November 30, 2018
Last summer I noticed salt residue near the autopilot ram and below on the water muffler. It confused me as I couldn’t tell where it came from but I cleaned it up and put it on the watch list. A month into the fall season I realized the source, the air vent for the Vetus Anti-Siphon Valve for the exhaust/sea…
July 21, 2018
**Note the 1290 has new circuity that requires a pulse to be transmitted and the bypass instructions below will not work** It is a known issue that the stock KTM side stand switch/sensor frequently fails and when it does leaves you stranded. Well just such a situation came up on a short tuneup tour my friends and I took to…
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 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…
May 5, 2018
Leaving Mantachen in the early morning meant we had time for a day stop in Isla Isabel (the Galapagos of Mexico). A whole fleet of shrimp boats were taking up the eastern anchorage so we ducked in to the south anchorage. Four attempts to set the hook (anchor) and three jumps in the water (into look at the anchor placement)…
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…
December 11, 2017
This adventure is supposed to be about sailing, right? So when the winds picked up after motoring out of Chacala out came the screecher. Motorsailing along we decided to put out the fishing lines even though the freezer was looking good in the pescado department. Fish on! The wind was from a good angle so up came the main sail…
December 6, 2017
My initial thought was to dinghy to shore and then grab a bus into San Blas for a look around. Vicki suggested we just take the dingy straight to San Blas. I was a little apprehensive but figured this was a chance to expand the envelope of my comfort zone (I get nervous once past the distance that would be…
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 5, 2017
We really enjoyed San Francisquito. I mean really what isn’t to enjoy? Great fishing, check! Great snorkeling, check! Good hiking, check! Dolphins, check! Anchorage slot at San Francisquito There is a narrow slot in the bay of San Francisquito, which is a perfect place to wait out strong winds. Lucky for us the weather was calm since the slot was…
October 28, 2017
Boats. Sometimes I just sit and shake my head at the amount of work it takes to keep a boat going. I owned an airplane earlier in life and let me tell you, airplanes are a cake walk. Boats just never stop asking for more. And then throw in a dumb-ass owner who loves new toys and it is a…