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I've been stuck at the house taking hundreds of calls from our customers now that the book is being distributed. The calls range from requests to do telephone antique appraisals to complaints about typos and mistakes made in this publication.

Do I let this get me down? Hell no.

I have my four guitars (actually 3-1/2 guitars- I share one), synthesizers of all kinds, digital loopers, computers, video cameras, digital cameras, scanners, microphones...

Although I'm stuck at home, I can reach out and boogie online.
One of my favorite compositions (not mine, though) is called Oceano. This is my spontaneous arrangement, accompanied by film and photos from our sailing trips in Mexico. I play all the instruments. Hope you like.

So far it works great!

Had to drag the dink down to the marina and splash it for a test. The plastic trash bag I put on it peeled away cleanly and left a nice smooth surface.

Two things I noticed: the boat moves faster at low rpm and there's no more splash over from the wake. Yaaa! I zoomed out to BLISS on the mooring and found one of the mooring lines loose and reattached it. Tomorrow I'll go out and do a better job of it, since there will be a norther on Friday, and I'll probably be in Errorzona that day. I still have the wheels to mount and bottom paint to apply on the dinghy, but so far, so good.

The Three Dollar Cure

It's been awhile since I've been able to do much anything else but the Guidebook for the past few weeks, but now it's mostly done and I'm back doing some modifications to our 7-1/2 ft Livingston dinghy.

Over the past few days I've sanded, primed and sprayed new white gelcoat on the hull.
Now I'm adding some additional flotation between the almas near the stern- I hope to accomplish two things with this work: A) When I'm motoring at any speed, the water climbs up the transom and splashes into the boat. I hope that lifting the stern will eliminate the problem; and B) This little boat is really heavy for it's size, so I'll be adding wheels to the stern so I can roll it up on the beach when I get to shore, rather than dragging the thing over sand and rocks. The added buoyancy should help offset the weight of the wheels... or I may have wheels ...and water sloshing over the stern as well. I dunno.

To accomplish the task, I bought a block of stryofoam 2'x2'x6" at the local hardware store for about $3. (They use it as a building material here). I used a small handsaw and my secret weapon to shape and smooth the foam to fit the space. My secret weapon is an inline air powered sander with 40 grit sandpaper. It uses sheets 2"x2' and does a fast clean job of shaping styrofoam. I glued the styro in with West Systems Epoxy and adhesive filler and let it set up overnight. This morning I sanded it smooth and cut a piece of heavy fiberglass roving to cover it, mixed up some more epoxy and wetted the cloth in place using a 3" paint roller. I wandered back out to take the pictures when I noticed the cloth lifting off the foam. Yikes! I dodged back into the house and grabbed a white kitchen garbage bag, slit it down one side and spread it over the work. I was able to smooth the fabric down and squeegee out the trapped air with my hand, and I'm leaving the bag in place until it cures enough to peel it off... if it will peel off. Guess we'll find out later, huh?

Feels good to be doing boat stuff again!

Another piece of the puzzle

This piece of equipment is a high pressure pump I won for a great price on eBay. This pump will be driven either by a power-take off (PTO) from the new generator or by a 5-6 hp electric motor. For what, you ask?
This pump will suck seawater into the boat and push it against a semi-permeable membrane. The water that goes through the membrane is fresh clean water, the stuff that doesn't go through goes back overboard.
In this way we make fresh (drinkable) water out of ocean water. This pump, when it's all hooked up to the rest of the system will desalinate between 24 and 48 gallons of water per hour, depending on whether we use one membrane or two.
It's not quite enough to keep up with a standard showerhead (at 3.5 gallons per minute) but will fill the tanks for that shower pretty fast. The watermaker we have on BLISS now will make about 1 gallon per hour or about 2 days to fill our 50 gallon tank.

New shoes for baby

Shed the tread
My 17 year-old tire finally did what it was supposed to do... delaminate and die. I've had a trip to the tire store on my list for a week, now that I'm using the VW Westy on a daily basis. And as I was tooling out of the ranchitos (the desert/dirt road open development on the NE part of San Carlos) after a stop at the GREEN FLASH, something started banging on the van.
My first thought was "blown tire" but I looked out the window and saw the tire wasn't deflated. Then I thought, "Oh No, not the motor!" But I only got the sound when the van moved, and the motor was ticking away as I sat there.
So I finally got out and walked back to the tire where I found a flap of rubber and stainless steel hanging from the top of the tire. The tread had peeled off, but the tire still had air.

A quarter mile down the road was a tire guy's shed- a llantera they call it in these parts. I had used him before and he was pretty good. He has a little metal shelter, no walls, on the side of the road, where he fixes tires and keeps a few used tires in various sizes to sell. I can't remember his name.
I drove the Westy down the road and had him pull off the bad tire and put the spare on the car, and top off the air pressure. He asked for 30 pesos, or about $2.70 US. I gave him 50.
When I brought the van home, the 1st Mate was relieved that the mishap didn't occur at 60 mph on a curve and suggested the trip to the tire shop.

Fresh Tires,
great price
The Continental/General Tire shop on the main road in Guaymas was my choice. The Westy weighs almost 6,000 pounds, so a heavy duty tire is required. My research online showed that the General Altimax RT 205 R70 14 was a good replacement, and as it turned out, they had them in stock. (I had priced tires online. The best deal was $290 for 4 tires out-the-door price, but 10 days to order them in Tucson .) The cost here was $267 complete and the tires were made this year in Mexico. They had new equipment for mounting and balancing, and the people were really nice, and accepted my VISA for payment.
...and a warning
For those of you who haven't seen this video about old tires (even if you've never used them) and how they can kill you, click here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

A tale of two sails

The GREEN FLASH is somewhat larger than our current sailboat, BLISS. How much larger, you ask?
Bliss is 33" long, the FLASH is 43' plus a 7 foot bowsprit, taking her to 50' overall. BLISS weighs (displaces) 8 tons, FLASH about 12 tons. The mast on BLISS is 40' from deck to top, whereas you can add almost another 20' to reach the top of the mast on the FLASH... and that's where the major difference is between these boats. FLASH's wind engine is around 1000 square feet and BLISS's is about 400. The difference really becomes apparent at the sail loft (our storage room). The small bundle in these photos is a jib (the sail in the front of the boat) for BLISS; the large bundle in the bag is a jib for the FLASH.
Other things come into play when you add more sail area... The force on a 565 sq. ft. jib is exponentially higher than the 220 sq. ft. jib, so the material needs to be either heavier (to be stronger) or the material needs to be "more advanced." And more expensive...
BLISS's jib is constructed of panels of Dacron (synthetic) fabric, sewn together and fitted with reinforcement at the corners and spots on the sail where it will rub against something. A sail this size of this material will cost about $1400 new.
The GREEN FLASH sail is built from panels of Pentex (advanced synthetic material) with reinforcing at corners and chafe points. It also has heavy threads of Kevlar (the material used to make bullet-proof vests) running through the Pentex to add strength, and few other bells and whistles you should have when you hoist up this monster to the top of a 60 foot mast in a stiff breeze. This sail costs about $5300 when new.

As a general rule, I don't buy my sails new. I find that a lot of sailors have much more money than I do, so I buy their "trade-ins" when they pick up their new suite of sails. The sailmakers can make a little on the mark-up of the used sail, plus repairs and alterations the sail may need for a different boat. If it wasn't for used sails, the sailmakers would probably never see me at all.

Now, I should add that I didn't pay $5300 for that sail. I bought it from the man who made it for his own boat and is a professional sailmaker (for many years) who is now in Mexico and cruising our area. Because he made it for his own boat, he didn't spare any expense, so I think I did really well. I paid him 25% more for the sail to make some revisions to the thing. It's so big, I need a parking lot in order to spread this sail out on the ground... it's a triangle 47x45x25 feet.

When I think about putting this sail up, I have mixed feelings.

Just for Rob

Rob's Comment: "OK, so where is my little red dot on the greater map of things? :o))"

September 15, 2008 11:13 AM