SSDD! Coffee, net, cleaning, yup we did it all. Talked to Velma about our paperwork issues and she was a big help. We now know what we need to do and are getting started on it. We'll be known as Whisper for awhile, but we will be changing the name of our boat to Tupo when we get the chance. "Tupo" is Swahili for "Here we are", which we think is pretty cool, and should be easy to understand over the radio. Also it is not vulgar in Spanish (or any other language that we know of!)
There are two problems on the boat that we are currently trying to deal with. First one is that our water tank seems to have some "contamination". By contamination, I mean when I used the foot pump in the galley (there is a foot pump for water in the sink in the galley, which helps conserve water, they should be on all sinks as far as I am concerned because when your hands are dirty, who wants to be turning on faucets?!?) this brownish crap with tiny worm-like things were squirming around. It should be pretty simple to disinfect (bleach works wonders, so does vinegar we hear), but I haven't gotten either the tank access hatch open or the fill tank cap. I have to admit I haven't tried very hard yet, but it is on the list to do so we can a) clean out that crap and disinfect and b) have water in our sinks for cleaning. Later, we'll be putting drinking water in there, but for now it would just make cleaning a bit easier.
Our second issue is our battery charger. We are currently hooked up to AC and have a couple of AC outlets in the boat (which we were running our air conditioner off of). There is also a DC system on the boat, which runs the lights, fans, CD-player, and all the other electronics onboard. The DC power comes from a 460 amp*hour battery bank (think of several big car batteries hooked together) for the house juice and a separate starting battery for our Yanmar diesel. Anyway, when sailing we will obviously not be trailing an AC extension cord behind us (though I bet our dads have enough extension cords to try it if we wanted :) so the house bank is pretty important. When at sea, the diesel has an alternator that will charge the house and starting batteries (they are separate so we always know that we can start the diesel). When plugged in at a marina there is a battery charger to keep the batteries topped off while using all the DC equipment. There is a fancy meter that tells us how much juice we're using, what voltage the house bank is at, and at the current rate of usage how much time we have 'till we're out of juice. The problem is that even with the battery charger on, we are using more juice than it is providing which doesn't really make sense. I do know the charger is working (at least a little) because without it we are drawing even more juice. So I'm guessing there is either a loose connection or some corrosion that is preventing the charger from working at full capacity. Fortunately, our house bank is big enough that it hasn't been a problem yet. Wow - that was way longer than I expected!!
So those two problems are at the top of the to-do list for tomorrow. What better way to spend a Saturday??
On the net today, we heard about a swap meet tomorrow at 10am somewhere. Our buddy Al (and his gf Nancy) offered to drive us over to check it out. Should be interesting and in tomorrows blog entry.
Several boats arrived today, including a pretty big power-boat-yacht from Seattle. We talked to them a bit (but forgot their names, they are on Navigator) and it was nice to talk about how we missed the floods up North.
Biggest news of the day is that by taking the laptop out onto the cockpit I picked up a couple of wifi signals so I could update the webpage! Funny thing is that the little connectivity readout says no signal (0 of 5 bars) but we can still connect at between 1-11 Mbps, which is plenty for checking e-mail and updating the text only portions of the site. All free! So while I don't know who we are borrowing this signal from, I greatly appreciate it and if they contact us I'd be more than happy to buy them a beer (or few). The yacht club here offers unlimited access for $50 a month, but when I told them that their signal was at 3 bars, they said it wouldn't work. Since I am working at 0 bars, they are either full of shit, don't know what they are talking about, or our laptop is superior to all others. Of course Whisper may just be working her magic - pleased that we are cleaning her out so well :) Always treat your boat like it's all you have, because in many ways for us, it is!!!
Janet went to the lap pool today for some exercise and had a great time. She was a bit disturbed at the "zoo" nearby. She described a tiger (that she thought was a statue at first) and many parrots all caged up for the gringos to leer at and get their photos taken with the animals. Sounds pretty surreal and I'll have to check it out one of these days. We hope to get the voice dictation up and running soon so Janet can make some entries of her own.
We finished off the night with a few drinks at the yacht club, hoping for some Friday night fun and socializing, but they close down at 10pm and not too much was going on. We did meet this cool guy who works there (Alex - Alajandro) who gave us the lowdown of the place and was pretty entertained by us young folk.
Well if you made it this far, I'll tell you about our dinner the first night - Subway (cheers Cathy!). We thought it kinda funny that here we are in Mexico and that they easiest, cheapest place to eat is an American sub franchise. Ah well. . .
Until tomorrow. . .