Just chilling and loving it

I took the trip into the marina by dinghy on Monday and booked a slip for the next 3 months. I explained to the manager that I would be staying at anchor until I needed to come in and use the slip, which will probably be when I run out of water or have a flight home.
As I write this I’m sitting in the cockpit watching the sun set with a glorious red sky, while dolphins swim around the boat. In the distance I can hear two dogs conversing across the bay from different boats anchored out here. I expect they are complaining about the virus. All in all it’s extremely peaceful and relaxing.
The government of Mexico have issued a 96 hour curfew for all of Mexico, and no one is allowed out of their homes or off their boats unless it is an emergency. This is fine with me as I wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

I do get a little irked by some of my fellow yachties who don’t think the curfew applies to them and that they can go off sailing elsewhere and ignore the restrictions, however it seems the military are quite active now patrolling the islands and evicting yachties who have pitched up there.

Tuesday was quite a lazy day, as most days are now. I wrote some software that allowed my Raspberry pi to pull in GPS data from my little usb gps stick ($10). I was mostly using gpsd for those who might be interested in linux/gps stuff. It was great seeing all the NMEA packets piling in off such a cheap device. I started to write some software to pull out the interesting data but hit problems with finding the right libs and header files for C, but that’s normal and at least we are on the way.
The main excitement of the day came just before sunset, I stuck my head out of the cabin and was rather surprised to see the big whale museum ship in trouble ahead of me, it was drifting down on me as the skipper was trying to get the anchor up and get out of the way. He must have been dragging. I felt bad as I had anchored quite close to him, and he probably could have dragged some way if I wasnt there a few boat lengths away.

However I expect he didn’t want to be dragging at all and as he wrestled to get his anchor up, it became clear his chain was tangled up in some of Davy Jones’s debris. He ended up motoring past me with his anchor still down, until he was in a deeper part of the channel where he then spent an hour, into the approaching darkness, struggling with what looked like a metal step ladder attached to his chain.

Eventualy he sorted it and went and anchored some distance away from me.

I have had quite a few people getting in touch concerned for my well being, and anxious about the situation here. Well I am grateful for your concern, but to be honest, I couldn’t be happier sitting out here at anchor. The only thing missing is Kathy. Hopefully she can get out here if I can’t get back there. It’s very safe here, the state authorities are taking the virus very seriously, even if the Federal government is struggling. Things will get worse I’m sure, but hopefully not as bad as they are back home. To get home right now, which is an option, requires a long bus ride, then 4 airports, and a lot of hanging around. I will probably end up back in Liverpool, exhausted, infected, and stuck in a small apartment self isolating for a few weeks. Give me dolphins and great sunsets any day.

Wednesday came and I started on the boat jobs. I got the wood glue out and repaired a broken galley draw that smashed sometime when a big wave hit us and the draw shot out and flew across the boat, I think possibly on the pacific crossing. I did some deck repairs in the cockpit and much to my delight I repaired the foot powered ‘galley gusher fresh water pump’. This is a foot operated pump that pumps fresh water into the galley sink. This has two purposes for me, firstly, should the main pressure pump fail, I can still get fresh water out of the tank, but more usefully it delivers a much more controlled amount of water. So helps to preserve precious supplies, especially when away from potable water for a while.

Thursday was a quiet day, like wednesday it was quite overcast and cool, raining at one point. I headed into town to replenish supplies. I also had a water pump to drop of with Mike on Ikigai, getting to him was going to be interesting as the Malecon is closed so I had to take the back streets which are quite hilly.

It was good to see Mike, he is planning on sailing north just as soon as he can. His boat is looking much better, and is probably much more seaworthy than when I first met him back in Turtle Bay last year.
Marina Palmira is a nice place and I was reminded of just how many classic looking boats, a bit like my own are hanging out down here. I mean old fashioned looking, double enders (Pointy at both ends), ketches, schooners etc. These are considered good boats for crossing oceans, and that’s what most people down here are doing or have already done.

This is in stark contrast to when I would walk the pontoons in Greece, Spain or even Liverpool, where most of the boats looked the same, Beneteaus, Jeanneau or Bavarias basically. We oddballs refer to these as AWBs or Average White Boats, that’s a bit unfair really, as they are often great boats, just a very popular. I quite fancy retiring to the med on a 32ft Bavaria, will be great for the grandkids, whenever they arrive.

So today is Friday, I didn’t do much today, polished some stainless on the bow, wired up the wind generator, and did a bit of tidying.

I have been listening to the BBC World service podcast of the apollo 13 mission, I just stumbled upon this and it’s been fantastic, it came out a few years ago and is being repeated. I thought I would listen to all of the episode in a run this week, but was gutted to find I have to wait a week for the next episode, they are almost home, but barely alive. I have to say, it helps put the corona virus in context for me. These guys really were in trouble. Lovell at one point thought ‘this is really bad, Let’s just go home’ before instantly realising that wasn’t an option. I would have been terrified.

The picture above is of an Albacore dinghy that sailed past me earlier today. The guy was having a great time, despite the fact it’s a two man boat. The reason I particularly liked seeing this was because it’s a British design, by a guy called Uffa Fox, there are a large fleet of these boats back in my home town of West Kirby, and they race often on the lake. The boat is basically a bigger version of the firefly dinghy, also designed by Uffa Fox. A firefly (1069) was the first dinghy I owned, probably when I was around 15 back in the early 70’s. I used to sail it on the lake as often as possible and had a great time in it.

Paul Collister