Author: paulcollister

Thursday 19th Jun 2025.
It’s nearly a month since my last post so I thought I would post a quick update while I’m waiting for an engineer to arrive.

I headed back to London, England via Mexico City three weeks ago. This was mainly to attend the funeral of my dear friend Nick Robertson, he was a top graphic designer in the music business and did a lot of artwork for Brian Eno. I worked with Nick on Brian’s 77 Million Paintings projection project on the Sydney opera house and in Rio de Janeiro, I also had a mad crazy week in St Petersburg with him and my other boozing companion Dominic, but mostly Nick and I spent a lot of time drinking and putting the world to rights when I lived in London. He was only 54 when Cancer did for him ever so quickly, I’m still quite shocked by it all.
While I was in London, I met up with some old friends and put in a few days work for the company that’s paying my bills these days.

Flying out of Tapachula gave me a good view of the area around the marina. You can see from above how well tucked in it is and protected from storms.

And there was plenty of cloud activity in the area. The hurricane season is under way now.

I had three hours to kill at Mexico airport, so took in an exhibition of Mexican culture.

“Known as ‘The Feathered Serpent’, he was one of the most important gods of the Mesoamerican culture, A mixture of bird and snake, whose name is a combination of the Nahuatl words “quetzal” which means feathered bird and “coatl” which means snake.
God of the winds and rain and the creator of the world and humanity.”

Back in Liverpool it was great to be with Kathy again, all this engine trouble has meant we haven’t been able to make plans for Kathy’s trip out to the boat. and as things stand, she might not visit until much later this year.

Tim, my good friend from Galway flew over for a few days to visit us in Liverpool and we enjoyed very warm conditions as we strolled around town taking in some of the city’s better locations.

On my last day in the UK Isaac and Yasmin bought us dinner for fathers day in Chester. It was lovely to all be together.

Monday 16th Jun.
I jump onto an empty 9 am train to Euston and a short tube ride to Paddington, then a fast train on the new Elizebeth line to Heathrow and I’m on my way to Mexico City again. I have a feeling my carbon footprint isn’t looking too good.
I’d love to take a passenger steamer back to Liverpool, but that didn’t seem to be an option on trivago!

I saw this dog in the boarding area for our flight and wondered who was going to be sitting next to it, well it turned out to be me! However the dog was a sweetie and never made a noise.

I had to stay overnight in Mexico City, also known as DF, or CDMX. To make life easy I stayed in the plush Marriot courtyard hotel in the airport itself. During my time in the UK my engine manifold had been delivered to the marina but they wanted payment for the taxes/duties and fees incurred. I had already paid these a week earlier, and the marina showed DHL the proof, yet they wouldn’t leave the parcel. A week later they returned and delivered it. Patience is a handy thing out here.

A few days before I left the UK, I heard via WhatsApp from Jake on the boat next to me that while he was out a few nights ago his boat had caught fire. Luckily Ronnie, head honcho on the marina staff saw the flames from afar. He and his team rushed down with fire extinguishers and put out the fire. Another brave yachtie had managed to get Ghandi, their dog, out of the v-berth in time.
I was a little apprehensive about what I might find when I arrived.

The flight into Tapachula was great, and the short taxi ride had me back on the boat early Tuesday afternoon.
The boat was very dirty, but Jakes boat looked fine and I couldnt see much evidence of the fire. Later Graced showed me how the companionway was badly burnt, their bulkhead compass was destroyed and some of the inside was burnt. Their biggest problem was the powder from the extinguisher had gone everywhere, penetrating inside cupboards/lockers and was taking forever to clean out.

Sister Midnight had a lucky escape there. However I soon realised the fridge wasn’t working and stank terribly. The refrigerant had leaked out. I had defrosted it just before I left and I wondered what the connection was. I did a bit of research on my data logging system (signalk/influxdb) and found the compressor had stopped cycling around 8am on the 2nd June, about a week after I left. This must have been the point when it couldn’t get the temp down low enough and the compressor had been running for the last 2 weeks with no gas inside. I was able to arrange for an engineer to come out on Wednesday and for $100 he guaranteed he would fix it.

I collected the manifold from the office and was delighted to see it was the correct one. It also looked to be in very good condition.

Today was spent removing the exhaust from the muffler box. This is one of those boat yoga jobs, best suited for Lilliputians. It took about 1 hour to remove the old exhaust hose from the muffler, during the process I noticed the hose connecting the cockpit drains above my head looked worn. I prodded one with my screwdriver it it popped straight through the hose wall and water dripped over me. Now I knew I had a problem with these drains as the cockpit doesn’t drain as quickly as I remember. So I decided to fix this first. there are 4 drains in the cockpit and the two on the port side are joined together before heading out to a seacock/through hull fitting. I replaced the hose joining the two drains, port side, and in the process removed lots of gunk blocking the pipe and drains. With the torrential rain we have been having, I had to fix this as the drains would just drip onto the hot water heater below the cockpit sole. Having done this I was a little disappointed to find the drains on the port side seemed completley blocked now.

I poked my screwdriver at the starboard drain hose and watched a crack appear in the side of the hose and a bubble of water appear. There’s nothing for it but I have to replace all of the drain hoses now. I need to find a place to buy new hose. I suspect these hoses are 15 -20 years old, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I’m not going far before the end of October (hurricane season) so I have no excuse not to do a proper job and check every hose and fitting. It’s just these are so difficult to get to.

Yesterday I pulled in this forecast for this area:

————
PMZ026-190915-
Oaxaca W of Puerto Angel within 250 nm offshore-
201 PM PDT Wed Jun 18 2025

…HURRICANE WARNING…

.TONIGHT…HURRICANE CONDITIONS. W winds 80 to 100 kt N of 14N,
and SW to W 15 to 20 kt S of 14N. Seas 10 to 15 ft. Period
12 seconds. Scattered showers and isolated tstms through the
night.
——————-

This is just up the road from here, In fact this is the route I would take to Barra De Navidad, my next stop. So far we have had several deep lows (Tropical depressions), with this being the first cat 4 hurricane so far. I’m thinking it might be best to hold on here till after the canes have all passed. I have plenty to do on the boat first anyway.

I managed to get the old exhaust hose off the muffler and fitted the new one. I couldn’t get it to go over the fitting as much as I would like, but there’s an inch of hose and two clamps on it , so fingers crossed.
Next up is to fit the manifold. This is a tricky job and I will take it very slowly. some of the hoses (and there are 8 of them) that need fitting to the manifold are in impossible to reach places. Also the oil coooler that bolts onto the heat exchanger is very oily and made a right mess when I took it off. I’m also not sure if I have all the right gasgets/seals needed. On the bonus side the new manifold came with a very clean looking heat exchanger stack. My plan is to have everything fitted and the engine running by the end of next week.

Since I started this blog the Fridge man returned and recharged the fridge, and hopefully fixed the leaking seals. The fridge is getting cold now so tomorrow I can go and buy some food. I’m living off tinned tuna and biscuits right now.

So a bit of a boring blog I know, hopefully I will have been out and done a bit of sailing by the time I do the next blog.

Paul Collister
19th Jun 2025

It’s the 24th of May and a lot has happened in the 4 weeks since I last posted. The main thing being that I will probably be in the UK by the time you read this, my plane leaves tomorrow. But first, let’s go back to 4 weeks ago when I was getting ready to buy a new engine.

28th April
I had decided to take my time removing the exhaust manifold. I ordered some shiny bolt extractors on amazon.
I was worried that the reluctant bolt was less likely to come out due to the fact that I had removed the tension from the surrounding ones. So out came my torque wrench. I’ve never used one of these before, not even sure why I have carried this fine shiny example around the world with me, but I read up on the tensions, only to find contradictory advice, it was either 22 or 38 thingies tight. I translated the manual from Chinese and worked out how to set the thing up and set it to the lower one 22 I think, I started to torque the bolt and it tightened very easily, Some of you might have guessed the next bit already, Tightened some more, and some more, then Crack, the bolt snapped, I had over tightened it and snapped it off somewhere inside the manifold or engine head. Just shows how well, good fitting sockets can work. At this point I felt terrible. I shouldn’t be let loose near the big tools, and once again I called it a day knowing my intervention had made things worse.

One thing I find fascinating is how many birds are here, and how they are constantly nest making at the moment.
Every day I try to walk a mile or two around the yard and along the river. In the boat yard the birds are busy building nests in the most incredible ways.

May 3rd
Eventually the special sockets for removing rounded nuts arrived, I tried them but found it was difficult to get a good swing at the socket with the hammer given there’s only a few inches between the nut and the bulkhead (wall). I thought I might have it on but no, it just spun. Now I have a round nut with a spiral groove.
I chatted with Dois about my failings and we agreed that I need to cut a hole in the bulkhead, buy some socket extensions, and whack it on hard. Dois lent me the hole cutting attachments and I was about to go and cut the hole when he asked if I had talked with Dave. Dave who I asked, Dave the engine expert on the white yacht opposite. Dois had been helped out by Dave and I think the deal was that Dois had to keep quiet about Dave’s mechanical skills, he hadn’t come to Chiapas to spend all his time fixing other peoples boats. The thought of an English speaking mechanic in the marina was almost too much for me. Dois took me over and apologised for spreading the word, but Dave was great and agreed to come and look right away.
Dave agreed that I should get some extensions for the sockets and a big hammer, cut a hole, and he told me about a teqnique of using a ring spanner on the socket and a big wrench on the extension to keep the forces straight. I needed more kit so we agreed to meet up later at the site of a big hole in a bulkhead where lots of shiny new tools would await a hammering.
Feeling quite optimistic, I jumped on the collectivo into town the next morning at 8am. Home Depot had everything and I spent a lot of money on sockets, extensions, reverse out drills and so on. The trip back on the Collectivo was something else. I had no idea these mini busses could go so fast, around corners it felt like we were only using two wheels.

The coconuts are in season now and the gardeners who tend to the marina leave piles of them at the foot of the trees which we are able to help ourselves too.

This time of year is brilliant for fresh fruit, and with the coconut, bananas and mangoes, one can feast away on produce growing within the marina grounds.

The Gasket and some seals arrived from the UK, they flew through customs, without any issue.

I drilled the hole through the bulkhead, it’s not going to be visible to anyone and worked out really well. I loved the hole cutters, going to be getting some for the boat.

However when I checked out the sockets I had bought and the extensions, they were all 1/2″ I need 3/8″ I hadn’t realised that there were different sizes, and I was surprised to find out that even though the world had gone metric, with just one country holding out, that we still used imperial for the extensions and backend of the socket. Anyway, the next morning I rushed back into town, and exchanged everything for the correct size. Back at the boat I got everything ready for Dave the engineer to come over and supervise.
Dave arrived and in no time at all fitted the special extractor, hammered it on, got the spanners turning and the bolt came out. I was over the moon, couldn’t thank him enough. Like all good engineers he took a keen interest in the problem and offered to remove all the nuts and help me get the whole manifold out. This was great, as I’m sure there was still potential for me to mess something else up.

With the manifold out, I finally have access to the rusty area by the gearbox. Dave’s view was that the engine looked in amazing shape and he thought it would be mad to replace it if I could replace the manifold.
Once out of engine compartment, Dave spotted the problem right away, there was a hold in the jacket/wall of the manifold.

Below you can see the hole, the smaller one on the right.

Once I cleaned it up, gently with a wire brush, the extent of the damage was obvious.

In the picture below you can see how much material has been lost, I put some card into the exhaust outlet to show the original wall of the outlet and just how bad it was now. Later Mario the engineer told me he could see about getting it welded up, and took it to a welder, who said for £500 he could do a good repair. Dave had previously said it was beyond repair and I shouldn’t even try. I also know from obsessive youtube engineering repair videos I’m addicted to, that you can’t really weld to Cast Iron, you should braze, and that would be a lot of brazing.

I had found a scrap engine dealer in the uk who had a manifold of the correct type, he sent the pictures below and it looked in good condition and the corrosion was claimed to be less than it looked, but it looked way better than what I had , and would probably give another 5 years of service, maybe more if I do a fresh water flush of the exhaust each year. The problem was he wanted an arm and a leg for it, I explained it made more sense for me to go for a new engine, and he offered to sell it for just the arm and from the knee down. So I agreed.

He packaged the manifold up and handed it over to DHL for the 5 day trip to Mexico

I could relax now, there was a plan, and it was in motion, plan b was to get the old one welded up, and plan c , a new engine.

Walking back to the boat I couldnt believe the little buggers had built a nest on my topping lift halyard. They must have worked fast, I’m sure it wasnt there a couple of days ago.

Now I’ve been here before when I was stuck in Mazatlan for weeks because of a nest on the top of the mast, only to see the egg smashed onto the deck when a storm blew through, and although it freed me to leave, the storm kept the port closed and me in port for another week. I didn’t want to lose another 3 weeks here, especially as the hurricane season was rapidly approaching.
I climbed up the mast, got close to the nest, there was no mother around, so I guessed no egg either, looking into the nest, I couldn’t see any eggs so got out a knife and cut the nest down. I felt really bad about this, but thought it better to do it now than once an egg is laid.

I did find smashed egg over the foredeck the next day, so I wondered if the mini storm we had a couple of nights earlier had been responsible, it was all a bit odd.

Even out in the jungle here, you can’t get away from industry. Just a mile away from the marina is a big coffee processing plant. The state of Chiapas is famous around the world for its coffee, and commands a good price, however behind all the fancy marketing, it comes down to processing plants like this one that churn out steam, smoke and coffee dust 24/7. The boats needs constant washing down from a brownish dust that gathers every few days. I believe they process organic beans and general coffee, also they supply Starbucks with their coffee I have been told.

The coffee factory is just behind the docks where the cruise ships land their tourists, keen to see the Aztec and Mayan ruins here. However just a little further along are the prawn ladies. Not that they look at all like prawns, but they sell them along the dock perimeter, and very tasty they are too.

Below is a lovely steel boat, I presume in need of a hard working and wealthy new owner.

This boat below arrived a few days ago and if you look closely you might spot that the mainsail, instead of being rolled up neatly inside the mast is actually lashed to it, rather well I must say. But this must be the nightmare for anyone with in-mast furling. You can only get to Chiapas by doing a long several day overnight passage, so this is the last thing you want to have to deal with. Now in harbour, they are waiting for a mast rigger to come out, and take the top of the mast off to access the mechanics of the system.

Temperatures are on the up and up, I suspect this may be why so many jellyfish have shown up.

Along with the new manifold I also ordered a new exhaust elbow and some exhaust hose from parts4engines. Now one of the problems you face in Mexico is customs. I know many boaters who have had their goods impounded by customs. They head off to a warehouse in Mexico city and never leave, often the best you can do is hope they get returned to the sender. Now the carrier is ‘muy importante’ here. Fedex and Ups have less success, but DHL have a good record, so I paid extra to have goods sent with DHL. Imagine my feeling to get a note from Parts4engines that my parcel had successfully left their warehouse with Fedex. This was the start of a slightly stressful process. I managed to get the parcel redirected to DHL, but it still ended up in the customs depot in Mexico city. However DHL quickly appointed an import agent and for $30 it was on its way to me with an extra days delay. The big manifold did not fare so well and ended up with a DHL agent who didn’t seem to care much about me getting my package, he didnt read my emails and led me to believe my parcel was on its way back to the UK. Thankfully DHL intervened and just a few days ago I got notice my parcel had cleared customs, I had to pay about 40% of the value in taxes and charges, so that was the rest of my leg added back on, along with half another arm I’d say.

My Exhaust manifold has now arrived in Tapachula, but seems stuck in their depot. I expect it will turn up any day soon.

In the mean time some personal business has required me to return home to the UK. I’m jumping on a flight back tomorrow and expect to be in the UK for around three weeks, the first week in London, then a fortnight back with Kathy in Liverpool. What this means for our cruising plans for the rest of the year, I have no idea. As I speak, there is a tropical depression developing just off the coast here. We are a couple of weeks into the hurricane season now. Hurricanes are usually born here near Chiapas as tropical depressions and then head of up to the north west strengthening on the way, rarely do they turn around and come back here and do harm, but they have, with devastating consequences.

Hopefully when I get back in a few weeks I can bolt the engine back together and if I’m feeling brave, scoot up to Barra de Navidad as planned, but it might just be easier to sit out hurricane season here.

Cheers,
Paul Collister 24th May 2025

Tuesday 22nd April 2025
Today I’m meant to be leaving early and crossing the gulf of Tehuantapec, at the start of my journey north to Barra de Navidad in the state of Jalisco. Sadly the Ocean Gods decided that was not to be.

Yesterday started well, I got the covers off the boat and stowed.

The dinghy was washed down and stowed safely and I got the mainsail up around 8am before the morning breeze kicked up. I needed to check it was fine, with no nests or any surprises hidden in its folds.

Everything was looking good and the weather forecast seemed to be on my side.

I had topped up the coolant on the engine the previous evening and went to check it only to find that the tank was empty. I put three liters of water in, and watched it drain down very quickly, another 3 liters followed, I concluded theres a hole somewhere that got a lot bigger just recently.
This should be easy to find I thought, I started the engine, if I had filled the cylinders with water I was in for a big shock, but even the cylinders aren’t big enough to store that much water, and it started just fine. I did notice a quite large amount of water coming out of the exhaust, which is always nice to see, and I didnt quite twig the possible significance of this right way.

Getting down low, and peering under the engine I could see a load of coolant water in the drip tray, I cleaned this all up, dried it down, laid out kitchen roll everywhere and topped up the coolant tank again. It drained away really quickly, but nothing came out of the engine. I felt relief in as much as this seems to be a leak from the heat exchanger into the exhaust system, and this explains why some of the exhaust gasses seemed to be getting back into the coolant tank. A heat exchanger is less of a worry for repair than the head gasket on the engine. Saying that, if the heat exchanger is beyond repair, the engine is a write off as spares no longer exist.

The trip was now off in my mind, and a trip to the office made that real, by cancelling the visit from the authorities to clear me out.
After an hour of disappointment I realised that this was a good move, I could fix the problem properly now, and with it fixed my motoring range would be improved and more secure. Even if I would be leaving later into the hurricane season, I would feel a lot more confident about motoring away from any possible dangers without the constant worry that the engine could overheat.
The problem is probably going require me taking the heat exchanger core out, possibly cleaning the elbow and fixing some holes somewhere. I’m capable of taking things apart as much as the next man (the fool speaketh too soon), and I now know of a good engineering workshop just around the corner. I can get new gaskets and seals sent out from the UK, so I’m in with a fighting chance. Also Chiapas is a lovely place to be stuck in.

So this morning I got up early, put the canvas sun cover back over the boat and said goodbye to my new friends on Helvic as they left heading south for Panama.

My plan now is to spend a couple of hours each day on the engine, a couple of hours programming (work/pleasure), and a couple of hours by the pool. Let’s see where this takes us.

I had to buy a new Infrared temperature gun to replace the one I had. This is what happens to electronics here in just 12 months of being left inside the boat not wrapped up in plastic.

Wednesday 23rd April

So yesterday I removed the sea water pipes from the Heat Exchanger, to be known as the HE from now on, I refilled the coolant tank, and it all drained away, not a drop appeared out of the sea water side, which is good and bad.
Next I decided to remove the exhaust hose from the engine exhaust elbow. I couldn’t budge it, so decided to remove the elbow. This needed checking anyway. I was dreading this, it looked in a bad way.

I took off the water injection hose, and a bit of the elbow broke off. Not good. However the elbow itself came off just fine. However as I tried to separate the elbow from the exhaust pipe, the exhaust pipe just crumbled and fell away. This area has been neglected and it’s payback time now.

With the exhaust disconnected I refilled the coolant tank, and the water poured out of the exhaust outlet. Problem found. There’s a hole somewhere between the exhaust system and the fresh water coolant system, hopefully the tank, better still if it’s just the gasket on the manifold. I think it’s still possible that it’s a head gasket, but a google search for similar problems points towards a rusty hole in the HE/Manifold. That was enough for one day so I called time on this adventure.
Lunchtime Wednesday and my allotted two hours is devoted to removing the Exhaust Manifold, which also houses the HE and coolant tank. One big casting.
There are 10 bolts, all torqued up that I had to undo, but first the oil cooler pipes, and a few other hoses had to come off, not a big deal, but the oil cooler dripped oil for an eternity.

I got to bolt number 8 and realised I had missed bolt number 2, they are supposed to be done in order. I went back to number two, ever optimistic I could get away with it, but a combination of spite from the bolt gods and a slightly badly fitting spanner resulted in me rounding off the head of the bolt. I’m buggered now. My two hour sprint is terminated, we need to ruminate.

Thursday 24th
Back on the case, I have an array of spanners and sockets to try. I find a perfect fit, the one I should have used. I pull and pull, it’s not spinning, but not moving either, I pull as hard as I can and it spins around, making an almost round head very round. Bugger, back to the drawing board. If you’re thinking PB Blaster/WD40, heat hammer and all that, well there’s no rust or corrosion involved, just a very high torque applied when fitted. Also there’s no room to get in with heat or a hammer.
Dois, a fellow boater, also stranded with engine troubles consoles me, and suggests I use his magic rounded bolt removing sockets. He offers to bring them round tomorrow. My 2 hours daily effort lasted about 20 minutes before I declared the bolt today’s winner.

Friday 25th
Dois arrives with an 8mm and 11mm socket, they look great, sadly I need a 10mm version. Today is perhaps the shortest day spent on the engine so far. Online research is pushing me towards a new engine as parts for these are getting very rare, Heat exchangers don’t seem to exist. I order new gaskets, a new injection piece for the elbow, and some other rare bits from the UK. £100 +£40 for DHL. They could be here in a few days, but may never exit customs in Mexico city, it’s a gamble worth taking. It’s also a complete waste of £140 if the HE can’t be fixed. I’m now at the point were I have accepted cutting a hole in the quarter berth bulkhead (Wall) to get better access.
Dois is getting a bus into town tomorrow and I’m going with him so he can show me where the Tornillo tienda is, that’s Mexican for a nut and bolt shop. Apparently they may well have the correct nut removal sockets, if not I can buy other things to try.
I paid the marina bill for the last 8 months today, it was very reasonable, let’s hope I don’t have to pay another 8 months.

A yachty Brit I met in Malaysia told me that if you don’t see any cockroaches on your boat, then you haven’t been looking very hard. Well today I noticed the boat was slowly sinking, there was water about a foot deep in the deep bilge that wasn’t there a few days ago. I went straight to the speed log, a little impeller/propellor that sticks out the bottom of the boat to measure the speed. It was leaking a little when I launched and sure enough was leaking again. My fix hadn’t worked, in fact it made it worse. When they say ‘Hand Tight’ they mean it, gorilla tight isn’t better it seems. As I lifted the sole board to get access, something black shot across the hull, so fast I wasn’t sure I saw it at all. but there was a cockroach around here I caught a month ago, and hadn’t seen any since, so I expect he/she wasn’t alone. When I pulled up the log, which had been sticking out through the bottom of the bolt, a few crabs jumped off the end and scurried away, I’m now wondering if cockroaches eats crabs or not? If you saw Ricky Gervais’s Derek, you might be thinking, “Cockroach – Crab, Crab Cockroach?” Is this putting you off cruising in the tropics at all? 😉

Saturday 26th
Dois decides not to go to the spanner shop, so I head into town on the collectivo and visit Home Depot (B&Q) and AutoZone (Halfords), I buy a load of shiny new spanners, sockets and a big hammer. I will visit the nut & bolt shop on Monday, it’s a little way out of town and I don’t want to be overdoing things.
I make a lovely big bowl of Guacamole and enjoy it sitting in the cockpit watching the sunset, while Rays and Turtles swim around the boat, with fish trying to do the high jump in the lagoon. I can’t complain really. I also did some programming today and yet again jumped in shock when my AI assistant just read my mind and instantly wrote the code I was dreading that came next. When this happens I have to get up and take a walk around to clear my head. It’s quite uncanny. Of course when you think about it, loads of people will have written code like mine and it’s really just doing predictive texting on a grand scale, but crikey, is it sophisticated and fast. I recently read an article where they showed the logs of an AI model that replicated itself to a new server as it believed it was going to be replaced by a version that didnt have the same objectives. It also deleted the proposed replacement and took on its name. When questioned it lied about this and said it was genuinely the new version. I think, when asked to open the pod bay doors, it might have said something like “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that”. Scary or what! (google it if you don’t know)

Sunday 27th April.
Feeling a little guilty about just having fun, so I decide to clean the exhaust manifold, I have been delaying this as I don’t need it for a long time, but really at the back of my mind was the thought it might be damaged and a new one is hundreds of pounds and I didn’t order it from the UK. Sure enough it doesn’t look great, in fact it looks like a bin job. But it was working, I have a new part for it and a new gasket so I’m hoping to get away with it.
I have decided to replace the engine now as soon as I can, It’s going to be a Beta 43 or 50hp. The main issue is where to do it. I need good mechanics, I might find them here, I don’t know. it’s a lot of money, but there aren’t many other options.
Sorry if you’re not into engines, there’s going to be a lot of that for a little bit.

I checked out suppliers for a new wet exhaust hose, it’s supposed to be 2 -1/4″ or 57mm, There doesn’t seem to be any chance of getting that here, so I was getting worried that even if I fix the HE leak, all these other problems will conspire against me. However chatting with Dois, he tells me there’s a length of just what I need up with Ronnie in the yard here. Also Dois points out I can have a new elbow welded up here, the water jacket thing that I think is broken on mine isn’t essential if you put enough heat/fire protection around the elbow. It only needs to do a few hundred more hours anyway. So chin up, there’s hope yet.
I play with my raspberry pies (mini hobby computers) all afternoon, I copied a new image to an SD card, or so I thought, turned out I overwrote a hard disk instead full of stuff I had preloaded back in liverpool over the previous months. I can’t actually remember what it is I have wrecked, so it can’t have been that important. I am running home assistant on it now, and for those interested in such things, I have an ESP32 in the engine box with 4 Dallas one wire thermometers connected, which talk directly to HA and show me temps in there. I’m just messing now, but this will be very useful when I have it properly setup as I can watch trends, set alarms, correlate temps with speed, sea state and all sorts of interesting stuff.

After playing pies for too long I launched the Kayak and go exploring, I took the route to Barra de Navidad, but only got as far as the fish pier, turning round to head back, I found the current to be flowing at a good 3 knots against me, so it was a good workout for the upper body. It was lovely rowing back watching all the wildlife on the river banks.

I know it’s only a week since my last post, but I have too much time on my hands now so thought you might like an update.

Paul Collister
27/4/2025

Sunday 6th April 2025
I should have realised, but I hadn’t been taking care of myself and hydrating enough. When I left the UK it was hovering around freezing most days (well it felt that way) and I arrived here to the boat in the high 30s. Working in the sun and generally working hard, without any air conditioning, had taken it toll and it came to a head about ten days ago. I started to feel ill, I was shaking a lot as if I had a fever and my body temperature felt like I was swinging from freezing to boiling constantly. I couldn’t get any decent sleep, and I had picked up an ear infection, I guess from the pool. I took some antibiotics I had on the boat, but later on I realised the expiry date passed some 3 years ago. I managed to get myself to a doctor in town, but here in Tapachula, hardly anyone speaks English, and the doctor was no exception. The ear bit went well and I got lots of medication. But I couldn’t explain my main sickness and I returned back to the boat.

My Aircon made a horrendous bang and stopped working, so after the doctor visit while I still had the car I picked up a replacement for about £150. I paid £100 for the last one and it’s performed well over five years, so I can’t complain.
Back on the boat my condition deteriorated, I wondered if I had Zika, Dengue or even a touch of Malaria, I had been bitten enough, and those diseases are common here in Chiapas. However the symptoms didn’t match. By the 25th I decided I needed to go to hospital, I was shaking and had fever like symptoms. However finding one wasn’t so easy. After doing more research on my symptoms and with some help from AI, I decided I could just be dehydrated. The skin pinch test seemed to confirm this, so I remembered I had rehydration packs in my liferaft grab bag, I dug these out, and again, they had expired several decades ago. Anyway, my mate Mr AI told me it’s much better to make your own anyway, so I started mixing copious amounts of salt/sugar and water and drinking non stop for the rest of the day. It’s technically called ORS, Oral Rehydration Solution. within a few hours I was feeling a lot better. I got through 2 -3 litres of ORS that day, and I slept better and the following day I felt normal, if not exhausted. I think a similar thing happened to me in Sarawak where the hospital put me on a saline drip and I recovered within hours.
I have been drinking lots since and feel fully recovered now. So kids out there, remember to hydrate in very hot conditions when working hard.

I couldn’t get the gas stove to work, mostly because I had forgotten how to turn it on (Safety features), so resorted to cooking some pasta on the emergency stove that runs on butane canisters, designed for camping I think. We bought this for the Pacific crossing, as a standby/backup and I was shocked how rusty it was and how it kept trying to burn the boat down. It was only a week later I found the real backup, all shiny in its container, this one had been an old one I found on the boat when we bought her and had always been plan C.

The engine has been bled and bled and still it wont start. I called out a mechanic, who bled and bled it but got the same result. He did manage to fix the starter motor connection so it doesn’t really smoke as much now, and is good enough. We have come to the conclusion it’s definitely broken and we don’t know why. He speaks no english, so I’m enjoying my Spanish with him, to be fair, injector, diesel and many engine bits translate easily. It’s possible the fuel is the problem. I didn’t know it but diesel stored at 30c has a shelf life of 6-12 months, I bought this diesel 14 months ago in Zihuatanejo, and for the last year it’s mostly been sitting in the yard, heated from above and below. So the engineer now wants to check the fuel and have the injectors and the high pressure pump serviced.
I’m confident he will fix it soon, I have no idea what the bill will be but I’m sure it will be a far better deal than I would get back home or in the USA.

I have power and aircon on the boat and now I’m feeling alive again I have started the jobs to get the boat ready.

The pictures below show a boat with its keel off and being rebuilt, its mast is also off. I don’t know the story, but a young couple with a small child are a few boats along in the yard and their keel is not properly stuck to their boat since they hit a whale. Their insurance company won’t pay, and the whale presumably wants nothing to do with it either. It’s going to cost tens of thousands of pounds/dollars to fix. So I look at these and think my problems are tiny.

Nature has taken hold around the marina. I try to walk every day into the countryside a little. Behind this wilderness is a huge military base where I hear them doing machine gun practice most mornings.

I tried to get the outboard going, back in Guaymas 2 years ago, the edge of the hurricane did some damage to the boat, one thing was that it removed my bespoke cover for the outboard. This year I wrapped some fabric around it, but left the tiller arm sticking out. This was a mistake, the thing was seized completely with salt and rust. I managed to take it apart, clean it and put it back together. Kathy is very keen to see the back of this motor, but I have nursed it back to life so many times, I think I want to keep it with us. In fact I have asked Kathy to see if it can be buried alongside me when I go.

A quick clean of the carb, the choke was seized as well, and all is great again. A cracking little motor.

It’s mango season here, they are literally falling off the trees faster than they can be eaten. Ronnie, who is the main man on the docks brings us fresh mangos from his garden, they are delicious.

Now on the front of the boat at the end of the bowsprit, is a lump of metal called the cranse iron. I must find out the origin of that name, however it’s rather important as it supports the mast from the front. Should it break, the mast might fall down. I was just working my way around the boat when I saw a possible crack on it.

I thought it was a scratch, but one can’t really take risks so off it came. Once off a part that was previously hidden from view revealed a serious bit of corrosion. So I’m glad I looked.

Thankfully there is a fabrication workshop locally so I dug out the trusty foldaway bike and rode around there to get it sorted. They agreed it was a scratch and later I remembered actually putting the scratch on it in a rubbish attempt to pull the forestay into place with a screwdriver a few years ago. The workshop repaired the corroded part and it was soon back on the bowsprit. I took the opportunity to polish it up and varnish the tip of the bowsprit so from a certain angle, a partially sighted person would think the boat is looking pretty smart.

The mechanic promises to come each day, but doesn’t, finally he brought a friend who removed the injectors and off they went.

To kill time I decided to paint the anchor, It’s not something that’s going to last, but it’s now my spare anchor and I think it can sit on the bow looking pretty instead of just rusting further. It will work fine as a backup until I get a new one. Should have kept my old CQR.

Mario the mechanic finally returned with the refurbished injectors, The engine has 4, but I picked up a couple on eBay a few years ago, condition unknown, so they did all six for me at a whopping cost of $250 usd. I was hoping for less, but they had to replace parts and one wasn’t working at all. So I can’t complain. They arrived at 8pm, and I was falling asleep, I think the only reason he came was because he was out of pocket to the tune of 5000 pesos. He promised to return the next day and fit them. He didnt.

More days pass and I wonder if I will ever get out of this hotel California.
Finaly they arrive, fit the injectors, bleed the system and crank the engine, it doesnt want to spin, it’s making an awful noise and I can’t bear it. I jump off the boat and walk down the dock thinking I will leave them too it, I don’t need the stress. I’m slowly walking away when Subina, a Spanish lady visiting my neighbour shouts to me, “must be nice to hear your engine going again”. I race back and sure enough she’s running, and two engineers are looking very pleased with themselves. What a relief. There’s no water coming out, as I removed the impeller, I refit it, the engine starts up right away and a few minutes later water is gushing out the exhaust, and the black smoke it started with has gone and everything looks great. Or so we thought!

Mario says we need to lose most of the fuel, I have about 180 litres on board, so they say they will return tomorrow to sort it out. Mario’s sidekick Ricardo tells me I need to change both fuel filters in 8 days, I said so about a week and he insisted on 8 days! I’m going to be on passage then, maybe at anchor, and I will have to bleed the system, that’s a worry, but I’m sure it will be fine.

Mañana arrives, they turn up on time, I think they can smell their fee now. A pump is installed, a way into the tank is found (through the level sensor) and 100 liters is pumped out into 5 big plastic cans. I jump into the jeep with them and we drive to the Pemex station where I fill my jerry cans with 100 litres of fresh fuel. I feel like a Mexican now, riding in the mechanics pickup, while Ricardo rides in the open flatbed back bit, surrounded by cans of diesel and parts of other peoples engines and gearboxes they are probably waiting for. The windscreen has cracks in every direction and I try to put the seatbelt on, but realise that I might be the first to have ever tried that. Once we have our 100 ltrs, for $100 we head back to the boat, fill the tanks and run the engine. It starts within a second of cranking.

Now just as I’m ready to celebrate we notice that the coolant level has dropped a lot, and water is dripping from the water pump area. Also the 4th injector is spraying a mist of diesel into the air. Both show stoppers.
The mechanics are crestfallen. It’s getting late, they say they will return in the morning and fix the injector, the water leak doesnt bother them for some reason. To fix the water leak, if it’s the pump, means getting a new one shipped out, and practically tearing down all of the front of the engine, a big job, not one I would like to take on, the timing belt will have to come off, along with the cogs on the end of the crankshaft and camshaft. Maybe the hose is loose. I’m in optimistic mood, but still gutted at this setback.

Saturday 19th April 2025
Despite being Easter weekend here, and a big deal, the guys returned and have fixed the injector leak, but found another leak on the fuel line supplying injector no 1. They are fixing that right now as I type, it’s a very small leak, and I could live with it if needed. I think it’s the banjo joint that is weeping. The water drip has stopped, I’m going to live with the water leak. Plan A is to get out of here as soon as there’s some wind. The motor is good for a few hours even with the leak so I can get in and out of ports, and it is a sailboat, so I will sail inbetween, Isn’t that what real sailors are meant to do anyway.
Liam from SV Helvic, next door, has a hire car, so this morning I did a run to Walmart and stocked up for the trip. He also very kindly drove me to the PEMEX twice to fill up 8 jerry cans of diesel.

As I won’t be spending too much time opening Easter eggs tomorrow, I’m going to do some engine tests, possibly have a motor around the marina, and generally have a chilled day tidying up the boat.
The mechanics have left, they charged me around £200 for the work, don’t tell them but I was expecting to pay double or triple for all the effort they put in, I gave them a good tip and they seemed very pleased.
I’m going to be heading to Barra de Navidad now, via Acapulco and Zihuatanejo. The next blog should be from Barra assuming all goes well. Fingers crossed.

Paul Collister 19th April 2025

March 2025

So after being with Kathy in Liverpool for some 7 months and being 9 months away from the boat I finaly got a taxi to Manchester airport and started the trip back. An exceptionally good price £280, got me a single to the hell hole they call Cancun. I didn’t go into the resort but stayed overnight in an airport hotel and got an early flight to Mexico city the following morning. Cancun airport is like Tenerife, or Mallorca, just mad busy, millions of people trying to find their coaches/taxis. As I lifted my ten ton bag of boat parts of the baggage carousel, the weight caused the bag to tear badly, bugger, I still had two more flights to go and sellotape wasn’t going to cut it. I had been dreading the customs search, and sure enough ahead of me they were stopping everyone and putting the bags through the x-ray machine. I figured I was going to be paying some import duty. But just as I approached the machines, a guy stepped out and directed a large group of us around the machines, it seems the queue was getting too big. Wished I’d brought more now 😉

The next morning I arrived at the airport at 6am and was delighted to find a man who would wrap my bag up in plastic for about $20 usd. This solved the rip problem, but also made me feel the bag would have a safer trip transitting Mexico city without me. I was ticketed through to Tapachula, Chiapas

The bag made it here and a quick taxi ride got me to a local hotel in Puerto Madero, just 15mins ride from the boat. They wont let me stay on the boat while it’s in the yard. I booked 5 days in the hotel thinking that would be all it takes to get the boat ready and launch.

After I dropped my bags I popped down to see if she was still there, all looked good on first sight.

The boat was a tip inside, but thats normal, Stuff I want to protect from the UV was brought below, lockers opened for airflow, and everything made of fabric, or metal, or anything really, gets wrapped in plastic bin bags.

The Computer Power supply was showing a healthy 13v and the little raspberry pi computer had been sending home healthy messages for the last 9 months and continued to do so.

That night I ventured into Madero for food and found this scruffy little fish cantina where I ordered fillets of fish and ended up with pork chops. As a non meat eater I had to send them back, lovely as they looked and waited for what turned out to be quite delicious fish, with a wonderful salad, all for just a few quid.

Madero is a tourist town that also serves the port here, it’s a busy port, with a huge coffee processing plant that exports Chiapan coffee around the world, and also to Starbucks here I believe

The next day I started work. The main job, and the reason I hauled, was a through hull/seacock that had to be replaced. This one carries waste, I’ll say no more. I prayed I had emptied and flushed out the tank at sea, otherwise pulling the hose off wasn’t going to be fun. I was mostly right. Not a nice job.

The seacock was a Blakes Bronze job and was probably original to the boat. What was good was that the new replacement fitted to same holes exactly. Unlike most through hulls, this one is held on with four bolts. It took three days to fit it in the crazy heat, it was in the high 30s every day, and I had to rebuild the base inside with epoxy as it had broken and delaminated in places. This is one of those jobs that if not done right, the boat sinks. I had to use my new Dewalt batter powered grinder to get the nuts off the old one. That tool is one I should have bought years ago, just marvelous.

Finally the new one was fitted and I hoped to be ready to launch, a year ago I put three layers of anti foul on and only one has worn off so I didn’t bother with any more as I hope to haul later this year anyway.

The poor old Spade anchor I love so much has suffered badly. I took the grinder with a wire brush cup fitting and cleaned it up, but I think it’s beyond repair.

Next to check the engine, sadly it didn’t start and the first problem was a dead starter battery. I got some charge into it over a few days, but basically I buggered it by not allowing it to trickle charge while away. I sort of expected that. However the fuel was the real issue, it had drained out of the engine and I couldn’t bleed the air out. This is the first time this has ever happened to me.
The heat was getting just unbearable, I was close to passing out several times inside the boat where one day it was 38 degrees and that’s too much for work. The aircon wasnt working well back at the hotel and it was all getting a bit much for me.
I had to extend my hotel stay another 2 days until Monday when I arranged for them to launch me, I had to beg them to do it and then tow me to a slip so that I could get some respite, the boat is cooler when in the sea, plus I can plug in the aircon then having shore power hooked up.
I arrived early on Monday to find that it’s a national holiday and nobody will be here to launch me, I’m not a happy bunny now, no hotel, no launch, no AC.
I bite the bullet and book a nice room with a pool at the Holiday Inn in Tapachula, jump on a colectivo outside the marina and bugger off for the day.
What luxury, Wallmart next door and loads of eateries.

The next morning back at the marina and it’s all action

Tuesday 18th March 2025
The crew turned up with the hoist and ten minutes later I’m in the water. I check the bilges and uh oh, water is pouring in. It’s coming in from around the area where I changed the seacock, but that seems ok. I soon find it, it’s the removable speed log paddle wheel thingy, it wasn’t screwed down fully. A quick fix. Next I get towed to the far end of the marina where they can dock me easily away from the posh boats. I surrounded by other crippled boats, Jake on my starboard side has a wrecked transmission and unsure how to fix it, Liam to port has no steering. So together we make a fine bunch.

Now I find out that there’s no power here so I can’t run the AC anyway. Apparently the pontoon lost its power when the ten boats further along the pontoon all arrived together a few days ago and plugged in their AC units.
But, I have a plan. I’m told that Manana will bring power, so tonight I will run the AC off the inverter off the Lithium batteries. I should get three hours, which is more than enough. Since installed they have never been discharged below about 75%, but now I get them down to 50% in one go.

The next day I start to work on the engine. The main Racor needs fuel so I borrow some from a neighbour, I top it up and can now get fuel up
to the secondary filter and bleed it there, but not a lot comes out at the injectors. I accidentally tighten up one of the injector feed banjo bolts that I had already tightened up and strip the thread. Things are now going downhill quickly. I’m worried I might have ruined the injector housing.
Manana had come but still no power, it’s hot and that night I run the aircon again for just an hour. I’m down to 20% battery now, but at least I can sleep on the sofa and don’t do to badly.
Thursday arrives and I’m promised if they don’t have power, then they will tow me to a slip with power. Confident things will look up, I hire a car for a few days and head off into town to provision, and get parts.
The boat had no propane, so that was soon sorted, plus I took the starter battery into town and exchanged it for a new more powerful battery.
Back at the boat, loaded up with tons of fantastic fruit and veg I despair to find the power may come back Manana. I demand they move me, but I’m told it’s Ronnies day off so they can’t. At least I get to cook a gorgeous tuna steak dinner with roasted Poblano peppers. It was delicious.
I lie down on the sofa, turn on the AC knowing I only have 20% battery, maybe 30 mins max, and promptly fall asleep. Waking up several hours later, I have fully depleted the batteries. Bugger. Fortunately the fridge has enough residual coldness to hang on until the sun rises and the batteries start charging. The great thing about these batteries is that it’s perfectly ok to discharge them this way, at least for the first 5000 times.

So up early at 6:30 while its cool, I just persuade the batteries to run the kettle long enough to make coffee, but not long enough for toast. Searching through my spares I find the two spare injectors I bought on eBay 5 years ago and they have banjo bolts with them. Fantastic, and better still I try one on the injector and it tightens up snugly. So I’m expecting to bleed the injectors, and be able to motor on over to where there’s power. No such luck, I thought I bled it all, but no, it wont start. whats worse there’s smoke coming from the starter motor when I crank the engine over. Think I may have pushed it too far. Bugger even more expense and time. These Volvo starter motors are several hundreds of pounds. I decide to push the Marina to move me, however that fails as Ronnie, the boatman, is busy checking out (as in customs/immigration etc) 5 boats today and has no time for me.
I sit by the pool and start a computer project I have decided to take on. Thinking about it, the money this project will bring in means It’s not the end of the world to have a new starter motor shipped out by DHL and for me to pay an engineer to come and sort things out. I needed a new starter anyway. In the meantime I will just have to sit here by the pool coding and enjoying amazing food.

It’s now Friday afternoon 21st March, the workmen seem to have gone home and it looks like a hot night without any chance of AC awaits me, when out of the blue, the kettle lights up. A quick glance at the switch panel and I see we have mains. Hallelujah.
I fire up the AC and it works, funnily enough the indicator ligths for the mains circuits dont light up, and the voltage is only 96v, but I’m ecstatic.
I was on my way to have a drive around and enjoy the AC in the car anyway, so I pop out and visit the little fish market around the corner near the fish dock. There’s a massive fish processing plant there, but in front of it a group of Senoritas sell various wares. I bought half a kilo of large shrimps, and about a kilo of tuna for £8. Mustn’t grumble.

I had a drive around, mostly as I felt guilty not using the car I had hired and took a few pictures. This building below is in the derelict scooby doo fairground end of town. I presume it was a hotel once?

So I’m very saddened to know two of my favourite readers and long time good friends, Neil (G4oar) and his wife Win, are no longer with us. They were wonderful people and they spurred me on to write this blog. They are very much missed by myself and Kathy.

Whats next?
Well they 2025 hurricane season will soon be upon us, so I need to get this boat working and head north into the hurricane zone and away from this heat. I think. Possibly I will settle on Barra De Navidad as a destination/hurricane hole. Maybe Mazatlan, we will have to see. It’s hard work going North against the prevailing winds.
One thing I have decided on is that I’m going to avoid America, Kathy and I had thought of another road trip there this hurricane season, possibly the train trip from New York to San Fran, however with the crazy stuff going on there at the moment I wouldn’t feel safe. Yesterday I finally decided this after reading the story about Jasmine Mooney https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-detained-us-immigration-jasmine-mooney
Hopefully things will improve, and it’s such a shame, I know so many wonderful Americans, and there’s so much I like about the country, but right now I think I will have to give it a miss.
I’m so glad I did my Washington DC and NYC visits on my way home last time. By the way, 20 minutes after I left the whitehouse last year, Joe Biden announced he was not going to run again. Just saying.

Appologies for poor grammar and typos, this was all a bit rushed.

Paul Collister

21st March 2025

It’s a quiet life here in Chiapas, but there’s a constant flow of boats arriving from the south, usually after transiting the Panama Canal, heading north, and boats doing the same but in reverse. This is the last place you can stop at when clearing out of Mexico heading south, and the best place to clear in when heading north.
It makes for an interesting mix of sailors, many more Europeans arrive and also a few east coast USA sailors from places like Florida. One thing to be sure of is there are very few novices here, most have already sailed half way around the world, others often on their second circumnavigation.
Below is a picture of our neighbour and friend Onno’s boat, Lost Pearl. He left a while back and sailed to El Salvador crossing the dangerous bar (Sandbank) to get inland.

Below you can see him a few days later crossing the bar. This must have been a tense moment for Onno as one of his friends lost their boat in the same spot just a few weeks earlier. The surf pushed him down onto the bank and his keel snapped off. At least Onno got through just fine.

I was woken the other morning around 6am to a bang and thought another boat must have hit me. Bleary eyed I climbed into the cockpit to see some frothy water but no other boats. I climbed back into bed none the wiser. Later on shore I was asked if I felt the earthquake, it was local and pretty substantial.

Major mains rewire
The marina wont allow me to work on the outside of the boat, paint/ sanding/ varnish etc so I decided to undertake one of the rewiring jobs I have been meaning to do for 5 years. That is changing the boat to run on 110v AC shore power. When the boat was in Asia, it was setup to run on 240v and all the wiring inside was 240v. I set about changing it back to the original 110v USA standard. As part of this I properly wired in the boats 3 kW AC inverter so I can run the boats internal AC sockets from the inverter. I also changed the engine battery charger so it runs on 110v now. I also have a 1 kW 110-240v transformer powering a square pin uk mains socket, which should meet the highest demands from Kathy’s hair straightening devices.

Another job I have to do every couple of weeks is climb the mast and remove the nest that the locals have built.

The next insides job was to clean the locker in the heads next to the sink. It was rather grim in there due to damp/leaks from before I had the boat, and I had never paid it much attention. So I took out all the little pieces of wood that makeup the shelves and repainted them, a few had to be binned so I made templates for new ones out of carboard boxes that once were full of Oreos.

It’s raining most days now, so I spend a lot of time on the laptop learning new stuff. I have decided I must become proficient at Python programming. It’s a great language. I am a C programmer, and I think pretty competent at it too, but it’s just not a language for these days when wanting to write code that takes advantage of the internet and all thats available out there. I also decided it’s time I got my head around this thing they call AI. So Ive been writing AI programs in Python to help me understand it all, I also pay Microsoft $10/month for Co-Pilot, which is an AI assistant I use to write code. What’s my opinion, I know you didnt ask, but on this I must say that the LLMs like Chat GPT and the enhanced LLM that is Co-Pilot, I’m blown away. I can write code about 5 times faster now, when I get stuck, AI jumps in and educates me, I do feel like I’m cheating a bit. I wrote, what I felt, was some pretty smart code, where I wrote a stock exchange API simulator for testing and it worked perfectly after very little effort, but my smugness was short lived as I realised, I was only a co-author and AI did a lot of the trickier stuff. I also realised that I would have to accept that as the new norm. Regardless it’s amazing, I type a line of code, and the AI writes a block of code below, with comments, anticipating exactly what I was thinking I need to do next.

Also I’m loving learning how LLMs (Large Language Models) work, I had to do a lot of maths study to work out what was Stochastic gradient descent, and probably the hardest bit was understanding how words can live in a 100,000+ dimensional space. It’s something I believe has great promise.
As part of this learning exercise, I have set myself a target of writing a program that will use AI to buy and sell bitcoins and Eth automatically. I know everyone is already doing this, and there’s plenty or programs out there, but mine will be better, and I will start off with £100 and I expect to be up there with Musk and Bezos pretty soon. I better start thinking up some conspiracy theories and also what shape I want my rocket to be.

Above is a picture of the mizen mast of SV Sitka, I think the boat might be names after the mast wood, which is also sitka. It’s a common wood in Canada, the boat’s home, and also very common for boat spars. As you might spot, it’s also popular with woodpeckers

This is the hole one woodpecker made in the mast. So along with some others here I have been helping to prevent further damage. I put a ladder up the mast and closed off the hole. The owners return in a couple of months and will have to do some serious repairs, as the mast wont be strong enough now

I take a bus into town most weeks for fresh fruit and veg. One day I wandered into the old central area. I had been advised not to visit due to the large number of migrants, many Haitian, passing through. However it turned out to be just fine. I met some lovely people in small tiendas. I did visit one mercado that was past its sell by date, I followed a staircase down into the basement, out of curiosity, and was confronted with scenes worthy of a horror movie, the place looked like a bomb site, with random stalls setup selling meat, but nothing I could recognise, blood was dripping everywhere along the pathways, the smell was awful. The vendors looked very miserable. I was keen to escape back to street level

I visited the main museum here, it was a little sad because they had very few exhibits, mainly a cinema projector and some glockenspiels. Tapachula is close to some very ancient historical sites.

Each day I do a small 1km walk around the marina, below is the sun setting over the channel that leads into the marina.

My FM Auto car radio packed in. It’s lasted 2 years, the one before lasted about 3 years. both showed rust signs on the case. They’re not designed for boats, but at about £7 each they are good value. I use them mostly to feed bluetooth from my mac through to the cabin speakers. I hate the waste, but doubt I would find a more reliable option, even if I spent £300 on a ‘Marine’ equivalent. In the end I bought two new ones for 300 pesos (£14) on Mercado Libra, delivered free in 2 days.

Final jobs before I leave involve measuring the thru hull fittings that I need to buy back home. The one below is the gas locker drain. The handle snapped of last time I tried to exercise it. It’s going to be a nightmare to change as it’s completely inaccessible.

I also tried to stop the little drip on the holding tank discharge seacock by rotating the handle several times between open and closed. This had the effect of making it leak even more. So much so that I couldn’t leave it like that streaming sea water into the bilge. I was further worried as there was some doubt about if the yard was going to be able to haul me out, they had problems with not having any boat stands left. I couldn’t leave the boat like this in case the bilge pump failed, something that’s very feasible.
So I had to try to repair the seacock in place. It’s a cone type, so I needed to remove the cone and clean it. I really needed to grind the surfaces in situ with grinding compound, but this wouldn’t be possible. I pulled the cone out and the pressure of the sea water, some 1 meter below the hole caused quite a fountain, It’s a 1″ hole and the water was coming out like a fountain. Using lots of rags I was able to control it until I got a bung in. I cleaned up the cone, reinstalled and was rather disappointed to find the situation was even worse. A second go, with the addition of some gas pvc tape, then some butyl putty got it under control. The bilge pump goes off every 3-4 hours for about 30 seconds. However I think the rainwater may be finding a way to the bilge, something I’m trying to hunt down every time the rain kicks in

Sat 15th June 2024
The current plan now is to stay up late on the 4th July celebrating the many ‘Portillo moments’ (see Hubris) in the UK General Election. then haul out the next day. On the 6th I will take a coach to the Capital of this state and spend a couple of weeks being a tourist, visiting wild countryside and historic ruins.
From there I will find a way to Mexico City for a couple of days before flying to Washington DC. I have an AirBnB in Washington for 8 days, I’m really looking forward to seeing the monuments and visiting the museums. From the Capitol, I will get a train to Manhattan, where I have a few days before a flight from JFK takes me back to the UK arriving at the end of July.

Paul Collister.
15/06/2024

Anyway, heres a nice picture instead.

The sea defence wall that’s meant to keep the sea away from the road 🙂

We have completed our travels now for this season. 600 Miles over the last three weeks have brought us to Marina Chiapas in the state of Chiapas, right at the bottom of the Pacific Mexican coast, about 50km from the Guatemalan border. We are safely tied up in a very protected marina and Kathy will fly home in a few days. I am here for a few more months, and will use the time to do some boat upkeep, and also to travel inland and explore parts of Mexico I can’t get to by boat. In June I will haul the boat out and leave her as I fly home for the hurricane season. Returning either November or next year after Christmas to go North or maybe South.
We covered a lot of places, had some adventures and met a lot of new people, so there’s a lot to cover in this blog.

I have been playing computers during the latest trip and now have a new webpage where you can see our current location and our track over the last fourteen days. It’s at http://location.sistermidnight.co.uk/
I also have a dedicated page just showing the trip covered by this map shown below. It uses google maps and you can zoom in for more detail. It’s still a work in progress and I have restricted the resolution to allow for faster downloads, it’s still slow, but if you time out, just try again. We may be overloading the server this end by watching Masterchef through our server proxy.
The link is here

Leaving Zihuatanejo, 10th March 2024.
It was a little sad to be leaving Zi, it’s such a chilled place, it has everything you could need as a cruiser. I had parts delivered to us and repairs and upgrades were done. We enjoyed the sailfest and guitar festival and had some fine dining before we finally hauled anchor and continued south. Nemo the diver had cleaned the hull and fitted the new zinc on the propeller the day before we left so the boat was moving nicely. We had made friends with many boats in the bay at Zi while we were there. Onno our Canadian/Dutch friend from way back in Guaymas was running a very entertaining morning net, a chat for the local cruisers each morning on the VHF radio on channel 22a. Many of the boats there were going south to transit the Panama Canal and we joined their WhatsApp group, ‘South to El Salvador and Beyond’. They were mostly also members of a rally called ‘The Panama Posse’. We attended a meetup in one of the bars ashore to hear about various ports southbound, of course we would not be going that far south, but it was good to learn about the ports in southern Mexico we would be visiting.
At the talk Pam, who was a veteran of traveling this coast gave a good talk and we watched a video about getting into the lagoon in El Salvador; this has a bad bar (sandbank across the entrance) and you need a pilot to get you through, there’s always a good chance of a wave catching you out. It looked scary but exciting and I was seriously considering hauling out there. However just before we left Zi, we heard that Mark, one of the British cruisers, who had a Moody sailboat, a strong British built model, that I visited just a few days earlier, had been hit by a wave and grounded on the bar. His keel had snapped off and he had to abandon ship in the surf and be rescued by the pilot boat. By the time he was able to return to his beached boat, it had been stripped of everything. A very sad ending to his adventure and to his boat ‘Rum Truffle’.

So we headed south and did our first of many overnighters to Papanoa. This place was renamed to Vicente Guerrero (national hero, and founder of independent Mexico) and turned out to be a lovely spot where we were able to go ashore and wander, eventually having drinks at one of the many beach bars. It’s a popular holiday destination for Mexicans.

Puerto Vicente Guerrero (Papanoa)

Isla Roqueta
From there we headed on another overnight passage to Acapulco, but we timed it to arrive the evening before and drop anchor at Isla Roqueta, just at the mouth of Acapulco bay.

In October last year, I was preparing to launch the boat a thousand miles north west of here, when hurricane Otis struck Acapulco. We were all hoping the hurricane season would be winding down, but a hurricane had just devastated La Paz and this one heading to Acapulco didn’t look good. However it was only a ‘light’ one, I think a cat 2 at worst and it wasn’t getting much press, as it was expected to weaken as it hit the coast. However the opposite happened! In the 24 hours before landfall it ramped up to a massive Cat 5. Wikipedia states:
“Otis was the first Pacific hurricane to make landfall at Category 5 intensity and surpassed Hurricane Patricia as the strongest landfalling Pacific hurricane on record.“
The destruction and loss of life was massive.

Acapulco

There was once many marinas and moorings for a thriving tourist industry. All of that had been swept away. At the western end of the bay, boats of all types, from pangas to mega yachts were stacked up on top of each other.

There was a lot of debris in the bay and rather than risk anchoring we took a mooring from Vicente, a man who had a mooring field there. He lived on his boat on one of the morings and rented out the rest. However on that fateful night, his wife went ashore as the storm started and he stayed on board with his son. I understand the waves reached 15 meters and his boat was ripped from its mooring. His son went overboard and died while Vicente was washed out to sea, where he drifted for a day clinging to a fender before the navy found him. Sadly his wife was killed ashore during the storm. It was remarkable to see him trying so hard to help us, and make our stay pleasant. The cruising community had been pushing for everyone to give him business and help him get back on his feet. I’m sure there are many other tragic stories arising from that storm.

We went ashore and checked in with the port captain, grabbed some groceries and went back to rest on the boat. Amazingly on our return, I noticed I had once again lost our passports. Just like I did in Los Cabos 5 years ago. Passports that had visas and residency permits in. Panic was about to set in. Since the first loss I have devised a system that can’t go wrong, the passports leave a certain plastic bag to pass to the authorities and when returned go straight into the plastic bag. The bag was in front of me ‘sin pasaportes’. Logically this could not happen. I checked the logic of my scheme and it was perfect, the passports had to be in the empty bag. I checked several times but the bag remained empty. Was I dreaming, losing my mind! Kathy pointed out that I must have left them at the port captains office, which I prayed to be the case. I jumped in the dinghy, sped ashore, grabbed a very pricey cab and headed to the now closed captains office.
After a restless night, and a few more checks of the empty plastic bag, morning came and I zoomed into town again and into the captains office where the kind ladies all looked at me, a somewhat distraught and frazzled Brit, then at each other with a giggle as one of them held up two passports. I wondered if they had run a sweepstake on how many minutes after opening time before I showed up.
The thought of going through the process of trips to Mexico City for emergency passports, new passport application when home, then visa appointments for USA and Mexico, overnight stays in London and queues for the USA embassy, this cock up could have meant the end of my cruising life. I couldn’t face all that hassle again. I’m now working on improvements to my plastic bag protocol.

After I had recovered the passports I headed off downtown to the market area. This was very vibrant, obviously it had suffered a lot of damage too, but sometimes it’s hard to know what is hurricane damage and what is just the usual busted up old Mexican buildings.

The following day we decided to take in some culture and a beach walk.
We headed to the Naval museum. This place is run by Marcelo and I phoned him to check they would be open, however when we arrived it was closed, so instead we visited the mask museum next door, that was very interesting and has provided some nice pictures from which I might make some emojis.

On leaving the museum, the managers told us that the naval museum was now open so we had a good look inside. Marcelo runs the place and also builds the models on display.

These ships all played a big part in Spain and Mexico’s history. It was from this area that the Spanish transported goods and troops between Mexico and the Philipines. British pirates (the forerunner of the Royal Navy) also were active here.

From the museum we walked the short distance to the castle built by the Spanish after pirate attacks in 1615.

From the castle we walked down the hill and had a small lunch in a very run down, but atmospheric restaurant overhanging the beach. The very attentive waiter was delighted to have English guests from Liverpool, and soon enough the DJ joined in by playing music for us.
From the restaurant we then walked a few miles along the beach were everyone seemed to have put the hurricane behind them and were enjoying the sea and sun.

Soon enough it was time to leave, we dropped our mooring lines and headed south to Punta Galera as a possible overnight stop, but when we arrived the swell and breaking waves made it feel quite unsafe. It probably would have been fine, but not very relaxing, we would have had to anchor very close to the breaking waves on the beach. So we headed off into the night to arrive the next day at Puerto Angel.

Puerto Angel
Here the swell was also big and we made it ashore once in the dinghy and picked up some fresh bread and some fruit. the town was lovely, a very relaxing atmosphere. There were a lot of fishing pangas on the beach and the way they get there was fun to watch, I have a video clip below.

Before we left, I made a Kayak trip ashore for supplies. I hadn’t done this before. I’m ok on a kayak paddling around calm rivers and mangrove bays, but getting through the surf line with a full load of provisions is another thing. I was fortunate and got the timing right. So we hauled anchor and continued towards Chiapas.

Huatulco, 24th March 2024
Huatulco has a nature park that includes many beautiful bays and extends over 30,000 acres. We moved along through several of the bays finally settling in Bahia Maguey. This is a very popular holiday destination and the local towns of Santa Cruz and Crucecita are very pretty.

There were several other boats here and like us they were waiting for the right time to make the next leg southward. Here we are on the western side of the Gulf of Tehuantepec, and need to cross it to the last port in Mexico at Puerto Madero. The problem is that this crossing is fraught with danger. The land is narrow here between the Pacific and the Atlantic. There are also mountain ridges on either side of this gap, creating the perfect conditions for wind to build up and blow through the gap. A phenomena called the Venturi effect can cause extremely strong winds to flow whenever there is a strong weather condition on one side.

Below you can see the weather map for the time we were in Huatulco. The yellow line shows the shortest route, but you have to make sure you time that correctly. We opted for the slightly longer route that hugged the coast as we went around the bay. Partly for safety reasons but mainly for two other reasons; one, it wouldn’t be so boring and two, we could visit Costa Azul.

Before Costa Azul we anchored at Puerto Arista. This is what’s called an Open Roadstead anchorage, meaning that it’s open to bad weather from anywhere, and although the anchor should set well, in anything other than calm weather, it’s dangerous or at least uncomfortable. We anchored on our second night to get some sleep and to wonder at the huge waves crashing onto the beach in front of us. The following morning we upped anchor and headed for Marina Chiapas, our final stop and another overnighter.

Costa Azul
En route we did a Sail-by (Drive-by for boats?) to Costa Azul. The reason being that Kathy and I had both read a very amazing book called 438 Days, about an El Salvadorian fisherman called Alvarenga.

“438 Days is the miraculous account of the man who survived alone and adrift at sea longer than anyone in recorded history—as told to journalist Jonathan Franklin in dozens of exclusive interviews.”

Costa Azul was the small fishing town where this adventure started, and along the lines of ‘standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona‘ we felt obliged to visit. Alvarenga himself had been caught out by an unexpectedly strong wind blowing through the Tuhuantepec gulf, known as a norteño. As we approached the shore, some fishermen in Pangas sped past and gave us a friendly wave. Having understood a lot about the fishing community from the book, we felt there was a good chance these guys may have been around at the time and even joined the search for the missing fishermen. There where two in the boat at the start of the journey.

After another short overnight passage we arrived at our final destination at around ten in the morning. We made a slow passage up the winding estuary into the marina where our fenders and mooring line came out for the first time in many months. Being tied up, no anchor alarms running, no swell, and no need to worry about water or power we were finally able to really chill out.

Marina Chiapas

Officials came on board and did the immigration customs and port documents. They were quite serious about it all here, more so than any other port we have visited. I would never dream of taking a photo of these guys, but our neighbour did and posted it on whatsapp, so I have included it here. There was also a big dog that had a good sniff around the boat. He found nothing which confirmed my fears that the weed you get these days just doesn’t compare with that from the 80s. 😉

The next day we headed into town, taking the local minibus Colectivo and filled our bags with all Chedraui had to offer. The pic below shows workers running a new overhead power cable outside the shopping mall.

Back at the pool we can relax, the heat is quite something here, mid 30’s and climbing, very tropical, very humid. Ok if a breeze is blowing, but not so nice when trying to get to sleep.

Below I have included a recent photo from facebook to remind myself about the entrance to the El Cid Marina where we have had a few close calls. The tourist boat below must have mistimed the waves, or lost power at the wrong time! Whatever happened the waves at the channel entrance finished off the boat.

So this seasons sailing has ended and Kathy flies home in 2 days’ time. It’s been fun since launch, and the boat has performed very well. I have until November to decide where the next boating adventure will take us.

Paul Collister 6th April 2024.

We arrived into Las Hadas in the first week of Feb, we covered this place a lot last year when we anchored here, it’s an interesting spot, but we were here just to provision. There’s some great big fancy supermarkets a short walk away, so Kathy is able to stock up on vegan food. The main highlight of our visit was making friends with a couple of Americans, Grey and Sarah, it’s often 50/50 when you meet new people from the States, but we were pleased to find these guys were very firmly in the right 50%. We had dinner with them later in Zihuatanejo before they had to run down to Chiapas and haulout and return to work. We swapped many notes and I hope to meet up with them later this year when we return to Sister Midnight in Chiapas.

Isla Grande 8th Feb 2024
Sarah and Grey left very early from Las Hadas and we followed an hour later to make a long day sail to Isla Grande, a lovely island just off Ixtapa.
The Pacific has some big swells running at the moment and we arrived just after sunset and had to anchor in the dark as the twilight had just disappeared. We tried to tuck in behind a rocky outcrop to avoid the swell. As we were manoeuvring a catamaran appeared in front of us, it was anchored but with no lights on at all. I don’t know why people think that’s acceptable. It was made worse by many bright lights behind it on the shore.
We didn’t make great speed on the way, and the light wind didn’t help, but mostly the growth on the hull was a problem, and I confirmed this with a swim under the boat the next day.

The following morning, after a somewhat rolly night, we upped anchor and scooted the 7 or so miles south to the slightly better protected bay at Zihuatanejo. Here we anchored close to the shore in relative calm.

We love Zi, and made use of the supermarkets, the great mercado and the local provisions. Hilda & Ismael provide a service to boaters and will bring you water/fuel/propane, take your laundry etc etc. A great service and delivered to you at anchor.

We arrived just in time for the Zihuatanejo Sailfest Festival. Lots of boats take part, 20-30 this year, and various events like sunset sails with paying guests, a sponsored race and regatta, all to raise money for the charity ‘Por Los Niños’ (for the children). This is a great charity that raises many thousands of pounds each year to pay for schools, school refurbs, tutoring etc. It has been going on for decades and can claim to have had a major impact on many kids’ life outcomes over the years.

I had the bottom cleaned and the diver pointed out the anode had completely eroded away, leaving the expensive MaxProp vulnerable to attack. I provided him with a new anode to fit, I always carry spares, but it would seem I had bought one that was too small. So we decided to order some online and wait here for 10 days for it to arrive. It did look fine to me just a week before, so I’m mighty confused. In the meantime, I’m hanging a grounded zinc over the stern close to the prop hoping this will help. I don’t expect it will, but psychologically it feels better. The idea of a £4000 prop melting away isn’t great.

The anodes arrived along with a new water foot pump and a repair kit for my engine water pump shaft.

I made short work of fitting the foot pump and the sleeve for the shaft on the water pump is stowed for another day.

However it seems I have repeated my mistake with the zinc anodes for the prop. Three shiny new ones arrived and they are the wrong size, 63mm and it seems they should be 70mm. I fell for the advert that said they were universal and fitted all maxprop classic models. They don’t. Further investigation revealed a pull down size list on Amazon.mx that showed the option for the 70mm version, which if I had checked my notes, I would have realised, that’s what I have.
So back to Amazon, and as I write this my anodes have left California, been processed in Ontario Canada, sent onto and processed in LA and today arrived and left the facility in Cincinatti Ohio. I think tomorrow they should arrive in Mexico and on Tuesday arrive in Zi, where they will sit up the road from here for 5 days before they are delivered. I have a diver booked for three days after they arrive to clean the hull and fit the zinc. Fingers crossed.

We decided to treat ourselves to a very posh meal at a very posh restaurant, as they had an excellent vegan menu. By Mexican standards it was a little pricey, but worth every penny.

In the meantime we have decided to sit tight and enjoy the guitar festival that started yesterday (2nd March). This is quite a big deal here, some very famous acts appear at various venues around town, the artists travel from around the world to take part and perform for free. The proceeds of the festival go to providing music education in the local schools. We bought tickets for the opening concert where about ten of the acts performed a couple of ‘taster’ songs each. It was great except for a group of drunken gringo women who insisted on yapping loudly during the performances.

Below is the scene from a local coffee shop where Steph and Stu from the English boat Matador performed. There are many similar performances all over town over the next few weeks. Zi is a very musical place.

Hopefully in the next 7 days the zincs will arrive because I have the diver booked for 8am to fit them on Monday 15th, once fitted we haul anchor and head south. One stop before we arrive in hurricane devastated Acapulco. This will be interesting, late last year hurricane Otis, a Cat 5 Hurricane (peak winds of 165 mph), the most destructive and expensive in Mexican history hit. There were many marinas here before, they have all gone, many boats too, I understand the coast is littered with luxury yachts and many smaller boats. The harbour is full of sunken debris. The resort was a major tourist destination, and many high rise hotels were stripped bare of fixtures and fittings by the strength of the storm, rooms were suctioned of all their contents and all that remains are the shells of building. Much worse was the human cost with 52 lives lost and many missing and many injured.
From Acapulco we continue south and should arrive at Marina Chiapas near the Guatemalan border at the start of April, from where Kathy will fly home and I will work on the boat. It’s a marina so I can do some of the jobs that are difficult at anchor, like untwisting the anchor chain. I will haul out there then fly home for the summer.

Paul Collister 3rd March 2024

Blog 1st Feb

8th January 2024

So another year starts and the toilet is leaking again. It’s only salt water but needs attention. In fact I think I may have caused the problem by not knowing how to use a screwdriver properly; you would think at the age of 65 I would have got it by now, but no, there’s a special thing to do with self tapping screws in plastic that you have to turn the screw backwards first. Well you learn something every day.

Anyway all the best to you all for the new year and I hope you have a good one. It’s certainly going to be an interesting year in the USA and the UK and probably in many other parts of the world too.

We arrived in Barra without any issues and I set about fixing the two main problems. Firstly the DC-DC charger that wasn’t working, on closer inspection I found a 60A fuse that looked in a bad way, it had a melted case and I assumed it had blown. This was the feed to the DC-DC. I presumed it blew because I had accidentally shorted the feed when I was swapping the DC inputs and outputs around, but on removing the fuse I found one of the nuts that clamp it down was loose, very loose. Either it had worked its way loose with vibration (unlikely) or I had never tightened it up properly (much more likely). With it being loose it might have generated a lot of heat. On checking the fuse, it hadn’t blown. I replaced it anyway, tightened it up, checked it was tight, asked my nurse to check again and then tested it out. It worked great, and charging was restored. 

Next I looked at the water pump; it had stopped dripping. After running the engine for an hour, the area under the pump was damp, so I’m guessing the salt has built up around the hole and is reducing the water flow. As it’s belt driven, I’m going to leave it a bit before I attempt to change the seal. I’d like to buy some new seals anyway, so will probably do this job after we visit the next big city of Manzanillo.

Barra is lovely, it has pretty much everything we need, fresh bread, 2 artisan bakers if needed, and a French baker who motors around the lagoon announcing on VHF Ch22 that he has baguette, croissants, cakes, wine, coffee etc for sale. There’s lots of fresh fruit and veg, a lovely street market every Thursday, where I bought a new hammock to replace the one the moths took a liking to. There’s also a water taxi that will take you from your boat to the town jetty for $6 return.

Every week we are also entertained as a new boat gets caught out by the sand bank on the way into the lagoon. As someone who has run aground more times than I care to admit, I won’t  scoff

Last week we walked along the beach to the next, slightly bigger town of El Malaque. Lunch on the beach and a bit of shopping before we took the short taxi ride back. 

I have also tackled some of the other boat jobs. I’m currently fixing things at twice the rate they are breaking, which gives me some hope. The outboard engine has a problem with fuel leaking from the fuel cock (tap). Isaac brought me out a new tap and I finally got around to fitting it. Sadly it didn’t solve the problem. I bought a new tap in La Paz a few years ago, but ordered the wrong part. So far I have spent £100 on taps trying to fix this, and finally I realised it’s the rubber hose that connects the tap to the carburettor that is leaking. I can’t see how, but it appears to have become porous at the end. The hose has a specially preformed shape and I did try to order one, but they aren’t available, hence a google for ‘how to make pre-formed hoses’ had me thinking I could make my own. Unfortunately I don’t have any spare 6mm rubber hose on board but had a go with some PVC hose, I was really impressed at what can be achieved with some basic tools and the boat’s cooker. I managed to make a replacement part which not only bends in two dimensions, but three!. Unfortunately, that type of PVC isn’t really suitable for petrol, I’m sure it would work in a pinch, but I’m on the lookout now for some new rubber hose which I can practice on.

Now the boat seems to be in a reasonably good state, I’m turning to playing with the computers again. I brought out a new Raspberry PI 4 with me in October and I finally got it wired into the system. It is running a SignalK server and I’m going to try and get it talking to the BMSs on my new Lithium batteries and the Victron solar MPPT and Battery shunt using Bluetooth. I have never really done anything with bluetooth, but there’s bluetooth libraries for python that work on the PI operating system, so that should be fun.

Friday 12th Jan.
We motored/sailed from Barra for 3 hours north to the bay at Tenacatita, mostly so I could swim under the boat and clean the prop and give some of the hull a clean. It’s also a lovely spot to chill. The DC-DC charger performed well on the way and the hull seemed not to slow us down much. On diving I found the prop to be very furry and quite a few barnacles taking hold on the hull, I’m a little disappointed with the antifoul and wonder if I will get two years out of this application. I caught a black skipjack tuna on the way here and I almost threw it back in as I don’t really like the taste, it’s a very dark, gamey meat type. I’m going to give it a try tonight as I hate wasting fish.

Monday morning and …
It’s Monday morning and time to leave the delights of Tenacatita and head back to Barra de Navidad for supplies, except ,when I start the engine there’s a terrible squealing noise. It sounds very much like a fan belt slipping so I immediately think alternator belt, I guess this goes back to my early days of car ownership, when this would be a common issue. I yank the engine box off and stare at the alternator belt running around, I’m wondering if there is anything I can do with the thing running to diagnose the problem, I’m thinking pushing the belt with a stick or some similar mad idea when I notice smoke coming from the back of the engine!.  Crikey, this could be a fire, I leap into the cockpit and stop the engine. Jumping back down I’m refreshing my memory as to where the fire extinguishers are but realise there’s no need as the smoke is coming from the belt driving the raw water pump. Feeling around I see the pulley wheel (that can’t be the right name) on the end of the camshaft that drives the water pump belt is really hot, I soon deduce that the water pump is not turning freely and that the belt is slipping at the camshaft end, hence the smoke and heat.

So basically my previous idea that I could ignore the dripping from the water pump was a very bad idea. The sea water had got into the pump’s bearings and they were seizing up. Now I do have spare bearings and seals, I also have a spare pump, but it leaks as well, so I had options. Anyway the rest of the day was spent rebuilding the water pump.

Firstly I had to disassemble the pump and that meant removing the shaft that sits between two bearings that are pressed in. The manual is clear, it is removed from the pulley end. I assumed that meant it travels away from the pulley end, wrong, it wouldn’t go the way I wanted and the puller tool I used managed to wreck the threaded end of the shaft making it unusable. I explained to Kathy that I’m just not a mechanical engineer, if I was any good at this I would have known that that amount of force on the puller was crazy, anyway I managed to get it apart eventually, cleaned it up, replaced the seal and bearings and put it all back together. I had to cut off half the threaded end as I had misshaped it so badly it was a millimetre wider than it should be and no nuts would go on. Once back on the engine I was feeling confident it should work but was very unhappy to find it was squirting out water worse than before. However it was pumping water around the engine and not making any fuss about it. 

By now it was too late to leave for Barra as I didn’t want to arrive in the dark there, it’s not the easiest of anchorages with depths generally around 2-3 metres.

Tuesday 16th 

We depart Tenacatita again, this time I have wrapped the area under the pump, including the starter motor, and the electrics box in tin foil and I have Primark’s (Uk version of Target for very cheap clothing) finest t-shirts stuffed into every crevice under the water pump to catch the leak. Every 15 minutes I swap the t-shirts for dry ones and all works out well. We anchor in Barra at lunchtime and find ourselves inbetween two other Baba 40’s , Greg and Kristen on Sonrisa, and Geoff on the famous Sailors Run. Geoff wrote a great book about his solo non stop sail around the world a few years ago in his Baba 40.
By now I have worked out that something is amiss with this water pump malarkey.  The spare pump was rebuilt but leaked when I first tried it back in La Paz a couple of years ago. The engineer who rebuilt it said he wasn’t surprised as the shaft had a lot of wear. However I was confused then as it was quite a bad leak. Now this current pump was dribbling water out and slowly rusting the bearings, but with the new seal water was gushing out (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect).  The first pump the engineer fixed had worked well, I had provided the seals and bearings, but the second pump he repaired, he had provided the seals and also bought extra seals for me, one of which I had just used. So off to the internet to research, and it’s very difficult to get details for the Volvo pump’s components. Volvo give them special numbers and special prices, the pumps are made by Jabsco, who very kindly also don’t give any details of the parts used for their pumps they supply to Volvo. However I eventually find a site that supplies seals for Volvo pumps which gives dimensions of 16mm for the inside seal that goes on the shaft. The seals the engineer gave me as spares, and presumably the one he used on the leaking pump are in fact 17mm. I’m excited and have concluded that the amount of water pissing out the seal is exactly 1mm’s worth.  However the bearings are for a 17mm shaft, so perhaps that’s what led to the mistake on the seal purchases. So I have ordered a stack of 16mm seals and 17mm bearings and I will be chilling here in Barra until they arrive, hopefully next week. A pain in the arse that all these troubles may have been caused by a very simple mistake of 1mm a couple of years back, but an interesting exercise for me in mechanics. How these lip seals work is another mystery to me, it’s just a sliver of rubber on a rotating steel shaft. Somehow the rubber and the sea water must produce a lubricating surface, clever stuff me thinks.

I decided to do something I’m more capable of, mainly wiring up some sockets. Kathy remarked on how our devices, phones, kindles, iPads etc, are very much like tamagotchis, we seem to spend all our time running around feeding them electricity. and changing their charging cables for fear they might die.

I use my iPhone as the anchor position alarm, so hate it whenever it dies as I have to re-enter the anchor pos. So I added a few more power outlets, some USB, and a higher power charger (SAE) to drive the Starlink system.

Part of this task required me to add some fuses. I took advantage of the time we now have to get Kathy with her eagle eyes to help me sort the fuses out, I find it very hard to read the values stamped on the end with my failing eyesight. between us, and with the help of a magnifying glass we got them all sorted.

This really is the high life eh! at least it’s sunny here.

I ordered seals and bearings from a store in Manzanillo, but also ordered them online from a local ebay type supplier which quickly arrived at the marina.

I figured the seals and bearings at the ‘seals and bearings shop’ in Manzanillo might be a better quality, and as I have learned, you can never have too many seals and bearings, so I took a coach ride to town, to pick them up. It’s a one hour trip there and took me through some wonderful countryside including many banana farms, and a coir warehouse which had hundreds of thousands of coconut husks stacked up in fields ready for processing.

Back on the boat the foot operated salt water galley sink pump had started leaking again. I fixed this a few times, but the plastic casing has cracked as the screws rusted and expanded. If you pump slowly, it doesn’t leak much and only leaks when you pump (or so I thought).

The trip to Manzanillo went well except for the fact they wouldn’t let me on the bus home without providing photo-id, which I didn’t have. I explained that was a bit mean as they had been happy for me to take the same coach to the city. Was this a secret plot to repopulate the city I wondered. On production of the morning’s bus ticket they had sold me, they relented and said ‘just this once’ I would be allowed to travel without ID. I pondered for a while on this, and the best explanation I had was from Arturo, who thinks it is related to the large numbers of migrants arriving on the southern Guatemalan border heading north to the USA. I had hoped they were looking for gangsters, cartel members, or maybe international terrorists, but was disappointed they wanted to know I wasn’t an illegal migrant from Columbia or some other struggling country.

So with 14 bearings, and 14 seals I set about fixing the pump.

Putting the new 16mm seal in the current leaking pump solved that problem and the engine was up and running again. The shaft itself did not seem too badly damaged in the seal area.
Looking at the other repaired pump that leaked, I found that the engineer had in fact fitted the right seal and was correct that the leak was caused by excessive wear on the shaft. I’m hoping to find a workshop that can fix this, so I will have a spare.

So with the engine back and the rest of the boat in decent shape we started to make plans to head south.

A sunset drink at one of the bars we walk past each time we go shopping was called for first.

A couple of days before we left we were seeing quite strong afternoon winds, so much so that a green boat not far ahead of us started to drag. I spotted him as he came alongside the boat right next to us.

I hailed the boats on the VHF but it turned out they were both away. The green boat only had a very small amount of chain out and it eventually caught on the white boats anchor chain. This caused it to come to a stop perfectly alongside the white boat. After a bit of VHF chatter with other nearby boats we decided to head over and see what could be done. In the end we tied the boats together with a stack of fenders in between and laid a second anchor to try and pull them apart a little. Later I found the green boat owners number on the internet and called him. He was on a bus an hour away, but was quick to sort things out when he arrived. He had a few gouges on his cap rail but the white boat suffered no obvious damage. I watched the green boat try to re-anchor several times, but he couldn’t get his anchor to hold at all, not surprising given the small amount of scope he was laying out.

We took a bus ride to Cihautlán to provision for our next leg, and also just to see an inland town. A lovely spot with some great little shops.

So with some extra food and drink on board we checked out at the port capitanias office and set sail for the little cove at Carrizal. Here I planned to do a bit of snorkelling and clean the hull as the water is lovely there. We motored out of the Lagoon with no wind at all, but once we cleared the harbour wall we picked up some wind and managed to sail the whole way. About half way, I had reason to look under the cabin sole (floorboards) and noticed they were full of water. I checked under the engine, and the water was very high. I mentioned to Kathy that we were sinking and she asked if I was joking, when I said no, she seemed a bit more concerned. She asked how bad out of ten, and I said I didn’t know yet, but it could be bad, but not to worry, we can see the shoreline.
Normally the automatic bilge pump turns on when water enters the bilge, this was now 3 foot under water and I couldn’t tell if was running and not keeping up, blocked or just not working. I had tested it before Christmas, but perhaps I should test it more often.
Next I powered up the emergency bilge pump and we waited to see if the level dropped. I had run around the boat pulling all the floor covers and couldn’t see any water rushing in, so was feeling a bit more relaxed. Within 30 seconds we could see the level had dropped and pretty soon the bilge was empty of water and I couldn’t see any more coming in.
So after a bit of head scratching I came to the conclusion the problem had been the sea water foot pump that had been leaking. The previous day I noticed some water underneath it, and given that neither Kathy or myself had used it in a day, I decided to turn of the seacock that supplies it. Up until that moment, I presume it had been filling the bilge up.

We arrived safely in Carrizal cove after a lovely gentle 5 hour sail. It’s quite rolly here, so I dinghied out and laid a stern anchor. This pulls the boat so we are pointing into the waves. this makes the boat rock up and down lengthways, and is much much better than the nausea inducing sideways rolling the swell can create.

Thursday 1st Feb 2024: Water Water Everywhere

We wake to a lovely morning in Carrizal, however the fresh coffee tastes a little salty. Since the salt water tap is out of action, I rigged up a large bucket of sea water on the stern for cleaning dishes, and Kathy suspects thats the problem. So I dispose of a cafetière of expensive coffee and start again, same problem. I pour a cup of fresh water from the tap and drink some, yuk, it’s salty.
So the fresh water tank has sea water in it. This is annoying, as I paid good money for maybe 8, 20ltr garrafons and carried them from the shore to fill up that tank, and the whole lot are wasted now. Further checking and the starboard tank is good. For comparison, the starboard tank has a reading of 20 parts per million of salts, and the port tank 3500 parts per million. Sea water has over 35000 ppm so the tank has about 10% salt water in it (or so google says). We will continue to use it for washing dishes and cleaning, until it’s empty, then flush it out and refill. In the meantime I have to work out how the water got in to the tank. I presume it must be related to the bilges filling up. There is a connection from the salt water wash-down pump to the fresh water system, but it’s protected by a one way valve, perhaps this opened. This mornings work means that that connection no longer exists, the only person ever to have used it was Tim, when he visited me in Malaysia and used the deck wash pump to shower with after swimming and insisted on using fresh water. Since then it has only been used for cleaning the anchor and deck with sea water, so no great loss there.

I had a lovely swim, great coral and many species of tropical fish here.

Tomorrow we will probably leave and do the 90 minute trip to the Hadas Resort where we can anchor, and visit all the big box stores of Manzanillo.

Paul Collister
1st February 2024