Possibly the last internet post for a bit, so be checking the SSB section starting tomorrow. . .
From Janet:
Today marks two weeks that we have been at Las Hadas anchorage! And today at
long last we are on our way. We plan to head over to Santiago today and spend
the night there, then start heading for Zihuatenajo. The radar is working
again!! This is quite a relief for us, as Eric has been working on it since
Puerto Vallarta. Our friend Paul was over a couple days ago and he helped us
figure it out. He helped us to start thinking outside of the box so to speak.
Basically one of the wires had a bad connection and it seemed to be the video
because we were not getting a display. Paul's idea was to short out pairs of
wires by connecting them at one end and testing for continuity with the volt
meter at the other end. Indeed it was the video wire but perhaps the poor
connection was not up in the mast after all... Paul suspected it may be in the
splicing right behind the unit in the cabin so he said let's pull down the
ceiling panel and see how much slack we have in there so we can re-splice. Well
wouldn't you know it there was plenty of extra cable up there including an
additional splice of the whole cable! Now we're getting somewhere it seems...
ripped off all the electrical tape and there's our broken wire.. then Paul said
that his normal billing rate is $1500 per day and that he would send us a bill.
So we gave him a beer.
What took three days out of this week was obtaining our import permit. This was
also a big accomplishment and it's hard to believe it's over. We went through
the process with Paul from Nonnie and Anne from Walkabout so that made it a
little more fun. It involved going into town three times (once to customs and
twice to the bank, they do it through the national Bank to avoid corrupt customs
agents we guess) plus meeting a customs agent here at the marina and taking him
out the boat for an inspection. Since the outboard is still out of commission
and Eric is only rowing the dingy, we were hoping he could simply suggest to the
customs agent to "jump in and I will row us out to the boat" and the customs
agent would then say, "uhhh that's okay I can inspect the boat from here".
However as I mentioned Paul was also there with his dingy which has not only a
working engine but also is quite nice and spacious. So the customs agent said
let's take this one. Anyway the agent said that he couldn't swim and was
extremely awkward getting in and out of it. He was very young and looked like he
may be new, though he said he inspects three to four boats per week. After
looking around a bit and taking lots of pictures, he said everything was fine.
I caught a fish the other night, the first one we have caught since David and
Isabelle were here! It was just a little greenjack so I threw him back. We hope
to have more luck in the next week or two while heading south.