October 20, 2018
Start of the fall sailing season! Excitement had been building for a few weeks, as had the pile of boat parts. This year rather than the 11 hour bus ride I opted to meet my crew member Mike in San Diego, where we would use the CBX border crossing to the Tijuana airport for a flight to Hermosillo. I had…
June 5, 2018
During my normal engine checks I noticed rust below the starboard Yanmar exhaust elbow. This can be a huge deal because if the inner tube has a rust hole, the raw cooling water can be pushed into the cylinders and hydrolock the engine. So for a week we limited the starboard engine to anchoring until a new exhaust elbow could…
June 4, 2018
Before the rally my step-father asked if I could make the Stanley cup finals if he bought tickets. Um, hell yeah! It did however present a significant change of plans. Instead of a relaxing final month it would be a sprint to the finish and a rush to shutdown Strikhedonia for the hurricane season in San Carlos where she would…
June 3, 2018
We have tried our best to keep Tohatsu 9.8hp 4 stroke outboard running smoothly, when we would be gone more than a week or two we always flushed with fresh water and ran the gas out of the carburetor bowl. At the end of each season came an oil change. This gave us three years of trouble free operation but…
January 18, 2018
They say standing rigging has a 10 year life expectancy. I thought bah humbug, it should last much longer. Well I was wrong. Strikhedonia has two sister ships in Mexico, we are all 2008 models and last spring one of them, Moon Drifter, found a crack in a swage. This led to the replacement of their standing rigging and brought…
January 4, 2018
Really? For awhile the back light on our chart plotter had been flickering when dimmed for night passages. And after crossing to Mazatlan I found that it had completely died. Turns out from a bit of internet searching this is a common failure due to a poorly designed high voltage power supply circuit for the florescent back light lamps (called…
January 1, 2018
Whew looking back at 2017 was a another year of firsts; Farthest North in the Sea (Bahia Los Angeles), Sail plan for downwind sailing (Double headsails), Thanksgiving away from home (La Paz), Visit to the Southern mainland (Mazatlán and others), Teeth cleaned in a foreign country, and many more. We just keep finding more things that we love about Mexico.…
December 22, 2017
I shake my head at the vast number of cleaning products we have on board. And I’m speaking of just for the outside of the boat. It seems really fucking ridiculous but it is what it is, and it takes what it takes. Schedule: Washing/Cleaning/Metal polish – When out cruising it is often 3 – 4 weeks since we are…
December 1, 2017
The main reason we stuck around Mazatlán was to get the boat washed, polished, and waxed. After Louis and his guys on dock 4 at Marina Mazatlán finished, the fiberglass on Strikhedonia was shining better than any other time we have owned her, and all for a very reasonable price. Our boat wasn’t the only thing that needed work done.…
November 24, 2017
I had reached out to Club Cruceros via email about buying tickets for Thanksgiving dinner but they needed cold hard cash. Our friends on MoonDrifter were going but they were getting in close to Thanksgiving as well. So with an early start from Caleta Partida, we made it close enough to La Paz to join the morning net and get…
November 22, 2017
I’ll admit it, I fell for the marketing. Backing up, I knew we would use Predict Wind along with an Iridium Go! Reading around on Predict Wind I found their recommendation of an Iridium dealer in Florida. Armed with a credit card I placed an online order and shortly had a shiny new toy. I opted for the external antenna…
November 6, 2017
The hop from San Francisquito to Santa Rosalia is about 80 miles, using our typical speed of 6 knots would make for a 13 hour passage. Up at 2:00am on on our way with some moonlight to guide us out of the bay at a crisp 6.8 knots. Moon light departure from San Francisquito There is an interesting phenomenon just…