Chilling in Escondido, (no hay vacuna)

Monday 22nd March 2021

There’s not a lot happening since I got here, I’m just swinging on the mooring buoy with the odd trip into the marina to buy an ice cream and make use of the fast wifi there. My chances of getting vaccinated here look slim. The rich countries are all boasting about the money they have pledged to let developing countries buy the vaccine, yet at the same time making damm sure none of it leaves their shores and recently seem to be stopping other countries that have vaccine factories from having access to the recipe due to patent concerns.

Dirk & Sylvia have returned, vaccinated, after their mad dash up to the states by car. Mike from Ikigai is sailing from Ensenada on a friends boat, and will return to his boat which is on the buoy behind me in 2 weeks.

In an effort to improve the connectivity here I tried putting my at&t android (Hot Spot) phone into a bag and sending it up the mast. It works a bit, but I haven’t worked out how to get the charging cable up there yet.

Kayaking around the lagoon is fun, the stingrays in the shallows are spectacular.
I planted some herb seeds today, Basil and Mint, They should be easy to grow on the boat, and Basil can be hard to get here.

I was going to put the same picture at the end of the blog, as two weeks later, nothing has happened.

I saw this guy swimming around the marina, I might have talked about manta rays before, apparently there are none here, this might be a Devil Ray, I think a ray from the Mobula species. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it’s about 5ft, or 1.5 metres across, or OMG when you see it swim past you. Ever so graceful too.

I’ve spent some time walking around the marina estate for a bit of exercise. Somebody had a big dream for this place once, there’s a grid of roads laid out in concrete, covering quite an area, waterways weave through with one property under construction as you can see below.

Credit to google maps for the image

However most roads go nowhere, some are fenced off, and in places the concrete is cracking and weeds are starting.

The Ellipse, one day this might be full of mega yachts

Just around the corner is the harbour masters office and a jetty for a rescue boat. I got this picture of some locals reeling in the fish.

After a week here I decided to head out to the local islands, Isla Carmen is only 3 hours away and has the lovely Balandra bay. Leaving the lagoon I snapped this mega yacht, which I overheard someone saying was Steven Spielberg’s yacht, who knows, owners are always secretive, and buy and sell yachts quite frequently. I think John Wayne kept his yacht in this region.

Route to Loreto, then Balandra bay

I sailed north into the wind, by heading close hauled towards Loreto, then tacking for Balandra, however either my bad sailing, the boats poor sail trim, or a coincidental wind shift, (most likely the first), when I tacked, I ended up heading back to my start. On came the engine for the last bit. Unfortunately the autohelm had stopped working again, so I hand steered for the last hour, which wasn’t so bad. It turns out the screw that holds the key in the keyway had come loose and the key had fallen out, yet again. I was so sure I had fixed it good last time. This time I used some of the red loctite, I think I needed a less strong one, but thats all I had. It says something about needing nuclear weapons to undo the screw should I need to in the future. This may be why I didn’t use it last time. I feel this story isn’t over yet. There were three other boats in the bay when I arrived and the prime spots had gone, strong winds from the NW were forecast and I would have preferred to be tucked further in. however that night the winds weren’t too bad, the next morning one of the boats left and I moved closer in. another boat arrived later in the day and took my place, they had a rough time of it for the next 48 hours as we had constant 20+knot winds and quite a swell was rolling into that part of the bay.

A rich man’s boat chilling out with just the crew on board
Balandra Bay, Isla Carmen
Marks the start of a hill trek
Halfway up the hill
A north american flag flying upside down
Sister Midnight third from the front in the middle

After a few days just chilling I decided to anchor off Loreto and go into town and get some groceries.

Anchored off Loreto, taken from the malecon with Isla Carmen behind
Checking she’s still there

All went well until on my return I tried to start the engine and the instrument panel was dead. This isn’t unusual, there’s a stack of connectors between the panel and the engine, the wiring loom comes in three sections, and each sections suffers from corrosion, so I usually pull them apart, spray some contact cleaner in and wiggle them around. This time it didn’t work, and after an hour I decided to leave and work on it on the way. I jump started the engine so I had some power to haul up the anchor, then I raised the sails and set the now repaired autohelm for Puerto Escondido.

With the engine off I pulled out the wiring diagrams and starting chasing through the fault with my multimeter. The problem seemed to be related to an open earth fault in the engine end of the wiring. That’s complicated as the engine earth is floating from the battery earth. I’ve always been confused by this, Volvo did it to protect the engine I think, but with other parts of the boat being grounded for galvanic corrosion purposes, and then another ground system exists for the SSB radio, I have never been sure that everything was connected and working correctly. What I don’t want to do is have corrosive currents flowing through my heat exchanger destroying it. I decided to spend some time when I get back to port to investigate properly.

Arriving back in PE, taken by Dirk / Sylvia
Losing the light in PE

The next day started with a trip up the hill with Dirk & Sylvia

It was quite a walk, but led to some spectacular views

There are quite a few big charter boats live here

Back on the boat I started chasing wires to find the fault, it turned out to be a earth wire to the alternator lug that had chafed on the positive terminal of the solenoid. I remade a few connections around the area and up fired the instrument panel, it worked fine, sadly the engine made no effort to start when I turned the key. It appeared that the solenoid had stopped working on the starter motor, this was to be the start of a difficult few days. I will put up a post on the starter motor separately, so you can all skip that.

I filmed some amazing dolphin scenes on the way up to Loreto, but I haven’t had a chance to edit them yet, hopefully I can put a link in my next blog post.

I’m going to wait for Mike to arrive, he’s due in the next few days, I have booked another week here, and I will leave at the end of this week, maybe Saturday 10th and go North then across the sea to Guaymas/San Carlos on the mainland.

Happy Easter.

Paul Collister.

2 thoughts on “Chilling in Escondido, (no hay vacuna)”

  1. great to read your latest. looks as if your having a few electrical probs.
    well haven’t come across a floating earth that you describe, all the boats I have had every thing has been down to earth

    1. Yes, it’s odd. The starter and alternator have insulated negative outputs that aren’t connected to their cases, also all the sensors have two connections. The only place it falls down is the glow plugs, I guess they coulnd’t find isolated ones. This is solved by a relay that grounds the engine block to the Battery negative during the pre heat phase. This is also true when the stop solenoid is applied, I don’t know how that works, but I think it’s part of the high pressure fuel pump.
      Even though I have preserved the isolation, there’s still a short between the engine block and the battery -ve, perhaps that relay has welded itself closed , or it’s finding a route via the telex controls, prop shaft or some other earth wire that’s been added later.
      That’s a job for another day.

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