April 1, 2010. April Fool's day. We had a spot of bother while traveling SE along the El Salvador coast toward the Gulf of Fonseca, attempting to raise the mail sail. User error. Details are unimportant. However, if any of you dear readers are ever performing some task on a boat and you encounter an…
Meet the top men of Total Yacht Works in Mazatlan. Up first, we have the cool, calm and taciturn Bob Buchanan from The Great White North. Yanmar expert, takes very good care of his clients, gives each boat lots of hands-on attention. He owns and lives aboard a sailboat, himself. He is a serious-minded man.…
We returned to Mazatlán late this past summer, not only to hide somewhere for potentially the worst part of hurricane season, but also to visit the fine mechanics at Total Yacht Works. They'd done work for us before and the timing of our return coincided nicely with Yanmar's recommended 2000-hour engine maintenance, so we decided…
It was our 7-year-old 9.8hp Tohatsu dinghy motor that failed. The one that we'd just paid 600 pesos (about $46 US)* to have overhauled in San Carlos. Turns out, it hadn't been. * 300 pesos for the cab ride from Guaymas to San Carlos, carrying the dinghy motor; plus 300 pesos for the overhaul. I…
It's high time I told the details of our trip around the upper Sea of Cortez in June & July, 2009. We'd wanted to explore the northern part of the Sea of Cortez because (1) we hadn't done that yet and (2) we were keen on sailing south from Mazatlan in November 2009 to Central…
We left the sportfishing skiff we’d towed to Timbabichi in the care of the two pangas that guided them in to the shallow part of the anchorage. We assumed all was now well, and planned to follow up with the two fellows in the morning. The next day, about 0730, we saw the neighboring ketch…
VHF 16 came alive: “Anybody copy?” It sounded to us like the typical gringo boater, unfamiliar with radio protocols, was trying to check if his radio were functioning by calling for whichever other boater might happen to be in range, to tell him how well his signal was being received, and from how far away.…
Act I, Scene I. Somewhere in the Sea of Cortez. Morning on The Fox at anchor. Belowdecks, in the salon. "Darling, there appears to be a spot of water in the Dry Bilge." "Taste it, My Sweet – is it fresh, or salty?" "It tastes of salt, Love. Whence comes it, thinks you?" "I shall…
So. There we were in 57 feet of water in Bahia Agua Verde, with a busted anchor windlass. GB believed after some serious testing* that the problem lay in the electric windlass motor. Which, fortunately, was heavy but portable when next we were at a port with some repair opportunities. GB manfully raised the 66-lb.…
So, we’re out of Seattle again after GB worked on the raw water/engine systems failure for 9 days. The primary dilemma was the failure of multiple engine system components – either sequential or coincidental, impossible to tell. Local marine-engine pundits and some experienced mechanics were unanimous in saying, "Gee, we’ve never seen this before!" Here’s…