Month: January 2016

Yesterday, I went out to the boatyard to watch the boat go through a mandatory mechanical inspection before splashing. The mechanic and his assistant checked all the engine fluids and hoses, and started the engine, and in general checked all the mechanical systems.

One of the first things they did was to pull the raw water pump to check the condition of the impeller. It’s a good thing they did, because in addition to the expected finding of a tired impeller, they found that the pump itself was seized. Trying to start the engine with a seized pump might only have broken the corrosion inside the pump, but it might instead have broken the pump or its driveshaft. Fortunately, the current owner is a big believer in spares, and we didn’t have much trouble locating a spare impeller, a spare water pump, and a spare gasket in the ship’s stores.

Once that was put right, not too many other problems were found. The alternator seems pretty anemic, and should be replaced or rebuilt. Several hose clamps had corroded to the point of breakage, but that, again, is to be expected. The mixing elbow for the exhaust (where it’s mixed with seawater) seems to be obstructed. And there was an exhaust elbow that had corroded through and was leaking. Everything but the alternator, and possibly that as well, will be fixed before the sea trial. On the whole, the mechanic was well pleased with the engine, a four cylinder Kubota tractor engine that’s also sold as an inboard. After sitting for a couple of years, it fired up on the first crank, ran smoothly, etc. I got a comprehensive tour of the engine compartment and its contents, too.

So, inching toward ownership here. I don’t yet know when the boat will go in the water, and once it does there’s still the sea trial and the second part of the survey. But, no red flags so far.

Now I have to make some decisions about painting the hull. I may do it myself, or I may decide to have it done, since I don’t have that many hours available to work on it. It wouldn’t exactly pay for itself to have it done professionally so I can move aboard sooner (living at anchor would cost $1US a day for anchor fee), but it would offset the cost somewhat. On the other hand, any work I do on it will pay off in increased familiarity. I’m definitely going to replace the rigging myself, because I can do that piecemeal.

I moved into an apartment this last week. Casa Buena was the perfect soft landing spot, and very reasonable for a B&B, but I’d like to be living on less–a lot less–in Mexico than in California. So I found an apartment through a local broker (muchas gracias, Rafael!) and moved in over the last couple of days. It’s small (good practice for boat living, haha) but very comfortable and the location is excellent. I’m now three short blocks from the malecón, and four to the zocalo and all the downtown markets and shopping. I’ve got a phenomenal seafood restaurant around the corner, and a Saturday farmer’s market about three blocks away. In fact, today I had my mouth all set to try another entree at the seafood place but was seduced by a freshly grilled Spanish sausage sandwich at the farmer’s market instead. Fortunately, there’s plenty of time to try everything.

I have the use of the rooftop in the afternoons/evenings, and this afternoon was my first time for that. It was exceedingly pleasant sitting in the shade, with a warm sun and a cool breeze, watching the sailboats come back into the harbor after the Saturday races. I’m hoping to crew for someone during next week’s race, but this week I was too busy (and tired) to make it to the Friday night skippers’ meeting.

Betsy’s coming down on the 19th yay!

My first offer was declined by the seller. I had kind of got my hopes up that they would take the low offer and so I hit another mental roadblock, even wondering whether I should just shelve the whole boat project and let Sasha live out her life on land. Then Banks reminded me that I’d only made the first offer with the intention of solidifying the seller’s informal mention of a number some thousands off the asking price. True that. So I went back this last Thursday and offered slightly less than that number. I also started preparing myself to look for another boat. The offer expired Saturday night, and Friday and Saturday came and went without any word from the broker. At that point, I felt it was safe to assume the deal was off, and emailed Tom (the broker) that I’d like to take another look at the other Westsail that’s for sale here. Took Sasha out for a walk this morning and decided to stay local rather than drive to the beach, so I headed down toward the marinas. On the way, I checked my email and had an answer from Tom–the offer had been accepted, he’d just been out of the office all weekend. So, I headed straight down to the office, got a copy of the acceptance and a briefing on the next steps. Tom’s arranging for the pre-splash mechanical inspection, which should take place later this week, and hopefully it will be splashed Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime, I need to make arrangements with the surveyor to get the dry part of the survey done before that if at all possible. I’ll also need to make an escrow deposit tomorrow. Well, yay! Now I’m just hoping nothing big comes up in the survey or, more accurately, I hope nothing big is there to be found. If there is a problem, naturally I want it to be found.

Assuming the boat passes the survey and the sea trial and nothing comes up that necessitates a renegotiation of the price, I pay for the boat and it’s mine. I’ll need to find someone to help me take it offshore for the actual transfer, both to observe Mexican legalities and to allow me, on my eventual return to California, to avoid the use tax.

W00t w00t w00t!

Went back to Playa Balandra today with the intention of hiking. It’s ringed by some high ridges and you can see some trails running up there, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get some exercise for me and for Sasha. As it turned out, she wasn’t that enthusiastic about the steep, rugged parts–I guess she just can’t do that much anymore–but she came alive again once we got back down to the beach.

The views were, in fact, beautiful. I only just touched the beginning of what looks like a good network of trails along the ridgelines, partly because Sasha was flagging and partly because I was only the second car in the parking lot and in spite of myself I was a little worried about leaving the car without more people around it. The more times I do that and nothing bad happens, the bolder I’ll get (until, God forbid, something bad does happen), but today I was walking the line between caution and trust.

From the top, I did spot Mushroom Rock (I actually could see it the first time I came out, it was just blending in to its background) and, in the distance, Playa El Tecolote. Watched a couple of sailboats motoring out the channel. I’m assuming they were headed around to Los Frailes and thence to Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan, but really, I have no idea. After checking out the ridges, we went down to the beach and over to Mushroom Rock, then back along the beach. I picked up a couple of what I think are juvenile conch shells along the way. Probably totally ho-hum to anyone that lives near a beach, but a novelty for me!

Going to set the alarm tomorrow and go out to El Tecolote to see, if not the sunrise, the afterglow of it. Then make myself go to the Club Cruceros coffee so I can maybe meet a couple of people and also check on my membership application. Then, if Sasha isn’t feeling better, a visit to the vet. Then if there’s time, I might drive down to Todos Santos. I’d been thinking I would be passing that way when I went to pick up Betsy or Banks, but I checked today and SJD is in San José del Cabo, not Cabo San Lucas, so it’s not on the way. I have to be back by four to meet my new landlord to get the key to my new apartment. (Even if I do manage to buy a boat here pretty soon, there will be a period of rehabilitation before I can move aboard.)

I managed to forget my debit card in the ATM at Chedraui earlier in the week, and didn’t notice it was missing for several days. Fortunately, there were no fraudulent charges, but now it will take a couple of weeks to get a replacement. Again fortunately, I have another debit card from another bank, so it’s not much of a hardship. Then today I went to another ATM to withdraw some money for rent, and when I got there and looked in my wallet, both my other debit card and my credit card were gone. Needless to say, I was floored. I mean, would someone lift my wallet, take the plastic and leave the cash, and then put the wallet back in my pocket? Well, no. After a moment I remembered that I’d removed both cards from my wallet before my evening walk a few nights ago as a precaution, since I was down to one debit card. Whew!

Having said that, I feel I have to add that since being in Mexico, I have felt just as safe–safer, actually–than I ever did in Chico or Iowa City. I just don’t want to get down to zero debit cards.

Oh yeah, one more story. Having lost the debit card, I was at a bit of a loss about how to come up with the chunk of change for first month’s rent and security deposit. On the Yahoo La Paz Gringos group, someone had mentioned Xoom.com, a subsidiary of PayPal that specializes in transferring money from the US to recipients in other countries. Since I do not want to show up empty-handed tomorrow when I get the key to my apartment, I decided to test it out. So I sent $100 to myself. An hour later, I was at Walmart, trying to collect. Martin was paged immediately, no doubt for his command of English. It took a while, but I suspect it would have taken as long or longer anywhere, since the holdup seemed to be that the woman behind the counter had never handled one of these transactions before. The most fun part was when another clerk disappeared with my passport for ten minutes to make a copy of it. I was never actually worried about it, honest, but I had to keep listening to that internal script about not handing your passport over to a Walmart employee in a strange country. Of course, it came back safe and sound, but I felt like Lawrence of Arabia there for a little bit.

Yesterday Sasha was clearly getting stir crazy, so rather than tug her from lamppost to lamppost for an hour, I loaded her in the car and went out to check a couple more beaches. It was 10:30am, breezy and cool, so I didn’t think we’d find crowds.

First stop was Playa El Tesoro (The Treasure, named for purported pirate booty). Or actually, I hit an unnamed beach just south of that, since the sign said turn left. That was great, though, because I was the only one there and Sasha could run around without bothering anyone. It was along a small cove ringed with mangroves, so she had some ins and outs to explore. After ten minutes or so there, on to Playa Balandra.

Wow. It is a beautiful spot. The parking lot was less than half full and the beach itself not crowded at all. Mostly families with young kids. I walked south to where the people ended and let Sasha off the leash, and she bounced around happily for half an hour as I ambled toward a rocky point at the end. The waves on this beach are tiny since it’s so well protected–which also meant it wasn’t as breezy as La Paz. It’s also very shallow. So I picked my way around the point without fear of getting soaked, and came across more beach, completely deserted except for birds.

On the way back, I noticed that a stream of people was disappearing into the rocks at the north end of the beach, so I put Sasha on the leash again and we went to investigate that. Sure enough, another beach, even bigger than the one by the parking lot. People were spread out there at about fifty yard intervals. I was looking for the famous Mushroom Rock, but I didn’t spot it. Maybe you have to trek around the next point.

I think I prefer El Tecolote, for the view of Espiritu Santo and the more active surf. That, and Playa Balandra has a reputation for stiiiiing rays.

I also noticed that the surrounding hills would make for great hiking and some killer views on the hilltops, so that’s next on my list.

Saturday, 01/09. I didn’t feel like driving and it was pretty windy anyway so going to the beach wasn’t that appealing. I’d seen the serpentarium on a couple of lists of things to do and it’s not far, so…that’s what I did. It cost me 100 pesos to get in (possibly slightly inflated by my lack of Spanish, but maybe not–either way, I got my money’s worth). It’s a little zoo of mostly reptiles, but with an aviary as well, on about an eighth of an acre. Among other things, they have turtles, tortoises, rattlesnakes, many different kinds of lizards, a caiman (I’d call it an alligator, it was at least ten feet long), piranhas, parrots, parakeets, doves, a couple of chickens, and rabbits. And a couple of owls. I enjoyed all of it, but especially the aviary. You can buy little trays of seeds for the birds (or turtle food for the turtles or bunny food for the rabbits), and it was a blast taking one in the aviary and have a parrot land on me. My first try, the parrot just grabbed the tray and flew away with it (by “tray,” I mean a recycled plastic jug lid about an inch and a half in diameter). So I went back for another and was able to host two parrots and a budgie on my arm for five minutes or so.

Then I took Sasha for her second walk and on the way back stopped to look at the menu at the marina cafe. I can’t believe they don’t open until 8am. Well, one of these days.

Saturday morning I went down to the broker’s office and signed an offer on the boat. It’s a little lowball, but I have reason to believe the seller is motivated and I expect them to counteroffer. I think we both have roughly the same number in mind, but I want to make sure I don’t come in over that number, because the necessary expenses are already mounting. The bottom needs to be painted and I don’t have time to do it myself. That’s a few thousand. The standing rigging (the cables that hold the mast up and provide the support for the sails) needs to be replaced. Fortunately, the parts are already there but, again, I have neither the time nor the expertise at this point to do it myself. And the dinghy needs a new motor or, at the least, a set of oars. Those are the biggies, but it’s a boat, so there will be others.

In spite of, or maybe because of, the state of indecision I’ve been in for a couple of days–well, no, that’s not really accurate. It wasn’t indecision, it was a hesitation to act on the decision, considering what was at stake. So, let’s call it the FEAR. In spite of that, I realized that this is why I put all my stuff in storage and drove down to La Paz without knowing really a thing about it. So it would be silly to do all that and then not do the thing I came here for. So I did. And it felt great. And now I am one step closer to living on a beautiful boat in a beautiful bay by a beautiful city in a beautiful country.

And then…the doubts! I wound up reading a thread on CruisersForum about how you determine the amount you should offer for a given boat, and that seriously undermined my sense of accomplishment for the day. All of a sudden, I was worried that I’d offered too much. More research! Now!

And…I’m at least in the right ballpark. There are no statistically valid numbers for sailboat purchases. For any given manufacturer/model, especially for models over thirty years old, you are flying pretty much by the seat of your pants. Which I am willing to do. Just waiting now for the seller to respond to the offer.