Guaymas Mar/Apr 2013

Since it seems we will be residents of Guaymas this season, we spent many days doing as the locals.  Every Wednesday there was a “street market” called a “ a Tianguis” where they sold not only fresh produce, but also tools, clothes, furniture and most anything you could imagine. On Saturdays, there was another one within walking distance of the yard, so instead of Trish and I going for our walk around the neighbourhood, we would walk to the market.  This one seemed to specialize in brand name clothes, I’m sure most of the product came from the second hand stores in the US.  Then on Sundays, the neighbouring town of Empalme holds a huge market, probably about 10 blocks long.

We stopped and chatted with this lady and admired the bouganvilla outside of her home.  Just couldn't convince her to pose for a picture.

We were at one just before Easter and were greeted by the Deer Dancers many times.  Rumor has it that the dancers re-create the hunt for deer, one of them wearing a deer head and skin, their legs wrapped in shells which chime in time with the flutes and drums.  As well as entertainment, the markets provide a great spot for a mid-day snack, tortillas, tacos, antojitos and a meeting place for many of the cruisers

As well as entertainment, the markets provide a great spot for a mid-day snack, tortillas, tacos, antojitos..

and a meeting place for many of the cruisers

  The dry storage marina where we have the boat this year is in the “low rent” district of Guaymas. The owner is making great strides to improve conditions on his property and has recently expanded the yard across the road. He is presently building new washroom/laundry facilities and has spent considerable advertizing dollars on a huge billboard sign near San Carlos.

The word is spreading fast, and he was very busy hauling boats in and out during the last week of our stay.  Some of the boats in this yard have been hauling out here for 3 or4 years now, and some have been here in dry dock for much longer.

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There are lots of Canadian boats here in Gabriels yard, mostly from BC and Alberta, but this year there is a sailboat hauling out here flying the Quebec flag.  We met Louis & Perri on s/v Perilou ll, he is originally from Pierrefonds, Que and she from the UK.  They have been living aboard and  sailing for years, but this is the first time for them hauling out in and leaving the boat in Mexico.  We spent several evenings with them and emptied a few bottles of wine while we shared our stories together. 

Our "Sail Loft" in front of Gabriel's office

Another major project this season was to sew up a new bimini cover.  The sunbrella fabric on the old one had been repaired a few times, but was sadly in need of replacement.  We had hoped to buy a couple of 2 x 4”s  and sheet of plywood to fashion a makeshift table to work on, but found that wood products in Mexico are very expensive, So, we found a fairly clean spot of cement in front of Gabriel’s office to lay out the new fabric, and our painter



 We had no sooner got the new bimini in place and laced up when we realized we had just created a nice cozy place for a birds nest...guess we may have to re-design the lacing, or we will not only have bird poop on the deck, but in the cockpit as well !  While we had the sewing machine  set up, we also made a sun cover for the transom, and modified some our existing sun covers. 

Francisco loaned us his version of what he called “burritos” aka donkeys.  They were actually the remains of a pontoon from a catamaran, but they worked very well for us,giving us a place right below the boat to set up the sewing machine.

And at certain times of the day, the boat even gave us a little shade

 
 





































It took Don the better part of a day to re-install the solar panels on top of the new bimini, and he really didn't need my help, 











so while he was busy there, I did a load of laundry...by hand on these wash tubs. 

 and then watched a soccer game that was being played in the school field behind the boat.











Aside from taking in the scenery on our daily walks, we also got to practice our Spanish.  Some days we had two young girls joins us, and we also met Tio Juan who runs a little tienda beside one of the schools.  We visited with him often, and he invited us to his house for dinner one night.  He has a big home, with a bit of a beach and has a pet parrot out back.  He is a bit of a sailing afficianado, and had read the stories about Josh Slocum, and had many issues of Cruising World and other yachting magazines around the house.  He had also been given a small sailboat by another cruiser several years ago and was trying to learn to sail in the Sea of Cortez.  He had dreams of building a bigger boat, so was quite interested in hearing about our boat building stories.  Unfortunately, our Spanish is still not good enough to carry on a detailed conversation, so we gave him our website and he was going to Google translate it all.  That will probably keep him occupied for many weeks to come. 

Another season has come to an end and we have to say goodbye to Prairie Seashell and the sights and sounds of Mexico.   But, thanks to our friends Jim & Judy, who we met several years ago in LaPaz, we won’t have to take the bus to Phoenix.  They are driving down to San Carlos for a few days, and will take us back to their place in Phoenix before we head back to Calgary.


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San Carlos/Guaymas Jan/Feb 2013

January 10, 2013, Greg drove us to the airport for 6PM flight.  Glad we didn’t have an early morning flight or it would probably have been delayed due to the huge snowstorm last night.  Fortunately, we were only delayed by about ½ an hour and it was a fairly calm flight, until about 20 minutes before landing when we experienced some major turbulents.   Picked up our luggage and got out of the airport as quickly as possible and made it to the Tufesa Bus station with only 20 minutes to spare to catch our bus to Guaymas.    We ate our Tufesa Executivo bagged lunch of cheese and crackers and slept most of the way to the border.   Again this year, it was a very easy process to get our visa’s, then pressed the button at the immigration desk, got the green light, so back on the bus.  Each seat on this bus has it’s own TV, so we watched a few BBC documentaries, all in Spanish of course, and tried to sleep again until Guaymas.  Arrived around 7:30 am and dragged our luggage a few blocks to the Armida Inn for their buffet breakfast, no rush to get to San Carlos as Prairie SeaShell isn’t scheduled to be put into the work yard until 11:00 this morning.  We did arrive at the yard a bit early, but only had about ½ hour to wait until she was settled in and ready for us to come aboard
We got the tarps off, the bikes down, the suitcases up, turned on the fridge and headed to the new Santa Fe store for groceries.

 This years chores included a touch up on the transom with Rid Rot, as we had noticed a water stain around some of the wooden plugs.  Batteries are always an issue it seems , and this year was no different,  Don did some fiddling with the wires and switches and we will see if we can get them to take a charge. The work yard in San Carlos has had a major overhaul after the damage done by Hurricane Jimena a few years. Nice clean cement work area, water and power at every site .

Took off the propeller, cleaned it, greased it, replaced some bearings and polished it up…good as new! Which is more than I can say for our heater…we took the pump home last summer and Don replaced seals etc, got the furnace working this year, but now it leaks…guess we are just not meant to be here where it is cold enough for a furnace…gotta get further south !

We are all set now to leave the work yard, crew had us up on the trailer and back down the road and in to the water in half an hour.

All went well, engine started and we just motored over to Dock A9 where we can stay until Don gets his broken tooth fixed.  Don biked over to the dentist , the earliest he can get in is Tuesday, almost a week from now, and it will be another week to 10 days before the crown is ready.  Looks like last nights yummy caramel popcorn is going to delay us a few weeks. So this will be our home for a few weeks , but no fear, we can always find things that need to be done to keep us busy while we wait.

So this will be our home for a few weeks , but no fear, we can always find things that need to be done to keep us busy while we wait.










 First, we will remove the sunbrella from the bimini as most of it has succumbed to the sun and salt and has rotted at most of the seams.  We brought new sunbrella to sew up a new one, but first we will re-design the bimini.  When we first built it, we had assumed it would have to be folded down while under sail, but in the six years we have been here, we have never taken it down, not even during the storms coming down the Washington & Oregon coast, so guess we never will.  We are going to re-design it so that we have a little more maneuvering room around the winches,  and also make the top a little more level so we can mount two of the solar panels up there.  Presently two of our solar panels hang over the rails, and they are difficult to get around and putting a lot of strain on the toe rails.

 That done, we took the bus into Guaymas to track down Francisco the painter who we spoke to last season.  Found him at Marina Sinugular in Guaymas, and booked our paint job as soon as he finishes the boat he is presently working on which should be around Feb 15th.  Perfect timing since Carnival finishes on Feb 12th, and we really didn’t want to be in Guaymas for Carnival again…too noisy !!!
Another trip into Guaymas to buy some aluminium angle iron to finish mounting the solar panels on the re-designed bimini , and a stop at the new Home Depot to buy some wire to mount the wind charger we got last year, and to re-wire the solar panels. 

There are very few people living on their boats in this marina, so not quite the social scene as in Mazatlan, so we have been able to get our chores done in a timely fashion.  Apart from one night when we went to the Yacht Club to watch a presentation on the Sea of Cortez hosted by UNESCO, and a brief visit with a m/v Options who were going to Tucson shortly we really didn’t visit with many people on the dock.  Options is going to bring us some rice pasta from Trader Joes, and some tapioca flour which I need to make many of the Gluten Free pancakes, pastry etc.  Thought I had packed a new package of flour, but it seems it got left behind in Calgary, and it’s is just not available here like the rice flour is.  Made an orange loaf from a new recipe I found on the rice flour package…looks good…tastes awful!

Left San Carlos and headed over to Guaymas even before Carnival was over.  We will stay at our free marina until Francisco is ready to start work on the boat.  Marina Singular requires that you pay in advance for their haul out and work yard, so two days before Francisco is ready to begin work, we went to see Arianna to pay.  As she is starting the paper work, she tells us there is something new that she has to  tell us about.  Now they not only want up front payment for the haul out and months storage, but they also want the equivalent of a month in the yard as a deposit which they claim they will eventually credit to “”our account “”   What Account ???   Arianna was upset that we were considering going elsewhere because of this new rule, and she asked us to send an e-mail to the higher-ups in Mexico City to see if they would rescind this rule for past customers.  We got an immediate response from Jared (who we had met several years ago) but unfortunately he said his hands were tied.  Something doesn’t seem right here.  Francisco went to talk to Arianna later in the day (if it weren’t for him working on boats in Singular yard, there would be no one there)  He came to see us at the free marina that night, and said he has a bad feeling about this…feels the place could be closed down within the month.

Since we don’t want to get stuck half way thru the project, he has arranged for us to be hauled out at Marina Guaymas, otherwise known as the “Dirt Yard”, and since we have never been there and have no waypoints to get in, he will meet us in the morning and direct us over there. 
Valentines Day’s and Francisco and Paty joined us for the trip over to Gabriel’s yard.  It was her first time on a sail boat.  All went well, however, we were in less than 5 feet of water so Don was ploughing thru the mud while we waited for the lift operator to be ready for us. 

It was a little nerve wracking as we had to remove our forestay in order to fit into this lift.





One of the jobs that needs to be done while we are in the lift is to slice off several inches of the keel.  When Don poured the keel, he had no way of weighing the moulten lead, and he got a little carried away.  Francisco had told Gabriel that we would like to stay in the lift for a couple of hours while we did the cutting, however, they needed the lift right away as they had to move another boat today.  They will have to come back to lift us again, and as it turned out, it was just as well, it took quite some time to get the chainsaw to work.  We bought the chainsaw at the street market last week for less than $20 , it looked practically new and we knew the motor worked as we had them plug it in for us, but we had no way to try it at the market.  His first attempts at cutting the lead just didn’t work right, until, after fiddling with the saw for a while, he realized the blade was in backwards.  As soon as he put it in the right way, it cut thru the lead fairly quickly, and we got a chunk (about 200 lbs) taken off front and back.  We found Ardulfo to bring the lift back to re-arrange the blocks so he could get to the rest of the keel.

 By late afternoon, Francisco and crew were back to help us take things off the boat and to wash it down.  We didn’t really see why it needed to be washed since all the paint was going to be sanded off anyway, but according to Hal and Cathy, the lift leaks oil and they don’t want oil on the sanding pads.  Cut off some more lead in the morning before the crew arrived.  By afternoon they were sanding the foredeck and rinsing it, making it rather muddy below, so cutting more lead was out of the question.  We visited with Hal & Cathy on Airborne,  we were just  too tired the night before to join them for dinner.  Went to town in the morning while the crew did more sanding, and we removed the rest of the windows when we returned.  Following day cut a bit more lead and went to a pot luck in the evening.  There must have been over 40 people attending – there is quite the social community in this “Dirt Yard”

Said goodbye to Hal & Cathy in the morning and visited with Mark from Three Hour Tour (from Calgary).  We had met them briefly last year in Guaymas.  Their boat was hit by lightning last summer and they are now replacing all the electronics, batteries etc.   Francisco dropped off Jorge to begin sanding on the hull today, and they worked on the toe rail standoffs and worked on removing the old water line.  Since we are taking off over 800 lbs of lead, we should ride a little higher in the water!

Carlos the welder came by with the wind charger mount.  He will come back this afternoon with the truck to do the install.  I have to talk to Gabriel to get permission for him to bring his truck into the yard.  He was back by 12:30 and after one slight mis-understanding, he had it all assembled and new steps on the bowsprit by 3:30. More sanding the next day, and they were just ready to start the 1st coat of undercoat when we returned from the dentist.  The trip to the dentist was a waste, he had to cancel and re-schedule us for tomorrow as he had some equipment problem in one of his rooms and was running behind schedule.

 Got the groceries put away quickly before they started spraying and then got off the boat with everything we needed for a few hours.  Should have stayed on board, it really wasn’t smelly and we got very cold that evening waiting for the paint to be dry enough to get back on board.


Within 5 minutes of them finishing the painting, I heard Martin telling Francisco there was big rain coming.  We looked across the bay and it was pouring. I had visions of Matzatlan several years ago when we tried to paint ourselves, we no sooner got the paint on when the dew started and washed all the new paint into the water.   Fortunately, once again we had sea angels watching over us, as the front was blown over to Empalme and we didn’t get any rain – only the cold wind. 

 The painting process continued for exactly three weeks from the day they started, 4 coats of undercoat was rolled on with sanding after the second and 4th coat, then the 5th layer of undercoat was sprayed as well as the 2 layers of topcoat. Every day that they had to spray, we had perfect weather with not a breath of wind.

 Francisco had a little panic attack the day he was to spray on the top coat, he got the two part paint all mixed up, poured into the spray gun, and when they plugged in the compressor…no power.  This Awl Grip paint has a short shelf life once mixed, so he knew he had to get it applied quickly, and after a few tense moments, he had all the other boats along the wall unplugged so we now had enough power.  We went into town in the afternoon and stayed at a hotel that night, didn’t want to risk putting any footprints on the new paint.   Next day he prepared the boat to re apply the red stripe and the new water line.

 There were a few little touch ups to be done the following day, but all things considered, he did a great job! Now hopefully it will last for the next 10 years or more.

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Painting complete, we had to get new lettering done and then get down to other chores we thought we would be able to do while the painting was happening.

Sooo Shiny !!!

There was always such a bee hive of activity going on around the boat it was impossible for us to get anything done. So now while we wait for the paint to cure, we will sew up a new bimini, make shade covers for the transom, do a repair on the rudder housing etc, etc, and hopefully we will be ready to hit the water early in the fall and get south before the northers hit
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December 2012

 As soon as we arrived back from Cozumel, we went right from the airport to Greg & Julia's place.  Greg's company was sending him on a business trip to London, England, and he was able to take Julia with him for a long awaited holiday.  So, we stayed at their house for the week to look after the girls.  It was a cold, snowy week, and we have had our fill of snow shoveling for many years to come, but our snow angel just couldn't get enough.

 

We spent lots of time playing, baking, bathing and doing some Christmas shopping, and of course we just had to get all dressed up and make a visit to Santa Claus. 

Amelia trying on Grandpa's shoes for size!

On our way to see Santa in our new Xmas dresses !

The week went all too quickly, and on our way to the airport to pick up Mum & Dad, we stopped in at Blue Grass and had a quick reindeer ride.

The following week, we went to a Christmas Party with Owen & Evan.

Christmas morning with Evelynn & Amelia, then off to Pam & Howard's where turkey chef extrodinaire, Howard, cooked up a delicious bird for all of us.

Since Shannon is back in school, trying once again to finish Chemistry so she can go on to the Veterinary program at Olds College, Santa thought it was time to upgrade her laptop computer.

Owen had received a keyboard for his birthday in July, looks like we might have another budding musician in the family.  

All the kids and dogs together on Christmas Day 2012

Fall and Winter

Evelynn's birthday turned out to be a beautiful fall day and we were able to enjoy the day outside.

Our little Amelia went from the Baby Bucket swing at the beginning of the season, to getting up on the big girl swing by herself and waiting for a push from Grandpa who she never lets get too far out of her sight.

Since we were going to be in Cozumel by Amelia's birthday, we spent and early birthday with her and Evelynn making a Halloween Haunted House

And Evelynn doesn't even mind helping with the clean up

 and then she got to show off her new Halloween Princess Costume