Time to catch up a bit here! Friday we spent most of the day cleaning up a bit (it's amazing how disorganized things can get on a 27 foot sailboat after only a day!) and then I tried getting Sailmail working (Sailmail is what we are trying to use to do e-mail with our SSB radio). After working on it for a few hours, I think I have narrowed down the problem. It's most likely our USB to serial port adapter. The modem for the radio uses a serial port and our laptop (like most modern ones) does not have a serial port. There are a variety of USB to serial port adapter companies out there and I guess it is a hard thing to emulate becuase there seems to be no standards for how they should work. Anyway, it appears that the one we bought is not compatible with our SSB modem (Pactor IIpro by SCS for those that are curious).
My next job was getting our inverter hooked up. We bought a (refurbished) 1000W DC to AC inverter so we can run some AC appliances on the boat off our house battery bank. It should be a simple thing to hook up, but since I am not super familair with the wiring on the boat it took some trial and error. With the multimeter it was easy to find a hot and ground source to hook up to, but the hard part is that the inverter needs some pretty fat cables and we want it to go through our battery bank monitor (Link 10 by Xantrex, I think) so we can monitor our usage. Almost everything DC on board goes through the Link 10. This allows us to measure the amount of juice (in amps and/or amp-hours) we are currently using and how much total we've used. So it's important to have the inverter hooked up through the Link 10 so that we don't lose track of how much juice we have in our batteries. Anyway, I hooked it up initially to the wrong place and that caused the Link 10 to read out as positive amps when the inverter was on! (The Link 10 reads negative when using juice and positive when charging). It was starting to get dark so I quit on that for the day. . .
Saturday was quite the day! The local cruiser's bar here in La Cruz was hosting a benefit for the local kindergarten. We called up on the radio and got the last two tickets, whoo hooo! The only thing was to jump in the dinghy and get over there by 5:30pm. Well the outboard decided not to work (we tried it in the morning) so Janet got on the radio and called one of our neighbours here at anchor and asked for a ride. This guy Bill from Peregrine came by in his dinghy and said he could give us a ride later to Philo's. Now that the pressure was off, I went after that outboard (I think this was the 7th day of working on it all in total!). One time when I was out trying to get it started (I had oars with me to row back after each unsuccessful attempt) this guy (Jonsey on Niki Wiki) came up to me on his dinghy and said some thing like "it looks like you're having some trouble with your outboard". Yeah, no kidding. Anyway he guessed that it was flooded so I should take out the plugs and let it dry out before trying again. Since I could smell gas, I was also thinking it was flooded, but I was just going to let it sit for awhile. I took Jonsey's advice and took out the plugs so they could dry out. When I took the plugs out, I noticed that they were DRY. Therefore I knew that the engine was not flooded and had a different problem. After playing around with the choke and priming pump thing, I saw that one of the fuel lines had broken off where it meets the carburator. So I put that back on, zip-tied it so it would stay, and then put her back in the water to try again. This time she started on the first pull!! And it was 3pm, the time that Bill was going to pick us up. So Janet called him up on the radio and cancelled our ride request as we now could go into shore on our own dinghy. What a feeling!
Every time I worked on the outboard, I have to lift it out of the dingy and put it on the railing of the boat. This is not quite as easy as it sounds as I have to stand in the dingy to do this. As you can imagine, the inflatable dinghy is bobbing around in the waves and the railing is several (maybe five) feet above the waterline. One time when I was trying to get the outboard back into the dinghy, my feet slipped and I started to fall backwards over the side of the dinghy into the water. As I was falling I somehow managed to get the outboard onto its wooden block on the dingy, thus saving it from Davey Jones locker (i.e. the bottom of the bay). I'm not quite sure how I manged to do it, but I went completely into the water (luckily I had tied a string around my new glasses so they were okay too!) Janet then reminded me that if I hoisted the outboard on my shoulder (as Ben showed us) then things would be a lot simpler. Getting the outboard in and out is now a lot simpler!!!
Okay, so we got over most of the way to where people beach their dinghies and the outboard quit again. I then started rowing us and asked a guy where to go, of course he pointed to the other end of the beach, so I had to row us about twenty minutes to the correct place. It was more tiring than it sounds as inflateables don't row so well (especially with the dead weight of my wife and the outboard slowing us down!) After bringing the dinghy up on the beach, I took out the leatherman I brought along and took apart the outboard, fixed it (just the flywheel that was off of the magneto, or something like that - I can't keep all the part names straight) and then we went in to Philo's for the benefit dinner.
We ended up sitting next to Jonesy and Terry (Niky Wiki) and Stu and Ann (Walkabout). It turns out that Jonesy used to be a racecar mechanic for NASCAR and other racing organizaitons. Turns out that he was even a mechanic for Mario Andredi (sp?)!! So here I have Mario Andredi's mechanic helping me out with our outboard, who would have guessed?!? We had a great time talking to all those folks and others. The food was all prepared by local Mexican women and was probably the best food we've had here in Mexico - absolutely delicious!!
The benefit was for the local kindergarten and the kindergartners did traditional Mexican dancing and there was also an adult troupe that did the same. It was really neat seeing their outfits and dancing.
It ended up being a pretty late night and lots of fun. The dinghy ride back was uneventful (which is awesome in that everything worked!!)
Sunday I needed to work some more on the outboard (the pull starter wasn't engaging right and needed to be adjusted before every start). Jonesy came over to Tupo and helped for several hours getting everything up to his standards (quite high I should say!) I also mounted the inverter to the inside of the engine compartment and hooked it up (properly this time). Janet was over on Niky Wiki working on my Christmas present which she has been spending a lot of time on (I'm pretty curious at this point as to what the heck it is!!)
Last night (Sunday) Rod and Charlotte (Maestro del Mar) were rowing by our boat so we invited them over for drinks. They ended up bringing their own beer (!) and we hung out for a bit chatting. They are cruising with their two kids (14 and 16, girl and a boy, I forgot their names and we haven't met them yet). It was great having visitors and meeting even more cool people. I guess crusiers are all pretty friendly as we're all "in the same boat" :)
Now, it's Monday the 18th and I'm finishing writing this up while waiting for our breakfast at Philos. . .