Fridges and Seabirds

Category: Ships Log

Week of 01/13/13 - 01/20/13

Not a lot to report this week. I was down sick most of the week, starting with what first appeared to be a 24-hour flu bug (headache, fatigue and fever), but then a couple days later came down with what we think was Giardia. I’m getting the full Mexico cruising experience. :) Luckily our friends on Pelagia, who are experienced veterans of the parasite from trekking trips in Nepal, had the medicine aboard to cure it. I am one day into the two-day treatment and am already feeling much better. I am so grateful to our friends on Pelagia! Unfortunately, I didn’t get much work done on the boat this week as a result of not feeling very good.

Chris, on the other hand, was very productive. He has started converting our icebox into a properly insulated box that will house our refrigerator unit. It is a lot of work because our icebox is not a nice rectangle like they show in all the do-it-yourself books, but instead a crazy mess of non-right angles, slanted walls and different depths levels. Chris has had to fill this in with hard pink foam insulation so there is a minimum of 4 inches of insulation on each side (it’s the amazing shrinking icebox!). We’re using 1 and 2-inch foam, so this involves a lot of measuring, cutting, fitting and sometimes swearing. :) Hopefully our next blog post will show some pictures of the finished product!

The before picture of our icebox.

Dry-fitting the first layer of foam

The current state of our icebox - most of the foam is now glued in, or being glued in.

Since that is about all there is to report this week, I thought I would use the rest of the blog to share one of the neat things about living in La Paz – the seabirds. There are a lot of different species here, some familiar from the States, but many that we have not seen before. Sometimes walking around the marina, or along the Malecon (main road along the waterfront), you just have to stop and watch the birds for a while. Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures!

A juvenile Bonaparte's gull (I.D.'d by a very avid birder on our dock)

A yellow-crowned night heron

A reddish egret. It was wildly galloping through the water - pretty funny to watch!

A royal tern.

My favorite, a green heron. Is that the coolest looking eye or what?