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