THE WOES OF MIRADOR

We have been anchored here in Puerto el Gato for almost two weeks. We arrived here mid-afternoon July 9 with a dead alternator, dead voltage regulator, no battery monitoring system, a GPS that won't talk to the computer when the boat is moving, and no gasoline for the outboard. Since then the stock market has plummeted, our refrigerator compressor is acting weird, our computer continues to shut down at odd times, the NE swell rolls us to and froe most afternoons and nights, and we've run out of eggs and produce. Thanks goodness we still have lots of beer, Crystal Light, diet Coke, beautiful weather and scenery.

Puerto el Gato (The Cats Port) is a very pretty anchorage. We are parked in 22' of sometimes murky/sometimes clear water between two reefs, each about 100 yards away. Just after we arrived I dove on the anchor and found it buried as usual. Then I swam about 50 yards towards the reef on our east, sea side, of the cove, and found a smaller reef that is only 9'- 10' down at almost high tide. The strong nighttime winds are from the WSW and could push us a little too close to the rocks but haven't so far. The reefs offer great diving from 3' to 25'. They are teeming with fish and other neat stuff. There are lots of green Moray and white spotted eels.

The water is finally getting clear and warm. These reefs are so cool - there are caves and crevices full of fish and stuff. I can dive to 15' and stay down for 30 or 40 seconds. There is a lot to see - but the fish all know about spears and will not stay in range.

The bay is surrounded from SE thru the south and west to the NW by pink and red sandstone cliffs and whitish-gray gravel beaches. We go for a hike or run every afternoon or evening. We've seen coyote, rabbits, quail, a bright red Cardinal like bird, and cattle. During one walk we heard a plaintive cattle call 50 yards to our south. A few seconds later we heard a stronger call from a distance to our north. Then we saw a young heifer running thru the brush calling for its mother who was answering from the north. Pretty strange here in the desert.

Running in this desert is tough. The temperature is usually in the 90's, there is almost no shade, and lots of ups and downs. The ground is covered with large and small rocks that require close attention to avoid sprained ankles. The biggest obstacles are the plants, all of which have thorns, stickers, or very sharp branches. It is impossible to run more than 20 yards in a straight line. There are big and small hills and arroyos to climb up and down and cross through.

The scenery is spectacular with views from the tops of the hills that extend 20 miles east into the Sea of Cortez and 20 miles west into the Sierra Giganta Mountains. Running in the desert is never boring.

The weather is still very pleasant - mid 90s during the day and upper 70s at night. There is almost always a cooling breeze blowing. We finally put up the sun awning yesterday - the first time it's been up since we left The Hook four weeks ago. We see occasional clouds, but never any rain. Every night there is a lightening show to our north. Usually it is over the NE horizon and we just see the reflection of the lightening on the cloud tops on the horizon. The humidity varies from 30% to 90% - I still can't figure out how the humidity can be that high in a desert.

When we told people we were staying in the Sea of Cortez they told us about the heat, the storms, the wind. I know it is still early in the summer; but it is hard to imagine nicer weather. Some nights are a little warm if the wind dies but the Windscoop in the overhead hatch above the bed really brings in any breeze that might be blowing. The cabin temperature seldom exceeds 87 during the day and drops to the high 70s by sunrise.

I suppose it will get a lot hotter for a couple months but for now we are really enjoying this weather.

Here are some of those sharp poky things we keep running into as we run

We anchored as far inside the south part of this little cove as we dared go. We thought that if we kept a reef to our east that the swell would be diminished and our rolling at anchor would be minimized. Boy were we wrong! The wind blows from the SE to SW about 90% of the time. But the swell comes from the ENE to NE about 90% of the time.

The swells here are terrible at times. A couple of nights ago, at about 3 AM, the swell started in from the NE. The 3-knot wind was from the SE so we were broadside to the swell. The dishes in the cupboards were sliding enough to bang and rattle. Books were flying off the bookshelf, and stuff in the cockpit was thrown off the seats. That lasted until about 6 AM.

The swell was still pretty bad the next day so we set our stern anchor to keep the bow pointed NE into the swell. That works OK but the prevailing late evening wind is off shore from the SSW and hits us almost broadside when the stern anchor prevents Mirador from swinging toward the SW. Most nights the evening wind is less than 10-knots but on some nights it gusts into the 20-knot range.

The swell problem is much worse when it is high tide since then the reef is entirely submerged and the swell rolls in over the reef.

We are starting to have trouble with the Isotherm water-cooled refrigerator compressor. It shuts down with a compressor hi-temp alarm. This only happens during the day when we need it most. I read 114 degrees F on top of the compressor when it is running normally. The manual doesn't specify acceptable operating temperatures. I'm watching for another hi-temp shut down so I can measure the compressor temperature just after it shuts down. The manual says the incoming cooling water temp must be below 93 degrees F. I am currently reading 83 F at the pump inlet.

We use a Radio Shack Infrared Temperature Sensor (part #910-5390). This gadget is one of the most useful test instruments I own. I sure am glad brother Jim taught me the joys of IR temperature sensing.

The compressor also shuts down with a low voltage (11.5V is the low limit) alarm. I attached the Fluke Digital Volt Meter to the power terminal at the compressor. At 3 PM with nothing else running there was 13.7V when the compressor was NOT running. When the compressor runs the voltage drops to 12.8 - 12.9V. The cables, direct to the battery are 10 gauge which, should result in a 0.4V drop with 12 amps over 17 feet, one way. With the compressor on low power I see momentary voltage sags to 11.5 down to 10.9V. They last less than a second but eventually one lasts long enough that the Isotherm microprocessor controller shuts down the system. It does not restart automatically - we have to shut off the system, wait 5 seconds, then restart the system.

All I can think of is that the compressor motor is stalling and pulling the amperage way up so the voltage drops. I'm worried the compressor may be getting to the end of its life. That should not be the case since it is only 5 years old. Isotherm gave me a brand new compressor in 1997 because their older model used more current than advertised. The Fluke DVM can only measure 10 amps but our digital clamp on meter may work since it can sense 200 amps and does a Peak hold reading. I installed it on the positive lead and hope to catch the amperage reading at the next shut down for low voltage. There has been no problem now for three days.

While coming up here, all of 8 miles, from El Cobre the alternator quit, as did the battery monitoring system. I spent the first two days here trying to fix those problems.

No alternator output -WHY? I thought it was the torn 20-wire ribbon cable between the regulator and the Link2000R battery monitor and microprocessor. When I wiggled the torn section - it would turn the regulator "charging" LED on and off and the alternator field voltage would go to zero. I cut the cable in 1/2 to get rid of the torn section. Now I'm having trouble getting the connector back on the ribbon cable. I've done a whole bunch of those in the past but this cable has a really hard insulation, or maybe it got hard in seven years of use.

I have tried several times to put the end connector back on the cable. The insulation is so tough that the pins in the connector bend a little and touch the adjacent wires. When I check continuity I always find shorts between a couple of adjacent pins-thus the blown 2A fuses in the battery sense lead that also provides power for the monitoring system. Two of the pins in the connector have broken after three attempts to connect it to the cable.

So what I need is: a 20 connector ribbon cable that is 25mm (31/32")wide - what are the chances of finding that in Baja? Brother Jim ordered one from Xantrex (Heart Inverters) and will try to get it to me but it is tough to get parts down here. We have four options.

I talked, via HAM radio, to a cruiser who lives near Puerto Escondido - our next major stop and only 15 miles from Loreto. He said the options for getting the cable to us are:

- mail (USPS/Mexican mail) general delivery Loreto. He said that it takes three to six weeks for the mail to get from San Diego to Loreto.

- DHL to Loreto (3 days)

- Find a cruiser driving south from San Diego

- Jim drives to Tijuana and puts the package on the bus headed south - it can be in Loreto in 24 hours

We are doing fine without the cable so only the DHL option makes sense - depending on the price. The last package I had shipped from the US to Mexico via DHL was $55 for one pound of mail.

While motoring here I disconnected the Heart voltage regulator and plugged in the old manual ferro-resonant regulator. There were still no amps coming out of the alternator. While testing voltage at the alternator I noticed some bright and big sparks. After we parked the boat I took the alternator off and found a really screwed up positive output terminal. The bolt that comes through the alternator frame and is the positive terminal for the output current was loose enough to wiggle in a circle and touch the alternator frame, thus grounding the output. Not good?

The hole thru the frame looks like someone took an old badly worn countersink and went to work with it. I suspect all the cutting is from arcing. The insulator ring that is supposed to support the bolt was more than 50% burnt away. What was left looked like it had been exposed to a lot of flame and heat, black and crumbly. I opened the alternator up and inspected the inside, which looks fine, no arcing, good insulation, good brushes and springs. Almost like new.

This was the alternator I had custom built in spring of '99 by a marine alternator shop. It only has 300 hours on it.

I tried to back the lock nut off the old positive terminal bolt so I could take the bolt/terminal out and slide a new insulator, heat shrink or teflon tubing, over it and then use a nylon counter sunk washer as the external insulator. The nut was welded to the bolt - I think from the arcing since there were threads above and below it. I used two box wrenches but managed to shear the bolt with only about 30 pounds torque. It tore in a spiral so I think it was pretty well damaged by the heat.

I found a new bolt, put two layers of heat shrink on it. The nylon washer fit perfectly as did a nylock lock nut and another nylock to secure the positive battery terminal. I put it all together and checked the continuity from the positive terminal to the negative and case. No matter how I wiggled or pulled on the positive terminal there was no path to the frame.

I put the whole thing back on the engine and ran it without the field wire hooked up AND with no cable between the positive battery terminal and the alternator. No problems. (a thought occurred to me while trying to reassemble the alternator brushes BEFORE I remembered the brushes pin hole - if the alternator won't spin there is no way to drive the water pump for the Yanmar cooling system-I hope that is not right! I guess I'd better look up the water pump in the Yanmar shop manual and find out if it is gear driven). Note: I just checked the shop manual. The Yanmar raw water pump is gear driven but the fresh water pump is driven off a pulley that is turned by the belt running around the alternator. So - no alternator - no fresh water cooling for the diesel.

After running the diesel for five minutes I again checked the alternator positive terminal and found a dead short to the alternator frame and naturally the boat ground. No amount of wiggling would unground the positive terminal. I wonder if there is some arcing by-product or something else loose in there that is shorting the positive internal frame to the grounded external frame.

While I was doing all this, amazingly it only took two hours for the whole operation with no swearing and no loss of blood, Arlene was looking for the good $700 Silver Bullet alternator that we have never been able to find since storing it before we left Tacoma. No Luck - emptied the quarterberth and the water heater compartment. Nothing - but she did find the spare voltage regulator. Just like the one we have but NO ribbon cable. Who would have thought that little cable would the part we needed?

She finally checked the bottom of the aft cedar closet under all the foul weather gear and boots, now that's useful stuff down here, and found the good alternator. I reinstalled the Silver Bullet and it works perfectly.

The Link2000 battery monitor is also not working because of the torn ribbon cable so I have the Fluke digital voltage meter hooked to the battery terminals and laying in its foam case on top of the engine. I just open the top step, turn on the light and meter, and read the voltage. Accurate but clumsy and there is no way to read the small diesel start battery voltage nor any amps.

I replaced the Link2000R voltage regulator, which requires input from the Link2000R control panel via the broken ribbon cable, with a nearly identical Heart Incharge voltage regulator that is a stand alone unit. Spares and more Spares - don't leave home without them.

The problems we are having with the alternator and voltage regulator prove the saying - "Deferred Maintenance is Guaranteed Trouble." My maintenance log shows that I first noted the torn ribbon cable in February and the alternator problem in March. We were in La Paz for four months, off and on, between March and June and could have easily dealt with both problems while there. But, for no reason I can fathom, I just forgot or neglected to fix the two problems. Lesson learned - I hope!

Thank goodness for the solar panels. They do such a good job of supplying all our power.

The other day I was cleaning the watermaker pre-filter housings and dropped one of the rubber O-rings that seal the screw on filter housing to the mount. The water maker cannot work if there is any air sucked into the water supply. Without the gasket the filter leaks air like crazy. Where did I drop the O-ring?

In 23' of water - where else?

As soon as I dropped it I dove after it cause it didn't sink very fast, but was unable to find it. I put on my mask and fins and started swimming in circles trying to see the O-ring. After about ten minutes I saw it lying on the bottom - right on top of a white rock. That black 5" diameter O-ring really stood out against the background of a white rock. What a break! A free dive to 23' is about as deep as I can go, but I did, and the water maker is back in good shape.

Here is a view of Mirador looking into Puerto el Gato from Punta Botello whichm protects the SE part of the bay:

Now for my regular Moorings Charter boat stories:

A very nice couple from Ft. Wayne, Indiana pulled in with a Mooring 465 and anchored about 1/4 mile from us. I dinghied over and introduced myself and chatted with them for a while. They were kind enough to give us a gallon of gasoline which solves some of the problem we have since the pangareo never paid us back for the 2.5 gallons he "borrowed" from us. He lives about a mile from here and promised he would bring the gasoline to me in Puerto el Gato.

The evening after we first arrived here a Moorings 465 started to drop anchor 20 yards from us. I am not kidding - 20 yards -I could have handed them a beer off the end of my boat hook. The bay is 200 yards wide and a 1/2 mile long and we were the only boat here. I yelled to them that we "had 120 feet of chain out, we were sitting right on top of our anchor, and you directly downwind of us in the prevailing evening wind." Their answer was - "don't worry we'll also put out 120' of chain"

I was speechless - before I could say anything their chain was out and they were in the cockpit for drinks.

I went below to work on the alternator. An hour later I went back on deck and found them 1/4 mile away sitting 20 feet from another Moorings boat. Strange!

Now - WHY haven't I posted a WEB update for almost three weeks?

Because we are spending much of out time repairing broken things as described above.

But the major reason is that we have to re-evaluate our entire plan for cruising on Mirador. As with any cruising plan, our financial plans and budgets didn't last much beyond the first year.

Cruising requires constant changes in plans and lifestyles and we must now consider some serious changes due to the precipitous decline in the stock market and our investments.

I quit working in June 1999 in order to prepare Mirador for this cruise and began withdrawing funds from my retirement account in July 2000. Our problem is that the value of my retirement account has declined almost 46% (not counting my withdrawals) since its maximum value was reached in the spring of 2000. I was only 51 years old when I started taking money from my retirement account. Therefore, the IRS will not allow me to change the withdrawal amount for at least five years (2005). At the current withdrawal rate, with the market continuing to decline, we will deplete the account before we want to sell Mirador and either get a smaller boat or return to a shoreside life on a permanent basis.

We have plenty of money to last through our entire retirement; the problem is how to live until we want to sell Mirador and/or start using some of our other retirement assets. We want to leave those other assets untouched until at least 2014 to allow them to recover from the stock market debacle of the last 30 months. So, the question is what to live on for the next eight years while drawing from only one account?

We have a computerized budgeting and budget forecast system that I have built over the last 12 years, using Microsoft EXCEL. The current version contains three workbooks; with a total of 26 spread sheets.

We have been running endless variations of our budget for the next 10 years with all kinds of guesses about what kind of return our investments will yield. The results, as you might guess, are confusing. We need to decide how to deal with the possibility of the market continuing to decline this year and then showing little growth next year. Our budget is fairly rigid since over 85% of it is: boat payments, boat and medical insurance, US income tax, boat maintenance, and food. We have little room to significantly reduce our expenditures.

At this time, after the near record losses in the stock market last week, Arlene has decided to return to work. We will leave Mirador in dry storage at San Carlos, Sonora Mexico sometime in mid-August and then make our way back to Tacoma, Washington. We will rent an apartment in Tacoma and Arlene will return to work by early September.

I'll come back to Mirador in late -September to mid-October and cruise south for a while. After New Years I'll have to decide what to do with my life and Mirador. My options appear to be:

-continue on south with the intent of getting to Florida within two years

-cruise the Mexican Gold Coast until next spring when I'd return to the Sea of Cortez

-bring Mirador back to San Diego in spring '03 and sell her.

I plan to fly back to Tacoma every three or four months to spend time with Arlene, but, at least for now my intention is to keep cruising.

At this point we have not been to a store, village, or even fish camp for 39 days and we've been living on the anchor for over eight months. Most of the permanent cruisers here leave their boat every six to eight months and return to the States. Since we sold our home and our car was stolen after we left San Diego we have no transportation in the States and no place to live when we return to visit.

We've only been gone from Tacoma a little over a year but really do miss seeing our friends and family. We'd like to be able to visit Southern California, Washington, Maryland, and SW Florida several times a year without the expense of airplanes, car rentals, motels, and restaurants. Before the latest stock market crash we had decided to buy an inexpensive 28' to 32' motorhome and spend three or four months a year land cruising while we leave Mirador somewhere in Mexico. Living on the anchor for many months at a time, in a third world country like Baja California, is very hard work and we had decided we needed a way to get off the boat for a month at a time.

That plan is still possible if we assume that our investments don't lose too much more money this year and then have significant positive gains during the 2003 - 2008 period. However, Arlene is convinced that our US investments will continue to decline in value for a while longer and then will not start growing again for several years. She feels she must return to work, a good salary, and excellent benefits. It is hard to fault that logic. So, a motorhome for land cruising is probably not in our plans for this year.

Our decision about what to do with Mirador will depend on how the stock market does during the next 20 months, how I feel about single handing for extended periods of time, and how Arlene and I feel about being separated for months at a time. Arlene loves the heat, solitude, and fishing here in the Sea but she has lost all faith in the US stock market.

We haven't seen a grocery store in almost six weeks so we'll have to head north to Aqua Verde, 18 miles, where there is a small tienda that has produce and eggs, the two items we've been without for a week now. We'll then go to Puerto Escondido, (another 22 miles), where there is a much larger store.

After Escondido we'll stop at Santa Rosalia to pick up the package that another cruiser left there for us. After that stop we'll be off to San Carlos on the Mexican mainland. San Carlos is a total of 220 miles from here so we'll have an easy three week cruise over there.

I think we'll head off to Aqua Verde tomorrow, Tuesday July 23.