Day 573 Happy Thanksgiving!!
26 November 2009 | Turtle Bay, Mexico
Bill Hudson
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! This has been one of the warmest Thanksgivings we have ever experienced. It was in the mid 70's here and the attire of the day was shorts or a swimsuit, not overcoats and sweaters like back home in Colorado. Yeah!!! Finally it's warm!!
The morning started out with the fuel boat showing up to sell us some diesel for Zephyr. We were down a bit so, with a quick conversion(I cheated and used a program on my Mac) from gallons to liters, we were ready to pump. We guessed at 80 gallons and agreed on 300 liters of fuel. Tracy stayed below and monitored the tanks while I was above decks watching the fuel get pumped in. We guessed right at our 80 gallons and the tanks were full again. The last time we had filled up was at Marina del Rey back on October 15. This time, our consumption was down to just .80 gallons per hour instead of the 1 gallon we normally use. The reason was that for several nights we had only run the engine at 1000 or 1300 rpms and that uses less diesel. O course the fuel savings are off set by us only doing 3.5 knots at that rpm versus 6 knots at 1750 rpms. Yes, the consumption was less. but so was the miles covered. I think it's better to run at 1750 and get our 6 miles versus only 3.5 miles at 1300 rpms. But hey, that's just my opinion for what it is worth.
I fired up the little Honda generator on the stern to replace the amps we had used during the previous night and she fired up at the second pull. I stopped it while I went and got the cord to connect it to Zephyr. Now, of course, she won't start no matter what I did. Tracy told me to stop pulling the cord and let it rest. I'd probably flooded it.
So I went below to change the diesel injector oil that has to be changed every 50 hours or so. It's like I have said in the past. Cruising is nothing more than fixing your boat in exotic locations. Once one, I tried the generator and she sprang to life. We had amps!! We ran her for the next two hours and all the batteries were fully charged. What we used after that, the DuoGen could keep up with.
As we sailed South, we noticed that one of the lines that holds the rudder onto the bottom of the Hyrdovane had become quite frayed. I went down into the water to pull the pin and replace the line. We don't want to loose the pin that holds the rudder in place. Once the knot was in place, I sewed the end of the line to the knot so it can't come loose.
I actually finished a book today! It's called "Why didn't I think of that?" by John and Susan Roberts. It's a book with 1198 tips from 222 sailors on 120 boats from 9 countries. Not much of a plot but it's got lots of information from other boaters as to what has worked for them on their boats.
It was warm enough today to pull out the solar shower and heat water so we could at least wash our hair. The water in the bay is up to 68 degrees so we are getting warmer water as well as daytime temperatures so I'm all for that. Soon, the water will hit 70 and I'm in it then. 80s better but that's ok.
Tracy cooked up a wonderful Thanksgiving meal including a pecan pie!!! Chicken(out of turkey) and stuffing with cranberry sauce and with the pecan pie of desert. it was a perfect meal. Of course the wine didn't hurt either. We sat in the cockpit and watched the Sun go down as we had desert. A lovely day.
Tomorow, we are off for Bahia Asuncion about 50 miles South of here. We expect to anchor at 27 08.26N 114 17.47W if you want to see where we will be on Google Earth. We read about this place in "The Log", a newspaper that is put out around San Diego and Los Angeles. They had a nice article about Asuncion so we think we will stop in for a day or two to experience the off roads of Mexico. As we will be off just after 0500, I thought I better tell you about today now.
It's nice having the SSB to allow us to post to the blog when ever we want and not have to wait till we hit a big city to get internet.
So to all of you out there, I say again, Happy Thanksgiving!