Sequitur

With Edi back in Vancouver taking an immersion course at Grandmother Boot-Camp, I was left on my own aboard Sequitur on the mooring in La Punta. It was a strange transition; living aboard a cruising sailboat with someone is a very close thing, and it demands near-total interdependence. Ideally, there is no need to seek solitude, and even if there were, it would be a difficult thing to find. To suddenly find myself alone, then, was strange and somewhat disorienting.

Edi would not be back until midnight on the 29th; she had had a 35-year-old dental bridge come loose the week before she flew to Vancouver, so this was an ideal time to have it replaced. Her dentist said it would be completed on the 27th, so Edi booked the next flight after that, Friday the 29th. This would give her ample time to play grandma, and to gather-together the things we need to be brought back to Peru.


The only advantage that I could see to Edi's absence was that I could open-up all the engineering spaces and leave them open for days-at-a-time, while I worked on routine maintenance, doing some repairs and trying to resolve some problems. Even at over 15 metres in length, Sequitur is a small space, and to gain access to her systems, many hatches, panels and other structures need to be removed. We all know how much easier it is to troubleshoot and work on things when we don't have to put tools away and get everything back into place every few hours.

On Thursday I began a systematic analysis trying to find the reason, or reasons why the Fischer-Panda generator would not work. Interspersed with this, and to relieve my frustration with getting nowhere, was my search for 3/0 gauge tinned wire to connect the new 210 amp Balmar alternator to the house battery. By the end of the day on Saturday, I had totally run out of ideas on the generator, and had totally struck-out on the 3/0 gauge.


Gonzalo had invited me to join him and his family for lunch at the Club on Sunday. Besides Gonzalo and his wife Magdala, there were their two children, also named Gonzalo and Magdala. Also there were a sister, an aunt and a couple of parents; it was truly a family gathering.


Young Gonzalo, who recently turned 7, raced through his lunch so he could go out and drive the dinghy back-and-fourth between the pier and his father's sailboat out on a mooring. The remainder of us spent some three hours dining on half-a-dozen platters of appetizers, then main courses and desserts. Gonzalo and his extended family then went out to their boat for a late afternoon sail, while I went back to Sequitur. Needless to say I didn't need anything but a dish of fruit and yogurt for dinner.

On Monday morning, while running the engine at 1800 rpm to recharge the house bank, I smelled a hint of cooking alternator winding insulation. The alternator was beginning to overheat, so I shut-down the engine. This was just another prompt that I really need to get both the generator running and the new 210 Balmar hooked-up and online, or at least one of them. I ran the generator through a few more unsuccessful start cycles, monitoring the drain on its start battery with a multi-meter as I did so. For the first time, it was reading below 12 volts, and not recovering. I didn't want to use the engine starting battery to try to start the generator, lest it be cycled too far down to start the engine.

The need for finding some 3/0 wire really grew in importance; without it I couldn't hook-up the alternator. I renewed my search. Callao has a population of over a million, and is a suburb of Lima with its eight million people. It is the busiest port on the west coast of South America, with a huge commercial shipping traffic. It is the home port of the Peruvian Navy, it is the base of a very large fishing fleet and it has a large pleasure yacht fleet. I would have thought with all the boats and ships, there would surely be a supply of common marine goods, such as tinned wire. I found out that this is not so; they do have non-tinned, standard automotive battery cabling, but not tinned.

Why tinned? The salt air in the marine environment very quickly corrodes uncoated copper wire. By tin coating the strands, not only is the corrosion delayed by a factor of ten, but it also provides enhanced conductivity. I can get un-tinned 3/0 wire here in Callao for a bit over $40 per metre, and for the eight metres we need, that is nearly $325 on a temporary fix that will fail in a couple of years. Less-than-roll amounts of tinned 3/0 wire costs a little over $50 per metre in Vancouver, so for 25% more money, we get ten times the life expectancy as well as better conductivity. Nonetheless, I needed to get something working to charge our batteries.


After the engine and 120 Balmar had cooled sufficiently, I examined and tightened all of the electrical connections, and flashed-up the engine. I ran it at 1150 rpm, and I watched as it put 75 amps into our house battery. I closely monitored the alternator's temperature and kept a keen nose for the first hint of scorching varnish. Everything remained normal, and I slowly brought the battery back up to above 85%. After I shut-down the engine, I used the multi-meter to check all ten batteries in the house bank, and all showed similar charges. I then went to the two starting batteries, and while the engine cranking battery showed a good charge, the generator cranking battery was low. I noted that I needed to monitor it closely over the next while, and see of it is holding a charge.

On Tuesday morning I made launch runs ashore to get jugs of water to add to Sequitur's tanks. I was just about to call the launch for a trip ashore to Maestro and Minka, when I heard Bev call one. I quickly radioed her to have the launch swing by and pick me up on their way past. They were also on their way to Maestro and Minka, so we shared a cab. I looked for 3/0 wire at Maesreo without success, but I did buy a couple of gallons of battery water. Its a quite a bit cheaper by the gallon, compared to the quart price at the gas station down the street from the Club, but not enough to cover the bus rides unless buying three or more gallons.


After we had all finished at Maestro, we walked on to Minka. Herb and Bev were meeting the lady who parrot-sits their bird, while they are travelling. We had lunch together at Miami Chicken, before we split and went shopping.


I bought a few things to try: a kilo of freshly shucked choclo en granos, giant corn for S/3; a kilo of tiny new potatoes for S/2; a kilo of wonderful mangos, three of them for S/3; 1/2 kilo of gorgeous fresh strawberries for S/1 and five nice bananas for S/1. I also picked-up a 2-kilo bag of boneless and skinless chicken breasts from the good shop for S/21 and some bottles of S/13 to S/16 wines to try.

Meanwhile, Edi was back in Vancouver cooking-up a storm and feeding the new parents. According to her email, she prepared "a roast beef dinner, complete with smashed potatoes, 2 litres of gravy, green beans almandine and carrots julienne". She had also baked, and she loaded the dinner and a dozen potato dinner rolls, some blueberry muffins and some raisin bread onto our wheeled cart and rolled it up the street to Bram and Amy's. Edi had invited her other daughter, Genevieve and boyfriend Gregor, and they dined as an extended family. Bram's parents were due to arrive from the Netherlands the next day.

Edi is using some of her time to run a 'test kitchen' to try various baking recipes that can work aboard. She adapted a crusty potato bread recipe into dinner rolls, and baked them on a silicone cookie sheet. She reported having impressed everyone at the dinner table with the fresh crusty buns. She also made what she described as "the best Nanaimo bar I have had, a great recipe for a pot-luck with no baking involved". She did banana bread, carrot cake squares with cream cheese frosting and carrot muffins.

Onboard Sequitur, I spent much of Wednesday the 20th tracing the wire runs to and from the various batteries, regulators, distribution panels, solar panels, wind generator, diesel generator and alternator, and I also spent some time troubleshooting the Fischer-Panda. I checked the electrolyte levels in all of the batteries, and topped-up as necessary. The WaterMiser caps are working wonderfully; the batteries consume so very little water when compared to my previous experience. While I was checking the generator start battery, I saw that it had lost more charge; it was now below 11 volts, and it looked as if it had developed a small internal short, and that I needed to replace it. I began researching replacement batteries, and looking unsuccessfully online for sources in Callao and Lima.


Meanwhile, with all the mental and physical work I am doing onboard, I am eating more like a trencherman, than a gentleman sailor. For dinner, I prepared grilled chicken breast with mushrooms garlic and shallots, served with boiled comote Jonathan and boiled choclo en granos.

While preparing dinner on Wednesday evening, the Espar furnace stopped, and I guessed that I had discovered the level of fuel in the tank required for the Espar to work. It got quite chilly onboard, so I spent a lot of time on Thursday commuting back and forth getting diesel fuel. Two jerry cans wheel very nicely on our Magna Cart the four blocks from the gas station on the corner. It is more convenient, and a bit less expensive to buy fuel there than it is at the Club's pier.

Pouring from a jerry can into Sequitur's tanks is best done through the auxiliary tank's filler on the starboard side deck, where it is flat and spaceous. The other diesel filler is on the starboard corner of the transom, and while it is wonderfully easy to use when fuelling from a barge or a float, it would be awkward if done from a jug on a mooring or at anchor. The transfer pump then takes it to the main tank, which supplies engine, generator and furnace. I was pleased to find that the Espar furnace re-flashed after I had turned-up the thermostat, and Sequitur shortly began to warm again.


After lunch on Friday I assembled a battery buying kit and took a launch ashore to see what I could find. In the kit were multi-meter, tape measure, lashing line, bungee cords, "Spanish for Cruisers" bookmarked to the battery section, a boat bag and our Magna heavy-duty wheeled cart. In my pocket was a sheet of paper with the old battery dimensions, the dimensions of the battery box and the specs from the battery label. I took a bus to San Miguel and walked to Maestro, the Peruvian equivalent of a cross between Home Depot and Canadian Tire.

They didn't have what I was looking for, a heavy-duty truck battery, preferably a series 31. They did tell me; however, that the Maestro over on Argentina had heavier batteries. By the time we had worked our way through the translations in "Spanish for Cruisers" it was getting late, so I bought two more jerry cans and then went across to Wong to buy some groceries.


My bus ride on the way back was in the front seat, so I had a clear view of the street ahead, and I was able to shoot some photos of the congestion of both people and traffic.

Mid-morning on Saturday I set out again with my battery buying kit. This time I took a taxi to the Maestro on Argentina, since there is no direct bus to there from La Punta. I very quickly found a suitable battery, a Delkor 31-900 heavy-duty truck battery, and it was charged to 12.59 volts. This is a series 31 with 900 cold cranking amps, and is exactly the same dimensions as the old battery it is to replace. A nice thing about it is that everything printed on its packing box is in unilingual English; I could easily learn far more about it by reading than I would in questioning a fully fluent-in-English store clerk.

I bought it and loaded its 26 kilograms onto the Magna Cart and negotiated a S/5 taxi fare back to La Punta. I loaded it into the launch and we went out to Sequitur. Unfortunately, just as I was slinging the heavy beast from the launch, a wake caused the launch to lurch, and the battery fell into the water. It sank like lead. Then having satisfied Neptune, Poseidon, Davy Jones and whoever else needed a bribe, I spent another couple of hours on a launch-taxi-buy-taxi-launch trip. This one I managed to get onboard. With the new battery finally installed, I got back to troubleshooting the generator and trying to solve its riddle.


I spent Sunday morning and early afternoon ferrying water out to Sequitur, continuing to replenish her tanks. I then went over to the bakery to buy half-a-dozen pita for S/1.5 and to the mercado to buy a couple of ripe avocadoes for S/2. These were to prepare some avocado and cream cheese wedges for an impromptu cruiser's book exchange and finger-food pot-luck on the upper deck at the pier. It had started as a surprise birthday party for the admiral of Alpha Wave, according to her husband when I had seen him picking-up a pre-ordered cake at the bakery.

I began seriously tracking-down shipments that hadn't yet made it to Vancouver, trying to locate things we still needed, and supplying Edi with a shopping list of things to pick-up for her trip back to Peru. After bashing around the marine retailers in Vancouver, Edi located a 50-foot roll of 3/0 tinned wire for $350. A problem was that it was in Victoria, but the shop would bring it in for her to pick-up on Thursday, the day before her flight back to Peru. Since the entire 50-foot roll weighs over 15 kilograms, and we need only 8 metres, or 25 feet of it at the moment, we've asked to have it cut in half, and Edi can decide when packing whether there is space and weight availability to fit both pieces into the luggage.

As I was preparing dinner on Monday night, the stove went out. I quickly changed the propane tank and continued cooking. We now have two empty and two full tanks. I need to get the empties refilled.

On Tuesday the 26th of October, the sun crossed our latitude and continued its way south. This is the first time the sun has been to the south of us since six months ago when we were on the third day of our passage from Acapulco to the Galapagos. Also on Tuesday, through many emails and Skype calls, I managed to track-down a source for latches that we needed to replace a broken one and to serve as spare. I arranged for the parts to be FedExed to Vancouver, but by the time the order was prepared in Florida, it had missed the last FedEx pick-up. It would have to go out on Wednesday afternoon, with the hope that it breezes through Customs and makes it to our mail receiver on Thursday.

I made fuel and water runs on Wednesday morning and early afternoon, and in the mid-afternoon, I met with the only South American member of the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association. I had received a Christmas card from Richard in 2008, while I was the Association's President, and I kept it aboard as a reminder to look him up when I arrived in Lima. We spent a delightful afternoon and early evening discussing coins, collecting and many other things. He invited me to the next meeting of the Associacion Numismatica del Peru on the following Wednesday evening.

On Thursday I again made runs ashore to get jerry cans of water, and on one trip we stopped at Precious Metal on the way in. Pamela had just had her boat cleaned, and was very pleased with the results. I asked her who she had used, and she pointed to the launch driver, and said, "his two brothers". I organized with the lanchero to have his brothers clean Sequitur on Friday, and he said they would be there at 0700.


At 0645 Friday morning there was a knock on the hull. The tripulantes arrived and began to organize their cleaning. After a quick survey, they took their dinghy ashore to get water, and came back with an assorted collection of tubs, drums and buckets. They began by undoing all of the anti-bird lines and streamers to make it easier to get around on deck, and then they turned to cleaning the cockpit canvas.

I had been concerned by the non-arrival of a package repair parts for the Lewmar engine/transmission controls. The package had been sent on the 8th of October by Royal Mail International Air Mail Signed-For service from Plymouth. The package had already consumed twenty days of their ten-day estimate, so I had emailed the shippers on Thursday, asking that they follow-up with Royal Mail. On Friday morning I received their forwarded reply from the Peruvian Postal Administration: EL ENVIO LLEGO AL PERU PROVENIENTE DE GRAN BRETA�'A EL ENVIO FUE DESPACHADO EL 26/10/2010 DEL CCPL A LA ADMINISTRACION POSTAL DEL CALLAO. EL ENVIO FUE DESPACHADO EL 26/10/2010 DEL CCPL A LA ADMINISTRACION POSTAL DEL CALLAO.

With it was their Babblefish translation: THE SHIPMENT I ARRIVE AT THE ORIGINATING PERU OF GREAT BRITAIN THE SHIPMENT WAS DISPATCHED THE 26/10/2010 OF THE CCPL TO THE POSTAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE PEBBLE THE SHIPMENT WAS DISPATCHED THE 26/10/2010 OF THE CCPL TO THE POSTAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE PEBBLE.

I decided to run it through the Google Translator, and got a slightly better version of it, though still confusing: Delivery is TO PERU FROM GREAT BRITAIN the shipment is CCPL THE 26/10/2010 THE POSTAL ADMINISTRATION TO CALLAO. The shipment is CCPL THE 26/10/2010 TO THE POSTAL ADMINISTRATION OF CALLAO. I am relieved to see it has arrived here in Callao. Now, all being normal, after all of the appropriate minions and bureaucrats have taken their time with it and added their fees, I should see it and an invoice for the taxes, duties, fees and bribes in a week or so. Then I can repair the broken transmission linkage.

One thing that is plainly obvious is that there is never a lack of things to do on a cruising sailboat; one certainly doesn't get bored. Time seems to slip past very quickly, even with the loneliness of being temporarily a solo sailor, the sixteen days of Edi's absence have flown by. Her flight is scheduled to arrive in Peru this evening, and I have organized a taxi to take me to meet her and bring her back to Sequitur.

When by 0900 I had received no email from Edi saying she had arrived safely at YVR, I assumed that she must have been very rushed getting all the luggage to the airport, checked-in and pre-screened because of its high metal content, that she had no spare time before boarding her 0700 flight to Toronto. By 0900, I would have received an email telling me she had missed the flight.

Her flight is scheduled to arrive in Toronto at 1423, and the connecting flight departs for Lima at 1610 from the other end of the terminal. We had lots of time last month with the same connection, so I figured that she should have time to email me from the lounge. I sat waiting for her to tell me she was confirmed on the Lima flight; if all goes well, I figured I would hear from her around 1500 Toronto time, which is 1400 La Punta time. After watching more than two weeks zip by in a flash, the last few hours have seemed to drag by in ultra slow-motion.

At 1515 Edi sent an email from the lounge in Toronto, saying she is waiting to be confirmed on the flight to Lima. We have crossed all of our fingers.