Wrapping Up
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Time period: Wednesday 02/05/14 – Saturday 02/22/14 We are slowly wrapping up our boat projects in La Paz and hope to leave here by March 1st. |
Originally we had planned about 1 month, or maybe up to 1.5 months of boatwork in La Paz, but as you can see, that has evolved into almost 3 months here! Besides boats costing money to maintain, they are also a time warp. However, our boat is looking pretty darn good and we are really happy to have all the new toys aboard. Living aboard and sailing will be much more comfortable now!
Over the last couple weeks, we hammered out most of the final projects. Chris finished installing our extra pair of batteries, so now we have four 120 amp batteries, for a total of 480 amp hours. He also finished installing the wind generator; both our solar cells and wind generator are connected to the battery bank and are doing a great job of keeping the batteries charged. Chris also managed to put together the watermaker on our dock and got it working, though the water tasted very oily because somehow oil had been sucked through the system at some point. We spent a couple days taking it apart and cleaned every individual hose connector, pump part, filter, and the membrane. Chris has installed the pump, membrane and filters on the boat, though we still need to get new hose to connect them all. We will get the hose here, but will likely wait to finish connecting the system until we reach the mainland. On the sewing side, I finished a binnacle/wheel cover and a massive sun shade that covers most of our boat. The temperatures have been reaching the 90s on a regular basis, so we needed something to keep the boat a bit more cool while we worked on our projects. The sun shade seems to lower the temperature about 10 degrees. Hector also finished our dodger, which we have been immensely enjoying on the dock for its wind protection.
Chris putting the finishing touches on our new wind generator.
The newly mounted wind generator. And it works!
Chris and I cleaning the oil from all the parts of the watermaker.
The binnacle/wheel cover I made.
The giant sun cover I made. It is 5 m x 5m! Kind of makes our boat look like a covered wagon.
Hector and the finished dodger. There are nice covers for all the windows to protect them while not in use, and the middle window can even roll up if we need some airflow.
There are still a few things to do, but those can wait until we reach mainland Mexico. Our plan is to leave La Paz March 1st or 2nd and head across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. We would like to spend a week or so exploring mainland Mexico from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta, and then a couple weeks in Puerto Vallarta to finish final projects. With luck, we will be ready to cross the Pacific around April 1st from Puerto Valllarta. Before all that though, we are taking a 3-day vacation from boat work and will finally explore the islands just 20 miles north of here. Stay tuned for a fun blog about our trip soon!
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