STILL IN EVARISTO - REPAIRING BROKEN STUFF

Today is June 5 and we are still sitting in lovely Entrance Cove, San Evaristo. The weather is so nice, the diving so good, and the fishing so much fun that we haven't gotten around to leave. A couple of minor problems have developed that need attention so we will deal with them before we head out again.

Hurricane Alma did not recurve as much as predicted. She only came within about 250 miles SW of Cabo San Lucas. By the time she got to 18° N she was in 77° degree water and quickly lost all her strength. Alma's track was much more northerly than is typical for a East Pacific May hurricane but she never really started heading back to the NE as predicted.

The only impact Alma had on the Sea of Cortez was to increase the SE winds and swell. On Saturday night the SE wind came up to about 15 knots and the humidity went from the low 30% range to the high 80% range within about three hours. The humidity stayed above 75% until mid-day Wednesday when it started falling.

Saturday thru Tuesday nights the dew on deck was so heavy that it sounded like it was raining as the condensation dripped off the sun awning. We wanted to watch a movie on the TV/VCR but the VCR player would not run. It had a flashing light illuminated that said "the playback heads are damp." We used a hairdryer to blow hot air into the VCR tape slot. After five minutes the warning light turned off and we could watch the movie. Everything inside the boat was wet! There was condensation everywhere, the sheets on the bed were damp when we tried to sleep. When Arlene when on deck she found the cockpit seats covered with hundreds of black flies that had gotten so wet they couldn't fly and could just barely move.

This much humidity for such a long perid really surprised us since we thought we were in a dessert. We are told that these spells of moist SE air flow will occur many times during the summer.

My computer would not startup until I let it sit in the sun for a couple of hours on the morning after the humidity rose so suddenly. I thought the problem was a loose wire or corrosion so I opened up the case and found no problems. I closed the case, and naturally, the PC started up the first try.

I used the PC for a while to check mail and update the maintenance log and then shut it down. A few hours later I again tried to start the computer and nothing happened. That state lasted for several hours. One of the confusing symptoms was that the battery charge light was not lit, even when I had 19.5V on the charging plug. I was afraid that I had fried the battery somehow. When I pressed the ON button the green" power on" light would light as would the two orange lights under the battery indicators. But nothing else would happen and then the lights would go out after one to three seconds.

Once again I opened the thing up and looked for bad wires, broken ribbon cables, loose connectors. Everything looked OK. After about eight hours of chasing problems I determined it must be a problem somewhere between the button you press to start the computer and the circuit board in the computer. There was a tiny little button, a printed circuit, an 8 pin connector, a 1/2" wide ribbon cable that went into the connector, and another 8 pin connector on the motherboard in the PC.

I found that pins two and three seemed to be shorted together on the first connector. Close examination under bright light showed a very fine corrosion between the two pins. I scrapped out the corrosion and the PC starts normally again. I cleaned the contacts with electrical contact cleaner and everything worked fine until the next morning when, yet again, the PC would not start

This was pretty scary because everything we know or do is on the PC. Financial stuff, e-mail, nav logs, maintenance logs, phone numbers, addresses. I had not done a backup for three months so we were looking at a potential disaster.

Eventually, for no apparent reason, the PC started working agin. I immediately backed up the entire SONY PC to the older NEC PC.

Every time I wanted to work on the lower connector I had to remove the keyboard and one side of the small ribbon cable. Tedious work for my big fingers. As I was re-assembling the PC I had to put the keyboard back into the case. It is held in with one tiny, 1/16" bolt, about 1/4" long. I had it in the hole but the screwdriver slipped and the little black bolt dropped down into the PC, under the disk drive. I figured that might cause a problem, a metallic bolt rattling around on top of the mother board. After 15 minutes of fiddling, tipping, and praying I found the bolt on the other side of the mother board, ready for re-installation where it belongs. Boat tools are really two big for PC internals.

Yesterday afternoon I decided that the problem was due to the sleep/standby system in the PC. don't understand it, but the PC appears to be going into sleep mode when it shuts off and then won't wake up. I surmise this because if I disconnect the power cord and take the battery out of the PC for five minutes and then return power to the PC it seems to always start.

I will have to keep fiddling with this problem. Our financial information and communications with home depend on the PC. The NEC PC does serve as an adequate backup but it is four years old and has already suffered one terminal disk failure.

Here is a picture of Mirador taken from the top of the 400' hill to our NW. That is Punta Evaristo and the Canal de San Jose beyond the point. The six-mile wide canal separates Baja California from 12 mile long Isla San Jose.

Our more pressing problem is the La Vac toilet. The gasket between the seat and the bowl is dried and cracked. There are two tears in it that are each about three inches long. These tears allow air to be sucked into the bowl when we are trying to pump it out. No vacumn - no flushing.

A La Vac toilet is very simple and very reliable, except for the gasket for which we do not have a replacement.

The toilet outlet is attached to a Henderson Whale bilge pump. When the seat and lid are closed you operate the manual bilge pump which sucks the toilet bowl empty, creating a vacumn. The water intake line allows water to be sucked into the toilet to fill the vacumn. The more you pump the more water gets sucked into the bowl and flushed out thru the pump and the discharge line.

But everything depends on an air tight seal between the seat and the bowl and the seat and the lid. Those two gaskets have to fit perfectly and one of them is now torn. For now we are using the anchor wash down pump and hose to fill the toilet bowl as we pump it out. That works very well but the 4 GPM washdown pump can't begin to fill the bowl as fast as the Whale bilge pump empties it. The other problem is that the water from the wash down hose can splash out of the bowl if you are not careful. And, the green hose hanging down into the head from the overhead hatch is a not entirely attractive or convenient addition to the head.

I was able to talk to a boat in La Paz, 67 miles south, via VHF. They are trying to find out if one of the marine stores can order the gaskets. Coast Chandlery at Marina Palmira thinks they can get the gaskets with a two day delivery schedule. We will find out tomorrow.

What would life be like on a boat if we didn't have Marine Sanitation devices to worry about??

I finally followed my brother Jim's suggestion about the two 8D house batteries. It had gotten so bad that at night with both 8Ds fully charged we would drop to 12.2 V by 10PM, with only a 4 amp load. When the refrigerator ran at night, 9 amps on low power, the house bank would drop below 12 volts.

The solar panels had fully recharged the two 8Ds to 13.2 volts and the Trace C40 charge controller had gone into float mode. I then unhooked both 8D batteries from any load and from each other. Within 10 minutes the forward battery was at 12.95V while the aft 8D was at 11.95V. After an hour the aft battery was at 11.00V while the forward battery stayed at 12.95. I guess the aft battery has a shorted cell.

The aft 8D is now disconnected so we are using just the forward 8D. The single 8D voltage stays above 12.6 with a 10 amp load at night with no charging source.

I guess we'll be able to get thru the summer with just one 8D. The battery is fully recharged by noon each day. We use about 50 amp hours from dark until the sun is high enough to start recharging the battery. At 7AM the single 8D is at 12.7 or 12.75V so everything seems OK for now. I should have separated the two batteries months ago when Jim first suggested it. The problem is that we will still have to replace both batteries at once. But, I hope, that can wait.

The solar panels are astounding! All the batteries are fully charged and the freezer plate in the refrigerator is frozed by mid-day. We can then run the Spectra 15 GPH water maker (17 amps) for a couple of hours while still putting a couple of amps into the batteries. We have virtually unlimited electricity and water. If only the same could be said for beer and toilet water.

Lots of interesting stories are being broadcast from the boats making the 710 mile trip north from Cabo San Lucas to San Diego. The weather has been pretty difficult. Cloudy, cold, fog, 20 - 25 knots and 8' swell from the NNW. The heading from Cedros Island to San Diego is 327° True for 315 miles. Anyone going from Cabo to San Diego was really suffering as they pounded directly to weather.

Simplicity managed to "transfer" 50 of their 60 gallons diesel over the side somewhere between Santa Maria and Abreojeoes. I guess they have a big tank and little tank and were sucking from their big tank and had the fuel return set to their already full small tank.

Scrimshaw, a four year old 45' sailboat, lost their diesel injection pump south of Santa Maria. That's the 2nd injection pump that has failed them.

Natasha lost her inner forestay and a prop blade north of Cedros.

Arron, a single hander on Brass Ring, became so weak from his Lukemia he had to be evacuated from the boat north of Cedros. The Mexican Navy towed it back to the SW anchorage on Cedros. Arron went to San Diego where he got treatment and then returned to Cedros with a crew.

All the Marine nets and the USCG are looking for two boats outbound from Mexico. Patricia Belle, a 65' schooner, left from mainland Mexico for Hilo on May 11 and has not been heard from in several weeks. That trip should have taken about 20 days.

La Toscana is a 48' powerboat, or maybe motorsailor, who left Turtle Bay on May 31st headed for San Diego. That is a 350 mile trip and no one has seen or been able to raise La Toscana in the last seven days. She has not checked into either Ensenada or San Diego which are the only two ports between Turtle Bay and Southern California.

Diving here is fantastic. In the last week I have had run-ins with all kinds of sea creatures.

-Two Panamic Green Moray Eels- about 3' and 4' long. I offered it my finger and it kinda nosed it but wasn't much interested.
-Tiger Reef Eel
-Zebra Moray eel
-Big octopus who had a huge collection of empty clam shells in front of his cave

-Shovelnose Guitarfish (Rhinobatos productus) They are sharks and hide in the sand bottom. They look like skates or rays and are about three or four feet long. They are supposed to be good eating if you keep just the wings and the heavy tail. But, I can't bring myself to spear one 'cause they just lie there on the bottom, half buried in the sand. Even when I poke them with the spear they don't move.

-Nice eating size lobster. He was just sticking the front half of his body out of his cave when I swam above it with my spear ready to go. I pulled the spear back to tension the surgical tubing for a "can't miss" shot. Then the rubber band broke! I threw the spear at the lobster from 10' above but it just bounced off his head.

- Several 10 or 20 pound leopard groupers. They are excellent eating. The smaller groupers, less than two pounds, are easy to get within spear range. The big ones are very wary - I guess that is why they are big.

I have had a bunch of close encounters with round sting rays. They fly along the bottom but come up to many feet off the bottom at times. Sometimes I don't see them swimming along and almost bump into them as they come out of the grass or weeds. They are anxious to avoid me and flit away but I am afraid I may bump into one someday.

I speared a 20" three pound stripped mullet (Mugil cephalus) the other day. They are supposed to be very good eating but don't yield much meat. We only got about 8 oz of meat from a 3 pound fish. There are lots of mullets to spear. I hide in the grass, just below the surface, with just my spear and head sticking out. They swim within 3 feet of me. But, they are very quick! Unless they are perfectly broadside to me the spear just bounces off as they twist or they dodge the spear.

The one I got I first hit with two tines and pierced it's body. But, since the tines don't have barbs, it wiggled off the spear . I kept after it and got a second shot about a minute later. That time it didn't wiggle off. It's head is very hard bone and it's scales are really tough. Stalking them is like hunting small game in heavy underbrush. They stay in the weeds and grass most of the time so I have to use the vegetation as cover, but it also interferes with the spear.

The strangest and easiest fish we have speared is the Reef Coronetfish (Fistularia commersonii). It is a long tube about 3' long and about 3" across. There are big schools of them on the surface around the boat most of the time. I speared a big one off the swim step. I just stand there and wait for one to swim by and poke it with a spear. It is very easy to clean. Arlene cuts off the head and tail and squeezes the guts out. Arlene fried it and then we just flake the meat off the spine and ribs. Nice firm white meat that comes off in big chunks. It appears these will be a good source of food 'cause they are always around the boat. But it does feel like we're spearing a pet since we see the same ones for days at a time.

I also caught a coronet fish while jigging off the reef. They are voracious predators who suck smaller fish into their long narrow snouts.

I have been using "Sabki rigs" to jig for fish. A sabki is five or six 1" or 1/2" artificial shrimp, each on a small hook. They are each tied to the single leader, about 6" apart. You put a small weight on a leader off the bottom of the rig and then bounce it along the bottom or just off the bottom.

I use our lightest spinning rod with 10# line. I caught a 20" three pound Triggerfish the other day using the Sabki. That was fun! Triggerfish are great fighters and it took about 10 minutes to get him in. The poor little rod was doubled over whenever he made a run. Triggerfish are delicious and yield a lot of good meat.

Last night I caught ten fish in 90 minutes just before sunset. Unfortunately most were too small to be worth trying to eat. I did catch three barred Pargos and a rockfish of some kind that were all about 10" and 1 to 1 ½ pounds. I didn't keep any of them but Arlene now tells me to bring the 1 pounders hope so we can have a fish fry. I caught two Sergeant Majors at the same time. I was using a six hook Sabki rig. Just as I tried to bring the first fish out of the water a 2nd hit the lower hook. But neither was over 6".

The bioluminesence at night is astounding! There are hundreds of fish swimming around the boat in the dark. They splash and croak, in general making a lot of noise. Since they are all surface feeding, or swimming just below the surface, they all leave streaks and spots of light in the water. The coronet fish leave long trails of light about 12" under water. They are very quick and dart after the smaller fish.

Occasionally a school of small fish will get excited under water and make an explosion of light that starts as a small ball of light a couple of feet across and about 10 feet under water. The ball of light rapidly expands upward until it reaches the surface where it may be 20 feet across. It looks like a mushroom cloud coming from the sea bottom. Pretty neat!

The weather has been exceptional. The air temp never gets above 90 during the day and gets into the low 70s at night. There is always a 10 knot breeze blowing to keep the air in the boat moving. The only problem is the 80% humidity does feel awlful damp at night.

We will have to decide to head north or south in the next day or so. If we have to go back to La Paz to pick up the toilet seat gaskets we'll have to make the 67 mile trip when the gaskets arrive. If Coast can't get them on a rush schedule it may take up to three weeks for the gaskets to get to La Paz.