and said they had an old outboard they’d give us if we would like it. WOW!!! We were speechless (and still are!) It’s such a nice offer and we gratefully accepted it. We have been in touch with them as they were just leaving La Paz and were going to spend the holidays in Mazatlan and would not be in La Cruz (where we are now) until after the New Year. We’ve been trying to figure out how to get it here. We could take the bus up to Mazatlan, pick it up, and bus back to La Cruz which would take 2 days. We could rent a car and drive up but would more than likely drive back the next day, still taking 2 days. Hmmmm….. Finally we contacted Elvira, our good friend and Office Manager for Marina Mazatlan and asked if she had anyone coming down to La Cruz that we knew (or she knew) that wouldn’t mind lugging a dinghy engine down for us. It turns out….she did! Another boat, someone we don’t know yet called Irish Diplomacy was leaving Saturday and said he would bring it down to us, no problem! We contacted Sandy on Faith and told her the news, Chris got in touch with Elvira, got in touch with Irish Diplomacy, and just like that, the handoff was made and the dinghy engine is on its way down the coast. How cool is that?! The kindness of the cruising community strikes again.

So here we are, sitting in an absolutely gorgeous anchorage, things appear to be on the mend and functioning properly right now, all in all. We still have a leaky watermaker but have a temporary appointment with a repairman for Wednesday to have it serviced. Once we have the reversing pump for the autopilot in hand we will schedule an appointment with a repairman hopefully for the following day. Michael’s finger is doing OK and he’s been having fun wearing my ‘unique’ bandaids. Today’s looks like a piece of bacon. Yep, bacon wrapped finger….yum! ;-)

More to follow…
Rene