Sunday 3rd May 2020
Another pretty lazy day, It took a while to get the blog up and editing the underwater video footage was a pain, I deleted the best footage by mistake. I have heard that some of the popular sailing video bloggers make a fortune, all I can assume is that they’re a lot better at video editing than me. Still they must spend a lot of time doing the drone footage, finding the right music, and just simple stuff like setting up cameras, time lapse filming, charging devices etc. Then after the editing, there’s the uploading to youtube, dealing with all the subscribers, patreon etc. How do they find time to sail, or in my case polish the stainless steel and varnish the brightwork. Well hats off to them, but it’s not for me. You will just have to put up with old fashioned blogs with the odd bit of rubbish video.
I hear that the server I host this blog on struggles to feed video without a lot of buffering, I can believe that, I think I share one server with about 20 other users. We all have virtual servers, on one physical computer, and often the servers are hacked and used to send out stacks of junk mail. When this happens all of us on that server experience problems with our emails getting rejected by various networks with spam blocking filters.
I replaced the video of the overgrown hull which I was hosting on the server with a youtube embedded version. This seems faster, but I was bombarded with copyright infringement notices for the Jaws imitation music. YouTube said I didn’t need to do anything, but I should choose from two options, delete the music, or replace it. I was reminded of the good old early computer days, when your floppy disk was broken, and you tried to save a file you got the options of Abort/Retry/Ignore. As I remember they all did nothing other than make your disk drive grunt for a few seconds, then the message was redisplayed.
I found a way out of the dilemma and the video seems to play better now, perhaps it will be taken down, I don’t know. I did choose that music version because it was from a copyright free site. Oh well, I’m not going to waste time worrying when there’s still dull stainless steel shouting out my name.
Monday.
In to town early, shopping, and back on the boat by 11AM. I did plan to go to Immigration, but decided to leave it until Wednesday. I’m going to move into the Marina on Tuesday, Water supplies are low, the hull needs cleaning, and if I need to make multiple trips to immigration it will be easier. I’m not sure how long I will be there, the marina does seem to be a lot quieter now, so my virus fears aren’t so bad. I will miss the dolphins, the sunsets, and the cooling winds I have at anchor. But I will have electricity, hot water, all the toast I can toast, and I can give the boat a good wash down and get some of the salt off.
The plan had been to do some work today programming, but it turned out that I need to wait for some specs to come through, so instead I continued to polish the stainless, today I did half of the cockpit area, It’s starting to look great. I cleaned and polished the sheet winches, something I have never done before.
They came up looking stunning. I was really shocked, they shine so bright, it’s like being on somebody else’s boat, the kind of boat that is properly maintained, like an expensive boat that might race at Cowes or something, certainly not the type of boat I might own. I can imagine this boat might actually look smart one day. I’m definitely going to get the fiberglass gelcoat spruced up at some point and I will buy a proper low speed buffing/polishing tool soon.
Just as the sun was setting, a dolphin, or a gang of them, and I think gang is the correct collective noun in this case, leapt out of the water, quite close to me, really quite high, completely out of the water by a good foot or two, before landing on the surface with a big splat, not a graceful dive, but I presume a splat designed to create a shock wave to kill the fish there. And not just one show of acrobatics, but this happened 5 times in rapid succession, which is about how many dolphins were there, so perhaps they all had a go, or one was very hyper. Then there was a bit of a frenzy with tails sticking out everywhere. For reference five leaps & dives takes exactly the same time as it takes to grab an iPhone, put in the passcode, select the camera icon, point and just miss all the action!
While messing around on the youtube platform I noticed that a video I posted many years ago (2006) has now had over one million views, now I know a million isn’t what it used to be, but I’m quite chuffed to have reached a milestone of a million, a million anythings would have impressed me. Before I get carried away, I think the video is just proof that it’s all about the marketing. It’s called ‘Waves in the Atlantic’, a name I chose because when I used to take my kids to the Rhyl Sun Centre swimming pool complex in North wales, every hour or so, the PA would announce, “Waves in the main pool” and the wave machine would start up as scores of kids and parents would head to the pool to be thrown around (so basically a private joke only I would get). Anyway, it seems a lot of people google “Waves in the Atlantic” and I think I might have had one of the first videos with that title, I’m presuming that as people clicked on it, the number of views went up. I doubt they watched it as it’s quite boring, and not the cruise ship rolling horror story they were expecting, but as the clicks went up, so did the ranking in the search results, and like magic, 1 million people have clicked on it, well subtract my 50 or so clicks.
I still like it because it’s one of the few times I felt I captured the rolly experience of a big ocean. It’s here if you want to check it out.
Tuesday:
Up early, headache, sneezing, a bit dizzy, will I last the day? I expect so. I get started on preparations to bring the boat into the marina. It’s a little tricky as the engine hasn’t run for a few weeks and the anchor and chain has been getting quite groggy for a while. The growth on the chain looks bad. First I do the engine checks, the oil is a little low, but that’s ok, the water coolant is also a little low, but that’s easy to top up. She starts first time, which is normal, especially in these high temperatures. I was rather worried that the thru hull for the engine water intake, that’s the hole in the bottom of the boat that water is sucked through to cool the engine, may be blocked with all the weed on the boat, but it’s fine. I take the covers off the engine and shine a torch around to make sure there are no oil/fuel or water leaks. All is good, but there’s far too many toast and breadcrumbs on the top of the engine for my liking. I don’t know who’s putting them there, but it has to stop.
I plan to head into the marina at 14:00 around slack water, we are near spring tides now and the currents can run fast. My problem is the bow thruster is fouled up, the prop is very barnacled and the hull is well rough. So I won’t have as much maneuverability as I would like, so avoiding the fast tides seems smart to me. Having got the boat ready, removed the anchor snubber and put out some fenders and lines and I’m ready, but 2 hours early. So time to finish off the stainless polishing in the cockpit. with 30 minutes to go I put away my polishing kit, the cockpit looks nice now, start the engine and prepare to weigh anchor (22kg last time I looked 🙂 ). The first job is to remove the growth on the chain, it’s pretty bad and I don’t want all of that going into the chain locker and stinking the place out. I’m assuming there are already a few dead crabs in there from when I last hauled the thing up. I get a wire brush and as the chain comes up, foot by foot I scrape the sea life off the chain, and hose it down. The problem is after two foot the hose stops pumping water.
Back down to the cabin, up with the floorboards and lets have a look. It seems the sea water isn’t getting to the pump. I check the filters, expecting them to be blocked but they’re not. Now I’m thinking Apollo 13 again, I reroute the supply of water so instead of coming from outside I’m using fresh water from the remaining tank. this better work, otherwise we will run out of precious water before we reach the docking stage. It doesn’t work, I tried to call Houston, but there was no reply, I expect their working away on the replica of Sister Midnight they must have, trying to come up with a fix. Time is running out, the tide will turn soon and I will miss the re-entry window to the marina and have to spend another night out here.
I have a plan, if I can route the water from the Lunar module, sorry, I mean the water maker thru hull to the deck wash pump, then it might just work. Unfortunately, the water maker thru hull is 1″ and I need to connect it to a 1/2″ pump fitting and I only have 3/4″ hose.
Still nothing back from ground control, so I lash together various fittings until I have a rudimentary system.
It seems to work, but I’m quite expecting the pipe fitting to blow off under pressure soon. Carbon monoxide levels start to drop 😉
Back on deck and the tide is about to turn. I haul up the chain, two foot at a time, then scrub and hose it before letting it down into the locker. It takes a few minutes to do every two foot, and I’m trying not to work out how many feet are in 40 metres, which is how much chain is out. Every 10 metres I have to rush down below, crawl across the bed and flake the chain in the locker. I didn’t think this bit out very well, as I’m covered in seaweed/sea-life from the scrubbing and deck-wash hose, plus I didn’t close the window above the bed, so I think I may need to change the bedding soon.
Thankfully after 15 metres, the chain seems to be clear of weed, not sure why, perhaps this mostly lies in the sand and the scraping action isn’t great for little creatures to make their home.
The anchor pops up and looks disgusting, but we are clear and drifting with the wind now. the tide has almost stopped, so into gear, slow ahead and off to the marina, a good 5 minute journey.
I rev up the engine and the whole boat shudders, the engine groans, so I back it off a bit. I’m assuming the badly fouled prop (playing at the Dublin Castle) is the cause, props need to be carefully balanced, just like car wheels, and this is very unbalanced. I tried the bow thruster to see if I could shake some growth off it, and to see if it had any effect, however it just beeped at me as if two say ‘you having a larf’.
I find my berth, the marina have two guys waiting for me, I’m turning to starboard for a port tie, there’s a boat to starboard of my berth and I think it’s going well, I’m going quite fast as I’m not sure how well the turning will work when the dockhand starts frantically gesturing for me to turn more to starboard, not sure why, but I do, and almost hit the yacht to starboard. I think he was wrong, I turn back to port, pull in and a quick full astern stops me and kicks the stern in nicely. The same dockhand tied my bow line to the mid pontoon cleat then tried to get my yankee sheets off as a bow line. Perhaps he’s new here.
I jumped ashore, thanked them, adjusted the lines and relaxed. Great to be in safely. Then I realised I had gone back in time to a pre virus era, I had no mask on, was standing right next to the dockhands, passing them ropes. No hand sanitizer in sight. I’m almost certainly going to be on a respirator by the time you read this.
It’s been a good few weeks since I was in a dock, so lots of boat washing to do, I launched the dinghy to get the deck clear, it was covered in seaweed. I spent an hour giving the boat a good clean, connected the shore power and sat down for a well deserved Cerveza Sin Alcohol.
No sunsets or dolphins, but I enjoyed my dinner in the cockpit until I noticed a couple arrive on a dinghy and tie up opposite me, they joined another couple on the pontoon opposite and proceeded to spend the night being jolly. I was going to pop over and say hello, ask how often they met up, and was the shrieky women, with the ear piercing shrillish laughter, that travels for miles in every direction there most nights? As I may be leaving sooner than expected, but I didn’t. All of the shops have run out of beer, perhaps that might put a stop to it, or maybe they have stockpiles, or worse, several bottles of gin. I think I have earplugs on board somewhere.
Wednesday:
More headaches, I’m definitely on my way out. then again it might just be related to my infected tooth. That pain is firmly in the root now, and my tooth itself is fighting fit. I’m woken by a cracking sound from the hull, as if something is breaking. I jump out of bed, run on deck but can’t see anything. Back below and it repeats. I spent the whole day repeating this dance to no avail. My latest theory is that there’s crap in the water bashing the hull as it drifts past. I was going into Immigration today as my visa runs out, however I realised it runs out today and I’m not sure if that’s in the morning or at midnight, and they won’t renew it until it runs out, so instead I decide to wait until Mañana. The printer wont print my documents anyway, out of ink.
I spend a bit of time doing documentation for the software I’m about to write for some swiss solar power sites, then decide to check out the part numbers for the new toilet parts. Quite a dilemma really, the repair kit, which is mostly rubber seals/gaskets and rubber joker valves is $100, the whole pump assembly including all those valves is $130, and a whole new toilet is $200. I decide to dismantle it again, It was working great after I last fixed it just a few days ago, I’m assuming I did something wrong when I put it all back together. It’s stopped pumping water from outside for the flush. At least I’m working on the sea water side of things. There’s a blockage somewhere, I spend an hour chasing through hoses until eventually I find the problem, it’s a little fish, the size of a goldfish, he’s perfectly squeezed into a valve in the top of the toilet pump, but his tail is snagged on the outside so he won’t flush out.
I felt for the poor guy, it must have been an awful death as I pumped away trying to get water through. I expect it’s like the opposite of waterboarding for a fish, having air poured over your head. I wonder what secrets he gave up!
Thursday:
Visa day, Up early and off to the immigration office, I just managed to print out the forms I needed and a begging letter requesting humanitarian help, before the printer ran out of ink. I bought the printer in Malaysia a few years ago so it’s done amazingly well to last this long on the original cartridges.
Of course the Immigration office had a problem, “computer says no”, and I have to go back on Monday. It’s a good cycle to the office, but good exercise, and I can certainly tell I’m not so fit compared with a few weeks back. It’s also not great cycling with a face mask on in this heat, on the plus side, I’m swallowing a lot less flies.
I did some shopping on the way back and tried several stores for an inkjet cartridge, but it seems they only stock them for printers that are sold here. Disappointing to say the least. Throwing away ink jet printers is one of my pet hates. I picked up a kilo of fish from my friendly fisherman on the beach, he remembered me and was very smiley and cheery. I usually tip him for the fish, 10%, or 30p, not a lot really but he seemed to appreciate it. It must be difficult for the locals right now, the streets were very quiet, but I sensed a few more places open than usual. I think Mexico is hoping to reach its peak of new cases in the next week and then they may relax restrictions.
For the afternoons chores, I pulled out all of the anchor chain and rope rode and laid it out on the dock. It needed a fresh water wash and scrub. In bed last night the smell of fish from the chain locker was overwhelming. I took the opportunity to hose down the inside of the locker. I’m also going to reverse the rope rode while I have it out, there’s been a bit of hockling (untwisting/knotting of the rope) near the chain.
Friday:
A lazy start to the day, I’m suffering from heat rash which is waking me up on a regular basis through the night. I tried to get some lotions I use back home, but they have never heard of them here. Simple stuff like Calamine Lotion. Lots of Farmacias, but they all sell the same limited range. I will keep on looking.
Before the diver arrives I clean the chain, and the chain locker. I manage to get a new splice in the rope and discard about 30ft that is looking a bit flakey. That’s enough rope to make a lot of baggywrinkles.
Later in the morning Carlos the diver arrives , He is soon below with his cousin or uncle I think, they scrape for a good hour and do a wonderful job. They clear a lot of blocked thru hulls so I hope the deck wash will work now. They also help me put the chain back into the locker.
Carlos compliments me on the boat, asking if it’s a Hans Christian, which I’m quite happy to be confused with, The Hans Christian is a very pretty and solid boat, and possibly owes a lot to the same designer, Bob Perry, as Sister Midnight. I’m sometimes compared to a Tayana 37, which is a little bit of a snub. Boat owners can be quite snobby 😉 Anyway, Carlos points out the he and his uncle can do any boat job but specialise in painting and fiberglass repairs. I ask for a quote to fix up some missing chunks of coachroof that the dinghy gouged out on the passage over from Japan. I almost fall over when, after a bit of deliberation between themselves, they come up with a price of $50! I think I have already spent that much on gelcoat repair kits before deciding I could never get the colours to match. They start on Tuesday!
Carlos helps me stow the chain back in the locker before he leaves and I head below to see if the deck wash works now.
I redo all of the piping so the deck wash pump is fed from the correct sea cock/thru hull. It still doesn’t work, so I start pulling pipes off to poke a wire thru the fittings/hoses to find the blockage
Pulling this very sturdy looking hose, that has been on the boat since I bought her causes it to snap, without a lot of effort. Once again, I’m reminded this boat only stays afloat based on the laws of probability. Not because of my good preventative measures. Eventually I find the blockage, another poor fish tried to swim through the 3/4″ to 1/2″ reducer and never made it. His body swelled up and blocked the fitting. Yuk.
The deck wash is now working and the dead watermaker has a reliable source of sea water again, should it ever come back to life.
On the plus side, I have realised I’m in the right place to renew all the pipes and fitting in the bilge, there are great plumbing suppliers here and chandelries for the oddball stuff. It should be better than ever soon.
Saturday:
The heat rash is really annoying now, I head off to search for Lanolina Anhidra, but to no avail. I find some other emollients I’m hoping will work.
It’s been very hot in the marina so I decide to cover boat, this cover hasn’t been out of the locker since we were in Langkawi, Malaysia. I can barely remember how it goes on, but it does a great job of cooling the main cabin.
Hopefully I can work in there during the day now.
Paul Collister.