Sequitur

Michael & Edi have headed out on a slow, thorough exploration of the globe.

Vessel Name: Sequitur and Zonder Zorg
Vessel Make/Model: 2007 Hunter 49 and 1908 Wildschut Skûtsje
Hailing Port: Vancouver, Canada
Crew: Michael Walsh & Edi Gelin
About: For our current location click, on Map & Tracking, then on the Google Earth logo.
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13 January 2014
26 April 2013
24 April 2013
27 October 2012 | Harlingen, Friesland
29 September 2012 | Sneek, Netherlands
19 September 2012 | Hoorn, Netherlands
13 September 2012 | Aalsmeer, Netherlands
20 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
11 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
10 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
08 August 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg: Aalmmeer, Michael & Edi: Vancouver
28 July 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg in Aalsmeer - Michael & Edi in Vancouver
26 July 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg in Aalsmeer - Michael & Edi in Volendam
17 July 2012 | Michael & Edi in Leeuwarden, Netherlands
07 July 2012 | Edi & Michael in Vancouver, Sequitur in Saint Augustine
27 June 2012 | Saint Augustine, USA
07 June 2012 | Saint Augustine, Florida, USA
20 May 2012 | Fajardo, Puerto Rico
11 May 2012 | Terre Le Haut, Les Saintes, Guadeloupe
01 May 2012 | Carlisle Bay, Barbados
Recent Blog Posts
13 January 2014

Another New Book Released

I am delighted to announce that my new book: Carefree on the European Canals is now in print and is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca [...]

26 April 2013

New Book Released

The proof copy of my new book arrived by courier today. I have approved it and it is now listed on Amazon for pre-order, with a publication date of 30 April. It is a rather large book at 680 pages in an 8.5 by 11 inch format with 315,000 words illustrated by over 2400 colour photos, charts and maps. [...]

24 April 2013

One Year Out of Brazil

One year ago today we sailed Sequitur out of Brazil after enduring more than six weeks in the least-friendly country that we had experienced during our three-year voyage. In the early evening of 24 April 2012 we crossed the line on the chart dividing Brazil from French Guyana and breathed a huge sigh [...]

27 October 2012 | Harlingen, Friesland

Planing a Metamorphosis

We have added a new post to the Zonder Zorg blog at: Planing a Metamorphosis.

29 September 2012 | Sneek, Netherlands

Onward to Friesland

We have arrived in Friesland and have added a new post to the skûtsje's blog at: Onward to Friesland

19 September 2012 | Hoorn, Netherlands

North From Aalsmeer

We have moved northward from Aalsmeer and I have added two new posts: Heading North From Aalsmeer and North From Amsterdam

13 September 2012 | Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Taking Possession

We are back in the Netherlands, and I have added some new posts to the ZonderZorg blog at: Taking Possession and Settling-In and Making Plans

20 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Added a New Website

We have added a new website: Skûtsje ZonderZorg. Zonder zorg in Dutch means without worry. Our intention with the site is to provide a place to share some of the history, geography and culture of the skûtsje as we discover it. We will also use this place to document [...]

11 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Still More Skûtsje History

We continued to attempt to track-down Douwe Albert Visser, who was the owner of Nieuwe Zorg in 1941 when she was re-registered. One of the problems we repeatedly encountered in our online searches was the effect of currently having Albert Visser and two Douwe Vissers as very competitive skûtsje racers, [...]

10 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Some More Skûtsje History

While I was researching the history of Nieuwe Zorg, I finally found her first registration details obscured by an apparent typographical error in a transcribed online spreadsheet. She was listed as having been built in 1901 instead of 1908. I emailed the webmaster of the [...]

Continuing Preparations in La Punta

19 November 2010 | La Punta, Callao, Peru
Michael
We have begun to focus more closely on repairs and maintenance on Sequitur and on other details in preparation for the continuation of our voyage south. There were still many things we need to do before we even think of picking a date for our departure from La Punta. High on our list is to travel inland to visit some of the Inca sites.


To help us with this, on Saturday morning we had taken some fresh biscotti over to Precious Metal to have with the coffee that Pamela had offered. She had organized a tour the previous week for a group of her friends from Canada and the US, and she had offered to share with us the contact information for the hotels in Cusco and Machu Picchu and other places where they had stayed. She also gave us the contact information for Pepe Lopez, the local travel agent she had used.

Among other things, I learned that Pamela and I had lived within a few kilometres of each other from the late 80s to the early 00s; she in White Rock and me in Crescent Beach, British Columbia. We had many mutual friends.


Much of the remainder of Saturday we spent cleaning and repairing. I re-secured the port after foot of the solar panel arch, which had worked free during our buck of the Humboldt Current. The installers at Specialty Yachts in Vancouver had not used a backing plate there, and with the strain from the wind generator and SSB antenna, which are mounted above it, all four bolts had worked free. They had used normal nuts with no lock washers, and there was no evidence of any thread lock having been used. We had limped into Lima with some spare polyester line lashing the arch down to the stern cleat. At least now we have large pan washers, stainless lock washers, Locktite and pal-nuts to keep things in place until we can have backing plates fabricated.

On Sunday morning Jaime came out to Sequitur by launch to deliver the 6mm stainless lock washers he had told us the previous week that he could get for us that same day. I paid him the S/7.40, and didn't have the heart to tell him we had gone to Surquillo on Thursday to pick-up some.


A little later on Sunday morning, Gonzalo called us on VHF to tell us he was sending his son out in the dinghy to deliver our three cases of wine. A couple of minutes later Gonzalito arrived off our stern and expertly manoeuvred the dinghy alongside the platform so that the tripulante could easily hand me the cases. It was a very nice display of boat-handling by the seven-year-old boy.


A short while later Gonzalo motored past our stern in Tatita, and we thanked him for organizing the purchase and delivery of the wines from Bodegas Vista Alegre. He invited us to join him at the club at 1700.


I took a launch ashore to get another two jerry cans of water, and on the way in we stopped at Magic Carpet Ride to pick-up Dave. He had arrived in La Punta a couple of days previously from another leg of his cruise, which had started in Seattle eight or nine-years ago. As I was filling the water jugs, Luis motored by in his Sea Rider, and he came alongside the landing. I loaded the water containers into the dinghy and we motored out to Sequitur.

I had decided to take a shortcut and load the water directly onto the side deck next to the water fills, as I had been doing from the launch. This saves lugging the 20 kilogram jugs into the cockpit, then out of it and a dozen metres forward over and under all of the anti-bird lines and nets. From the dinghy; however, the lift to the side deck is over shoulder height, and somewhat awkward from the bobbing platform. I didn't plan it well, and in the process, both the first jug and I fell into the water. Fortunately, we both floated. Also fortunately, my glasses stayed on my head, and the pocket that my camera was in was zipped-up, and the camera was waterproof.


In the late afternoon, shortly after Gonzalo sailed Tatita past our stern with his family aboard, we called a launch to take us ashore to the club. Gonzalo continues to be such a wonderful assistance to us and to other visiting cruisers. Without him, our stay in Peru would have been very much less interesting, and our impression of the place very much diminished.


We sat on the upper deck of the club, enjoying wonderful conversation and camaraderie with Gonzalo and Magdala and their two children. With us was Pamela of Precious Metal, who is sailing north on Wednesday to the Galapagos and onward to the Mexican Riviera.

An hour or so later we were joined by Patty and Mark of Alpha Wave, who are also leaving on Wednesday, but heading south to Chile. Also planning to leave for points south on Wednesday are Kim, Steve and Cullum of Odyle. We headed back to Sequitur to continue with our preparations. I removed the door hinge plate from the after shower, and removed a screw from it to serve as a sample when we went looking for some that are 6 or 7mm longer to repair the door.


Edi completed a Christmas card for me to give to Richard to thank him for his kind and generous hospitality during my visit to the Associacion Numismatica del Peru. She had made a cut-out window to display one of my RCNA Presidential Medals as an ornament on a watercolour rendering of a festooned bough of holly.


On Sunday evening we enjoyed jumbo prawns sauteed in a concasse of mushrooms, shallots and garlic into which I had rolled some steamed mini potatoes, and served with fine green beans almandine and sliced Roma tomatoes. The 2009 Concha y Toro Trio, a Chardonnay, Chenin and Pinot Blanc blend, complimented the dinner nicely.


On Monday we negotiated a S/5 taxi and went to the Maestro on Argentina to pick-up some screws for the shower door repair, and while we were there, we bought two more of the extendable handles that we had bought two weeks previously. I had whittled-down the tapered polyethylene splines on the business end of the handle and had installed and through-bolted onto it one of the three polyethylene boathook ends we had brought back from Vancouver. It had worked so well that I decided to use two more of the same model handle for the other two hooks. We now have the first new boathooks we have seen south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

We added a few more things to our cart then checked-out from Maestro and walked across the street and up the block or so to Minka. For S/53 we bought three kilos of boneless and skinless chicken thighs and a tad over two kilos of boneless and skinless chicken breasts from our favourite shop. We then crossed the aisle to buy eggs; today the chicken came before the egg.

Several readers of our blog have commented that from our dining photos, our food costs must be quite high, and some have asked how much we spend for our dinners. With this shopping trip to Minka I have again included prices. For S/3.5 we bought a kilo of eggs, which this time came to fifteen. The eggs here are so fresh that we keep them on the shelf, rather than in the fridge, and even thus, after two or three weeks, they are still fresher than supermarket eggs in Canada or the US. We added three fresh mangos and two avocadoes for S/5, four very nice bunches of asparagus for S/10, two kilos of Roma tomatoes for S/2, three kilos of mashing potatoes for S/7, a kilo of red peppers for S/4, two kilos of green peppers for S/6, a big head of celery for S/1 a half-kilo bag of shallots for S/1 and a quarter kilo of freshly peeled garlic for S/2.5.

Back onboard Sequitur, I divided the chicken into nine double servings of thighs and six double servings of breasts, giving an average cost of 63 cents a serving. To complete a typical chicken breast dinner, the cost would be 44 cents per serving for the asparagus, 47 cents for mushrooms, 10 cents for the potatoes, 6 cents for the tomato, 7 cents for the shallot, 6 cents for the garlic, 10 cents for the mayonnaise, and no more than 25 cents for butter and condiments. This is less than $2.20 per plate.

I wanted to compare the cost of our standard dinner with that of a "cheap" one, but since I have had neither Spam nor Kraft Dinner for well over forty years, I was out of touch with prices, and had to look them up on the net. I found 225 gram boxes of Kraft Dinner at between $1.49 and $1.89, and 340 gram cans of Spam at $2.35 each. Add to this the cost of the milk and butter necessary for preparing the pasta, plus some ketchup for the meat, and the cost per serving runs to more than our $2.20. Even without the cost advantage of our style of dining, we prefer Sequitur's current menu.


On Tuesday morning Edi made fresh blueberry muffins using some of the Costco dried blueberries she had brought in her luggage from Vancouver. They baked wonderfully in the silicone muffin "tins".


We had a leisurely breakfast, enjoying the fresh muffins with cream cheese and Peruvian coffee. The muffins were delicious; however, the blueberries were too sweet. A check of the package showed glucose and fructose had been added in the processing. The next time we need to soak them in water to re-hydrate them and to try to remove some of the sugar. Maybe we could soak them in Pisco.


Later on Tuesday I continued with the process of mounting the terminals on the ends of the 3/0 gauge cable. On a launch ride ashore a day or so previously, I had asked Herb if he had a large gauge crimper that could accommodate 3/0 gauge, and he had told me he had made one from a retired bolt cutter. I called him on VHF and asked if I could borrow them, and because the launch service was so delayed with the South American J-24 championships taking place this week at the Club, he motored his dinghy over from The Lady J with the crimpers.


In short order I had crimped the four terminals, and had them ready for soldering, which would need to await a trip ashore where I can plug my gun into a 220 volt circuit.


I next turned to the re-mounting of the after shower door. The 12mm thick acrylic folding door had been attached to its hinge strip with 19mm long screws, and with the strip being a little over 12mm thick, there was less than 7mm of screw biting into the acrylic. When Sequitur awkwardly fell off a wave in early January off the Baja coast, the door had popped free of its retaining catch, and the twelve kilogram weight of the flopping articulated door had torn out the six screws along with six chunks of acrylic that had held the hinge strip to the edge of door. I had repaired the door the following week, but it had again come off its hinges in a doldrums storm on our Passage to the Galapagos.


This time I crazy-glued the pieces back onto the door edge and drilled the holes 7mm deeper. I re-fastened the door to the hinge bar using 32mm long screws. We now have a door again on the after shower for the first time since May.

On Wednesday Edi and I took a launch ashore and caught a bus along La Marina and Prado to Arequipa. We walked south a dozen blocks to Santa Cruz, which we followed another seven blocks to Ovalo Gutierrez. The broad avenue was lined with upscale buildings housing a diverse selection of small businesses and corporate offices. Around the Oval were sited several fast-food franchises, and on our way past we took advantage of the McHead. Relieved, we continued around to Espinar to Deli France.


We had been told Deli France had some of the best bread in the region, and on the net I had seen reference to it having the second best bread in Peru. We examined their broad selection of French cheeses, pates, charcuterie and other delices francais. They also have a nice, small selection of French wines, from the Champagne, Alsace, Bourgogne and Bordeaux. For S/10.50 we bought a loaf of bread to try and told ourselves we needed to return to stock-up before we leave Peru.

We walked back the two blocks to Ovalo Gutierrez and went into the Wong supermarket there. Its front sections appear to be the renovated interiors of two fine old homes, and then beyond them, the store continues in more normal supermarket architecture. The Wong stores are very much up-market compared to others we have seen in Peru. This Miraflores branch is yet a notch above the one we have been frequenting in Plaza San Miguel, with a decidedly more refined selection of goods.


On Thursday morning Edi headed ashore in the launch with Bev to go to the Gamarra Market, and I went in to the pier with them to fetch another two jugs of water. Back onboard, I opened-up the engineering spaces and began wiring the new 210 amp Balmar alternator. I had decided to tie the output from the alternator directly into the connections coming from the Fischer-Panda generator, after disconnecting the positive lead from the generator. My reasoning on doing it this way was that this should give me current flow into the systems in the same manner as would the generator, were it working.

After running the 3/0 cables and connecting them, I turned to sorting-out the wiring for the regulator, a Balmar Max Charge MC-614 multi-stage unit. The first four connections were easy enough to sort out: the blue wire from terminal #1 to the alternator's field terminal, the red wire from terminal #3 to the alternator's positive output, the black wire from terminal #4 to the alternator's ground and the white wire from terminal #12 to the alternator's stator output. That left me with the brown wire on terminal #2 and the separate red-wired fused pigtail.


The brown wire needed to connect to the 'on' side of the engine start switch. I traced some circuits and then cut the brown wire in the harness of the 120 Balmar and joined-in using a two-into-one butt connector. The fused pigtail is the for the positive battery sense wire. This needs to be connected to the positive side of the battery, preferably to the largest of the batteries being charged. At 1225 amp-hours, our house bank is our largest battery, and it consists of ten 6-volt batteries. I chose the one which already had sensors attached, assuming previous installers had gotten it right. I ran the two recommended pre-flight tests with a multi-meter, and it passed them both. I then programmed the regulator to match our systems.

As I was doing the programming, Edi returned onboard from her shopping trip to Gamarra. It was late in the afternoon and I decided to close-up the spaces, clean-up the mess and continue the next day. We started looking at travel arrangements to visit Cuzco and Machu Picchu. We were shocked to find that LAN Peru, the "national air carrier" of Peru charges triple fares for foreigners. Our flight from Lima to Cuzco return would cost us just over $1,200, but if we were Peruvian it would cost less than $400. Some further digging on the net revealed that bus fare from Lima to Cuzco return is in the $75 range, but the thought of a 21-hour bus ride was discomforting. We decided to shelve our planning for the evening.


On Friday morning I went ashore for two more jerry cans of diesel. The price was up again, which I had expected with the continuing collapse of the US dollar, to which oil prices are tied. I also filled and brought back two 20-litre jugs of water. The pier was very busy, teeming with competitors in the J-24 South American Championship being hosted by Yacht Club Peruano all this week.


Sharing the launch with me on my return trip were two crewmembers of the Uruguayan boat, Nomoyoc. We chatted briefly on the short ride to their boat, and I wished them well in their afternoon race. In the championship are entries from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico and Uruguay. Puerto Rico's entry surprised me. While it is technically not part of any continent, when it is associated with a continent, it is North America.


After I had added the contents of the jerry cans to their appropriate tanks, I returned to the alternator and regulator. I ran the tests again, and satisfied with my connections, I installed the regulator on the face of a longitudinal stringer in a conveniently accessible place just beneath the access lid to the generator compartment. I need only to install the drive belt to test the alternator, but I decided to leave the belt off until after I had run the engine the next morning for our usual hour or two of battery charging.

Preparations are continuing.
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