Once we returned from Arizona we were eager to maintain momentum. We hit the ground running, loading up the dinghy with all of our loot from the costco and heading out to the anchorage. When we left our dinghy was running on one cylinder and I had all but forgotten about that issue after 2 days in Phoenix. Once the dinghy was so loaded down and rowing would be physically impossible it returned to the forefront of my mind.

As we dinghied into the anchorage in the pitch dark night, our outboard running full out on the one cylinder it had available to it there was excitement in the air. We had finally cleaned out and returned the van, we were cruisers again, no car no attachments and a working boat full of provisions. All we needed was fuel, water and the right weather and we could finally set our sails and point Estrella south to those warm waters and all of that spearfishing and surfing we've been coveting these last 2 years.

There had been 2 unseasonable rain storms while we were gone and the decks were super clean. The cat was eager to see her humans again after being alone for over 2 days and we had a ton of stuff to stow.

Pisces and Tao were just returning from their evening ashore and welcomed us home in the moonlight. We made plans to get together and have an asian potluck aboard Estrella the following night.

No better way to motivate stowing and cleaning than to host a get together. Pisces, Tao and Tony from Sweetie came over and we had a lovely potluck. the next couple days were spent waiting for weather and further stowing Estrella.

Chris from Tao had a friend coming over from Baja to help him deliver Tao to Puerto Escondido and we had another potluck aboard Pisces as a sort of farewell since we were all leaving on the next weather window.


Gang potlucking on Pisces

We pulled into the fuel dock the following day to fill our tanks and while we were there Noah (Tao's crew) wanted to come see Estrella's new stringers. He is re-powering his boat in Escondido and had just built his stringers so he was eager to see something else to compare with. While his head was in our engine bay he noticed that we were leaking diesel fuel from a loose connection on our lift pump. Not a lot of fuel but still not ideal. When I removed the paper towel from the sump pan we found a very large nut loose in the pan. After some investigation we discovered that one of the motor mounts was missing both it's nuts and was basicaly completely loose. I decided to fix these issues while we were on the fuel dock because of how small and relatively simple they were.

I put a wrench to the fuel lift pump fitting and gave it a turn, it locked in nicely but the angle on the hose was off so I put the wrench on the elbow and barely turned it when the fitting snapped right off. further examination made it clear that somebody had jury rigged this fitting in place. brazing a 90 degree threaded elbow to what had been a straight hose barb.

Estrella was now disabled, again. Kristina had just finished busting her butt scrubbing all of the green growth off of the dinghy and making it generally spotless. We splashed the dinghy and I took the fitting to Star Marine. The fellow at Star told me he could get another one but it'd take 2 weeks. I decided to just bend the hose 180 degrees and stick it on the jagged brazed barb. This worked great but when I went to tighten the fitting into the lift pump it just kept turning, I could get no resistance from the threads whatsoever. When I pulled the barb out there were aluminum shavings in the threads. Evidently the leak was always these threads. Whoever repowered our boat put a standard 1/8" pipe thread barb into a metric threaded hole on the lift pump.

Exasperated, I twisted a bunch of plumbers teflon tape around the threads and screwed it in the best I could. I then fired up the engine and bled the bubbles out of the return line. We let her run for a bit in gear before tying the dinghy back on and heading to the anchorage. Having potentially introduced air into the system i was a bit paranoid so i ran estrella full speed to the anchorage. Once there we took a few laps around to see if the engine would suck air and die. Satisfied the system was airtight we dropped the hook.

I had stuffed some paper towel around the lift pump and when I checked it there was no diesel on it. The paper towel under the motor had some diesel on it that I attribute to drippings from when I bled the system. The next morning I found a motor mount locknut in my nut bin and torqued down the motor mount. Checked the other mounts and the port side forward mount locknut was very loose.

We were officially full of food, water, diesel and gasoline. Mike turned up and adjusted our wind vane control lines for us which meant we were really actually ready to go. We decided we'd leave on Wednesday but we spent much of the morning stowing things and prepping, we originally planned on leaving in the evening so that we could arrive in the morning 36 hours later to Topolobampo. After getting things stowed we were pretty tired and the forecast was for some brisk northerlies so we figured we'd sleep much of the night and take off at 4AM Thursday morning.

I was a bit anxious that we'd have an uncomfortable sea running after the last bit of strong northerlies. I ordinarily would have decided to wait them out in accordance with our new "Adversity Free" cruising plan but I figured the seas should be behind us and we have 2 autopilot solutions so it should be okay.

We had also given up on being the least bit destination oriented. Jacob and Julia on Pisces convinced me that we should just go sailing and if we're happy, keep going. If the wind and sea wants us to go to Baja, we can always just crack off and go to Baja, if not we can keep on to Topolobampo or even Mazatlan.

We've been really keen to finally get down past the tropic and start living that warm weather surfing/spearfishing lifestyle that we've worked so hard for. The concept of going to Baja where its cold and windy wasnt appealing at all but even less appealing was long hard passages, so Pisces' suggestion really made sense.

Our alarm went off at 0400 and we slowly got ourselves up. By 0500 we were motoring out of the bahia for the last time after 2 years. When we got outside there was a slight swell running and no wind whatsoever. We decided rather than bob around we'd just motor until the wind filled in. The engine was running nicely and we were making close to 5 knots due south.

As we got further out the seas really started to stack up. We had about 4kts of wind out of the west southwest and 4-6' short period chop right on the beam. Occasionally an 8 footer would slap into the hull and something would crash down below. During the morning ham net we heard more favorable conditions were being had by other boats in the sea not far from us but we were starting to feel some adversity.

I came to the realization that we were again doing what we did last time. We were motoring through crappy seas trying to get to a destination. I decided that we would turn back at that point. More importantly, I decided we'd switch off the engine and see where the wind and seas wanted to take us.

The minute we turned around and got the reacher unfurled we were happily sailing along on a 40 degree (northeasterly) course with quartering seas making 3.5kts of boat speed in 6.7 knots of apparent wind. We were producing most of that wind by sailing.

We had a lovely sail into the bahia in Guaymas and anchored right off the expensive Singlar marina in the middle of downtown.


Fellow Cascadian sighted!

We were told by multiple people that the holding was poor after jimena deposited silt in the bay. The reports of how much, varied greatly from 10 feet to 10 meters. My Cortez guide has a chart of this shallow bay that indicates depths of 10' throughout most of the bay. My chart and depth sounder matched up almost perfectly so if there is less depth due to silting my sounder doesn't see it.

Likewise I dont understand how a thick layer of sediment would make for poor holding in the first place. I mean no anchor will dig in when anchoring on a polished marble bottom but I don't know of any anchor that wont set in thick mud. Never mind the math if you add 10 meters of silt to a bay that is 3 meters deep you have a 7 meter high mound of land. Anyway, cruiser rumors are worth every penny you pay for them.

We no sooner dropped the hook and it set instantly and violently as usual, when we were told by another boat that we anchored a hundred yards behind, that we were on top of his anchor. He told me the bottom was very poor here and he had 200' of chain out. So his scope (chain to depth ratio) was 20:1. He advised that I do the same because a norther will drag us across the bay otherwise. When I pulled up the anchor we had just dropped and upon which we had not yet even backed down, the rocna was well stuck and had a small lump of thick clay-like mud on it. As usual on anchoring matters I kept my own counsel and let out about 40' of chain after we moved. Of course the anchor set instantly that time too.

When we put the engine in reverse it was only sporadically giving thrust, it seemed odd but we just chalked it up to weirdness. There were strange noises so I checked the transmission oil and it was a little dark and lacking a bit so I added some more oil and called it good. There was more diesel leakage from the bleed screw I had loosened when bleeding the engine so I got the tools out and torqued it down a bit harder. The paper towel had not one drop of oil on it, just some diesel from the leak.


Guaymas downtown waterfront

We decided to stay on the boat and retain the "leaving mindset" that night. There was a lighted boat parade in the harbor and we were anchored right in the middle of it. There was a huge parade on the waterfront and it was extremely loud. At one point every cop, federale and firefighter drove the parade route with lights and sirens blaring, the motorcycle cops revving their bikes as they went. It was quite a spectacle. I kind of wanted to get off the boat and see it but we were planning on leaving Saturday if the weather was favorable.


Pirate boat leading the Christmas light parade


Christmas lighted boat parade


Christmas lighted boat parade


Fireworks off the pirate boat


Christmas lighted boat parade These guys got a special prize from the Mayor of Guaymas because the Mexican kids lost their minds over the big marlin.

Saturday was a lovely day and I decided to make my first ever batch of lemon bars to go along with the biscotti that Kristina had made. Sweets and snacky hand held foods are great if the weather gets snarky. The wind was going to be "moderate" but northerly and a full on "norther" was forecast to blow 30kts for at least 3 days early in the week so this was our perfect weather window. This time we proclaimed that we would go for a "daysail". We would go sailing and if we were having fun we'd keep sailing, if not, we'd come right on back.


K's passagemaking biscotti and my fatmaking lemon bars

We set off around 11 and worked our way under power out of the large shallow bay. We had to motor over the anchor to get it to break free and the bow roller seemed like it might snap off before the anchor finally broke loose. When it came up, the anchor was more caked than it has ever been with thick, super dense, clay like cement colored mud. So, far from being poor holding, we've concluded that this bottom is the best holding we've ever seen.

We motored to the cape and there was glorious wind. It was blowing 10 knots. Unfortunately, this wind was coming out of the West South West and when we rolled out the big reacher we had tons of weather helm. We were cooking along at almost 6 knots but the autopilot was struggling and the wheel was all the way over to port. When a boat gets unbalanced the result is called "helm" this means the sails are trying to make the boat turn instead of help it go straight. Weather helm means the sails are trying to turn the boat into the wind. We have been battling this problem for years. I've added close to 600 sq ft total of sail area to the front of the boat to combat weather helm and never, ever fly the mizzen (sails in the front push the bow off the wind and sails in the back push the bow up into the wind)

Anyway I decided that maybe we had too much main up as the wind built to 12 knots. I banged a reef into the main to flatten it out and dropped the traveler all the way to leeward. This had almost no effect so I dumped the main until the whole thing was luffing. Still the rudder was hard over and the autopilot fighting. By now there was another nice beam sea running and slapping into the boat. I put the 2nd reef into the main and it still made no difference. At this point I dropped the main altogether and there was about a 10% improvement. I know all you salty dogs are going to email me like many have and tell me its impossible to have weather helm with only a headsail up but I would tell you all that nothing is impossible and if you want to be wowed come and have a look at my weather helm.

At this point we were still making almost 6 knots and the wind was up to a solid 15 right on the beam (90 degrees). I figured if we could crack off and sail downwind and down sea we could make a go of Topolobampo. But if we turned east of south at all we'd run right into the big estuarial mainland to the south and not clear the area where the mainland turns east. "What about Baja?" asked Kristina and quickly realized Baja was dead upwind and upsea. We were pretty hungry at this point and with only half a jib our speed dropped to 3 knots and we still had most of the helm problem. I knew that rigging barber haulers (ropes that move the center of effort forward) might have helped but I didnt want to monkey around with them in the building conditions. We had taken stugeron preventively so we weren't feeling ill. I decided to go below and make lunch while deciding what to do.

The kettle was on the floor and the stove was swinging on its gimbals like crazy. I decided to make chicken fajitas. As I stood there braced in the galley chopping onions, peppers and garlic cloves while the boat pitched around crazily I thought "Stugeron is the best thing ever invented for seasickness" there is absolutely no other way I could have pulled that off. The fajitas came out pretty good and we wolfed em down while discussing options and trying to stop the plates from sliding across the cockpit.

I decided as I watched the autopilot groan under the load that if the conditions worsened we would be hand steering all night in lousy conditions and be doing all that helm fighting ourselves, by hand. We decided to turn around again.

Kristina climbed into the pilot berth for a nap and I turned us around and sheeted that jib in tight. Naturally with these waves we didn't make the tack so I fired up the engine to help us through it and then just left it on. I had a blast racing the sunset home. I decided to close reach motor sailing with half a jib and it was perfect. The jib drove the waves and kept them from driving us and we were cooking along at almost 6 knots with the king spoke right in the middle, weather helm all gone. I decided to reach south of the exit so we could get in the lee of Cabo Haro (Cape Haro) and then motor straight upwind without any waves in our face.


This little fella musta joined us on the way back to Guaymas

My chartplotter showed all the dredges working the bay from many miles out using our spiffy new AIS reciever and I plugged in my mp3 player and enjoyed some music while slamming back to the bahia. I felt my nerves relax and was really happy. It was a good time. We didnt make it in before dark but it was easy enough to get in and drop our hook, closer this time, to the marina.

When we put the boat in reverse nothing happened. I stuck my head in the engine room and saw that the prop was barely spinning at full throttle reverse. We would not be setting our anchor that night. I remained optimistic that it might just be a linkage adjustment issue. Anyway, we were back and, in holding this good, were sure the anchor would set itself as soon as something caused it to be pulled.

We made steak for dinner and settled in for the night.

The following morning I went to troubleshoot the tranny. I detached the shifter cable from the lever and flipped it all the way back. Fired up the engine, same problem. Checked the tranny oil and its black as night. My clutches are cooked again and my tranny wont engage, in reverse this time.

We rebuilt our tranny in Ensenada in 2006 after the guy we paid to rebuild it in Portland in 2005 screwed it up (never hire Terry Foren). In order to remove our transmission the engine has to be removed. The previous two times we got away with just removing the lag bolts and sliding the whole thing forward, mounts and all, but now with the new stringers I had built the enigine will have to come all the way out in order to remove the transmission.

At this point our patience is worn to a nub and I seriously dont want to remove our engine again. To top it off our kitty is such that after this setback we might get a few months of cruising out of the deal. Many have suggested I just power through and fix this problem and then enjoy our cruise but after so many years of powering through problems and having something else cripple us afterward, its very hard to continue.

This might be the straw that broke the camel's back. Right now we're pricing out the parts and taking a few days to decompress and make a wise, unemotional, decision. Presently we cant get the boat to sail and we cant get her to motor and every time we fix something, something else goes wrong.

Just to clarify, I never thought this was going to be a vacation, in fact, I looked forward to the challenge more than anything. But we have been more plagued than anybody else we've run into and had a worse "repair to fun" ratio than most. The biggest downside I see to pushing through and making this last repair is that, as with all the other refits, there is no guarantee we'll make it 5 miles afterward.

Forgive the negative tone to this post. We're not super excited about how things have turned out, and throwing in the towel when, by my own measure, our cruise has been somewhat of a dismal failure to this point, is very unappealing. At the same time its feeling like maybe there is wisdom in cutting our losses. I don't want to be the guy who walks up to the roulette table with 10 grand and loses 8 but stays just to win it back until he has nothing.


Estrella in the sunset


Cheese!

More Pics of December can be found here