It's been a while since our last post.
07 March 2018 | Paradise Village, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Bill/sunny and warm
It's been a while since we posted so lets get caught up.
As for our illness(Bronchitis-me and Pneumonia--Tracy) we are close to being well again. I still have a slightly naggy cough and Tracy gets winded easily but we are a lot better than we were even a week ago.
Our son(Xander) and a friend(Rachel) came down for a quick visit and we had a nice time visiting with them. Since we were still on the rebound from out plague, it was more laid back than usual but everyone got a nice time just kicking back and relaxing. We did go out for a day trip to Punta de Mita, about 14 miles away taking advantage of some wind and with all the whales in the bay, we had some amazing sightings along the way. We left the marina in calm winds but a couple hours later, it was piping up to the low 20 knot range, typical of the bay. Calm mornings and blustery afternoons. We dropped the anchor and set back for a while(I took a nap) but Rachel got nailed by sea sickness with all the wind and waves hitting our boat so we pulled up the anchor and headed back to the marina by sunset where she recovered nicely in the calmness of the marina. It was great having our son back with us and we can easily see why he and Rachel get along so well. A great friendship that's been going on for several years. Sad to see them go.
As for projects, some went well and others not. We got our water tanks filled with nice clean water and we had to replace a bracket of stainless steel on our lifelines. We've learned over the years that even stainless steel will break given enough time. When we were in South Africa, another of the same fittings died so I had four of them fabricated while we were there so we were prepared for what we knew would be coming--more failures. We had planned on replacing the stern heads macerator but it was not to be. We did find a supplier for the replacement hoses we needed but we couldn't find the right replacement macerator we wanted. We have one on board but it will burn up if allowed to run dry so it went back into storage. I figure we can find what we need(ShurFlo) either in Mazatlan or in La Paz. No big deal though Tracy would sure like to have her stern head back in operation. We'd planned on changing the engine oil but the pump we use to suck out the old oil decided to no longer function. We talked to some other friends on boats here in the marina and called around to stores and no one had a pump available. It will also have to wait but I did top up the oil and got the oil in the injector pump changed out. It's supposed to be changed more ofter than the engines oil so at least it's taken care of.
As for shopping, we made a trip to Sam's on Sunday and were disappointed on their selection. Much smaller than in the US and not a lot of brands we are used to being there. We hit Walmart on Monday and got more of what we needed and Tracy went to Costco yesterday so our cupboards are topped up again.
We had dinner last night with some good friends and fellow cruisers(Jay and Terry on Cadenza)to celebrate our circumnavigation and just to get caught up as the last time we saw them was in California in 2009. We've kept in touch all these years and it was really special getting back together again. We met for a short time in Zihuatanejo during SailFest a month ago but this time we could really sit back and get caught up. A wonderful couple.
We've checked the weather and it looks like we will have the perfect window to take off North tomorrow. Our next stop will be Mazatlan, about 170 miles north of here. Winds are supposed to be light and just might be from a good direction for at least till Saturday when they pipe back up. Winds here in the Sea of Cortez typically come from the north north west, straight down the sea making it tough to get farther up into the sea. We'd hoped to make it to Topolobampo but it's just to far and going into Mazatlan will give us a good wind angle to head over to La Paz by late next week when we will have the next break in the big winds that can come up. We already made reservations at a nice small marina in Mazatlan so our stay there will be nice. We stayed in the same marina back in 2010 before we took off across the Pacific. As we visit these towns going up into the sea, it's like old home week as we visited them years ago. Nice being back home here in Mexico again.
That's about it for now. The next post should be from Mazatlan, hopefully with some pictures too.