Hola from beautiful La Paz, BCS, Mexico! Yes, we are still here, ten days after arriving. We had planned to leave for Mazatlan after about a week, but it seems that our friends in Northern California have all the wind at the moment, leaving none for those of us in Baja. And since we have a SAILboat, we are waiting until the breeze picks up a little bit, so we can SAIL to Mazatlan instead of burning dinosaurs (Eric's term).

Besides, it is quite nice here, many of our friends are here, we haven't seen the whole town yet, and we have a week until we need to be on the mainland, so why not hang for a few extra days?

We've been enjoying our time here, divvied up among boat projects, exploring, socializing, and relaxing. I'm going to split each of these activities up over several posts, so you don't have to wade through all of them at once.

First off, BOAT PROJECTS:
Some of the boat projects we've tackled since pulling into Marina Cortez ten days ago include:

---Tracing (again) the source of the persistent little puddle in our deep bilge. This time around, we added a one-way valve to the bilge exit hose, tightened some different hose clamps, and then thoroughly cleaned out the bilge, hopefully the last time for awhile.

---Wiring up the new solar panel. This necessitated threading (during five frustrating hours, and employing many colorful sailor words) some surprisingly recalcitrant wires down through the stainless steel support tubes of our bimini cover, and then using our old messy friend, Sikaflex, to seal the deal at the dodger.

---Installing the charge controller. We were SO happy to finally get the charge controller, which had been languishing forlornly at Downwind Marine in San Diego, having arrived there a day after we'd left. One of the local cruisers who was driving back from the States brought it down to us in La Paz this week. Installing the charge controller necessitated Eric performing uncomfortable yoga-esque poses and pretzelations in various small spaces, and employing (as in the case of the recalcitrant solar panel wires) some sailor words to make it all work.


Eric performing one of the yoga-esque poses, in the aft hanging locker.

---Discovering, after installing the charge controller, that one of the recalcitrant solar panel wires (the hot one) had shorted to the bimini support tubes. This meant that we had to take the recalcitrant wires out of the tubes and find the cause of the short. Oh joy. Luckily, Eric found the bit of exposed wire at the very beginning of the process (a piece of insulation had sheared off, exposing the wire, which had then gotten cozy with the metal tubing). He wrapped some electrical tape and heat shrink tubing around it, and voila! the electrons now flow happily from solar panel to charge controller.


Getting the solar panels all wired in.

---Repairing the holes in our Code 0 sail. You may recall, from one of my earlier posts, the unfortunate altercation that occurred between the furled Code 0 and the wayward, zinging spinnaker guy line after our spinnaker pole broke. You may also remember that I described the wounded sail as a "lace doily." On closer inspection (when we took the sail down yesterday and had it strewn all comfy in the cabin), it only had one line of perforations, that we were able to patch with sail repair tape.


Van trimming the sail repair tape.

Eric then sewed (yes, he's the one of us who sews; I would rather clean the bilge), a sailcloth patch onto the foot of the sail, where the line had burned through. Now the sail is hopefully as good as new and is ready to propel us through light air again, which is a good thing, as they seem to have a steady supply of it here.


Eric fixing the sail.

---Re-riveting one of the hinges on the hatch in the main cabin. This process took longer than we expected, as it required us to walk into town, find a hardware store, and use our fledgling Spanish, to find the right size rivets. All of which we did. But it's fixed now. And we had the added bonus of eating lunch at one of the town market's lunch counters.

So that's a wrap-up of our recent projects. Just a shout-out to those of our friends who thought we might "get bored" after leaving our day jobs. Hasn't happened yet!

Next up, exploring La Paz.