Still in Puerto Galera

Andy: “Smell my ear”

Me:  “huh?”

Andy:  “Smell my ear.  Does it smell like dead shrimp?”

Me:  sniff, sniff.  Switch sides…sniff, sniff.  “nope, you’re good.”

The romance is come and go on Savannah…

(In full disclosure, I have to say, he has had dead shrimp in his ear before and they do smell horrific)

He had just come up from one of the nastiest bottom cleaning jobs in a while.   Savannah’s paint is crap.  I would love to hear from any other aluminum boat owners as to what they put on their hulls and how well it works.  We’ve painted our bottom three times in the past four years….it’s getting ridiculous and expensive.

Anyway, he was cleaning it because we were getting ready to leave Puerto Galera and we had enough crap on the bottom to slow us down a couple of knots.  Then it started to rain, and the wind began to blow…hard.  So we decided to wait.  Today we got up and were about to leave and it continued to rain, and the wind continued to blow…hard.  It’s probably fine weather to leave in (I’m convinced Puerto Galera has it’s own weather system here and as soon as we get out of this bay it will be totally different) but it’s a pretty busy shipping channel out there and we don’t exactly know where we’re going…so we decided to wait.  Judging by the forecast, it will be a few more days before we get out of here.  We’re all stocked up, ready for a two or three week sabbatical from any kind of town.  Let’s hope we’re still stocked up when the weather breaks.

In the meantime, we’ll just sit here and stare at each other a little longer, reminding ourselves how cool it is to be on a boat, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with each other, all the time….

Savannah...safe and sound...and stinky.

After four long months, Andy finally made it back to the boat safe and sound!  Originally, I was supposed to get back first and then he would join a few weeks later.  It turns out to be a pretty good thing that Andy got back first as I’m not sure I would have known what to do (I have to say, my lady sense kind of kicked in and anticipated this). First off was the smell….it smelled like it did when we bought it.  You know what we did then?  Ripped it all out and started over!  But this was anticipated.  You can’t leave a boat closed up for four months in the middle of the wettest place on earth and expect not to have a little mold and a little stink.

 

I’m not sure the order of things, but lets imagine Andy is working hard at cleaning and scrubbing and decides he wants to go in to shore to get more paper towels, cleaning solution, whatever (cold beer?).  He pumps up the dinghy, lowers it, unlocks everything, and goes to start it.  The outboard carburetor freezes up.  Minor set back…Andy being the handy man he is, gets that fixed pretty quickly (relatively speaking) in between rain showers.  Now he’s off to shore.  Almost there and “vroommmmm….put, put, put”….nothing.  Water in the fuel tank.  I’m guessing he paddled back to the boat at this point (more than likely in the rain).  He dried out the spark plugs, carburetor and fuel tank and got her going one more time.

By this time, it’s probably time to eat and not wanting to hop right back into the rain, Andy decides to have a nice hot bowl of Ramen noodles.  He goes to light the propane and well, no good.  The solenoid is stuck closed.  You can guess my laid back husband is starting to lose his patience.  After all, he’s been traveling for four days and comes home to sleep in a stinky boat with no fan (it broke right before we left), and no ability to raise the hatches since it’s raining cats and dogs and now every attempt he makes to get things right is failing.  You know the drill….one problem leads to many.

So he does the only thing a man in his position would do…he goes to grab a cold beer.  Not happening…the fridge isn’t keeping its charge. 

I’m glad I wasn’t there. 

Lots of trips to ACE hardware later (and no doubt lots of cold beers at the Rusty Anchor), all is on the way to working the way it’s supposed to.

One thing that wasn’t nasty that I felt sure would be was the head.  Andy said it was surprisingly normal, with the exception of one poor goby that was unfortunate enough to be sucked in when Andy filled the bowl with water.  He made his way back out on the next flush, but you can imagine he wasn’t happy.

Even with all of the problems Andy had, I think we’re pretty lucky in the overall scheme of things.  It was the first time leaving Savannah for more than a week and given the things that could have gone wrong, we’re in pretty good shape.  After all, the boat is still there, right (and floating)?  And it contains all the stuff it had in it when we left J.

Just three more weeks and Jake and I will be happily reunited with Andy and we’ll all be bitching about the rain and smell together (because in reality, that boat will never get aired out if there isn’t a break in the clouds).  We’ll be sporting new sheets for Jake’s bed and new fabric for our pillows (that should take care of some of those smells).  We’re bringing a new wifi booster antenna – if the post office ever gets it here – and some cable so Andy can hook up his latest purchase, a depth sounder!  I’ll have snow pea with drawls (and all other fresh veggies while we’re talking about it) and Jake will miss Chick-fil-a, but I think we’ll adjust fine as we eat our $1/lb tuna.

Living on a boat sounds strange to some, but we’ve learned from this trip that as uncomfortable and cramped as it can be at times, it’s a small price to pay for getting to wake up every day with each other while living our dream.  We’re definitely looking forward to being a family again.

Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers and well wishes…it looks like it worked.

Almost off the hard (cross your fingers)

Good news is the engine doesn't need a total rebuild (yet).  Not so good news is we're still on the hard getting the bottom painted.  It's taking a few extra days given the delay of getting it out of the water as well as finding some spots that needed sanding and new epoxy before repainting.  But it could be a whole lot worse.  I want to thank our good friends Eric and Nicole for letting us stay at their house (2 extra days, might I add).  Since Eric was out of town most of the time, I would especially like to thank Nicole.  When we stay with someone, we move in.  We take over the kitchen, do numerous loads of laundry and come with lots of toys.  Nicole has been very generous.  Eric came home today and he and Jake entertained us with an impromptu jam session.

As for the boat, the oil pressure loss turned out to be due to a kinked exhaust that created back pressure in the oil pan which blew out the dipstick and most of the oil.  We have a few more checks to do once it's back in the water but we think we're good to go.  We're trying to get a rebuild kit to take with us in case we have any problems along the way.  We know within the next year we're going to have to do something with it.  In the meantime, we'll just run on our port engine to be safe.  It's a good thing we have two engines!

The last few days have been spent running around for last minute parts, last minute shots and medications, getting visas and new military ids, etc.  Neither one of us feels 100% prepared but I don't suspect we ever will.  Emotions are on high.  This weekend we'll spend some time with family, last minute maintenance and then weather permitting, Wednesday morning we'll set sail for Ensenada.  It should be about a 12 hour sail.  The last time we were in Ensenada someone told me of the Global Mercado - about a 4 square block market.  But it was closed due to the Mexican Independence day.  I'm hoping this time we can make it there and buy any produce we might need and anything else I don't know I want, oops I mean need.  From there we're off to Isla Guadalupe to see the sharks (still without a shark cage)!

Once we head out I'll start the official homeschooling curriculum I bought.  I took a good look at it the other day and it looks like we'll sail through (no pun intended) some of it and strive to make the other parts interesting.  I don't see Jake sitting at the table for very long with lots of worksheets.  It does however, provide me with a cheat sheet of what I should be focusing on should I get lost.  There's lots of philosophies on homeschooling, most of which I can find some sort of validity in.  After we get a little more experience under out belts, I'll venture out and provide my 2 cents for anyone interested.

For all of my landlubber friends, take a good luck at the pictures here.  This should clear up any confusion on "what is a catamaran?"

On the hard! Not.

I was expecting to post cool pictures of the boat being hauled out today, but instead I'm posting a picture of our engine after it spewed oil everywhere.

Andy took the boat over to the boat yard this morning at Shelter Island.  He pulled in around noon and we had two surprises.  First, there was a racing boat on the only lift that can fit our boat, and that boat is too long/deep to put on a stand to free the lift for us.  After talking with the guy it turns out that this boat was towed in for emergency repairs and with any luck at all, we'll have ours pulled out tonight or first thing tomorrow.  They promise us we'll be out by Thursday as originally planned.

Secondly, and most important...right before Andy pulled into the yard, the oil pressure on the starboard engine went to zero.  After he docked, we opened up the engine compartment and there was oil everywhere and the dipstick was hanging out.  He did a little troubleshooting and decided to put more oil in and clean it up a bit to see what happened.  No more oil spewed out but after reading the various manuals and doing research on the internet, we're thinking (i.e Andy is thinking) we may have a problem that unfortunately I can't find a way to describe without insinuating many other things (ring job, blow by, engines loose, etc.)  So, tomorrow we're having a diesel mechanic look at it to get a second opinion.  Andy's handy, but he weary of the potential of such a big job. So stand by for more updates.  Hopefully tomorrow will come with much better news.  We're praying this doesn't turn into our first dip into savings and push back our departure date.