"Back in the Saddle Again"

Ooops, I mean we are finally in the travel lift again!

We have been working like crazy the last few days to finish up jobs to be ready to splash tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan 31.  Alan is very jazzed to be getting into the water and arose this morning at 3:30am to start working through several jobs: (cockpit seat hinges, dinghy on the davits, loaded up the kayaks, transferred and polished fuel, washed the chain (laying on the ground), cleaned the outboard).

Then it was breakfast time and after a quick meal of cereal the race continued.  Time for a quick trip to get a hose for the air filter on the engine.  Alan then was off to the fuel dock to jerry can some gasoline (for outboard and the Honda generator) and diesel.  Back at the boat, he went to tighten the vent cap on the outboard tank and it broke in his pliers.  Not so good.  

Well, we decided to squeeze in a quick run to the Yamaha dealer as we had discovered we were missing a tiny little piece when putting on the outboard prop.  And with the emerging issue with the outboard gas tank, it was time to act!  A cruiser’s outboard & dinghy are like the workhorse for a boat at anchor:  no other way to get from the boat to shore, besides in our kayaks that is.

We were told the Yamaha dealer is essentially across the street from the marina.  Now, you may wonder, how we did not already know this.  Well, the dealer does not have a sign posted.  Not a single sign.  If you KNOW there is a Yamaha dealer there, lucky for you.  The yard boss Horatio pointed us in that direction and off we went.  We scored with the outboard part, but were sent a couple of blocks up hill to a fisheries supply store for the gas tank repair.  A new gas tank seemed in order as parts are not available.  And in the middle of it, Alan walked back to the marina and drove the car with the old, open gas tank to the store.  We really wanted to check all the connections:  tank to our hose to our engine.  Success!!

Now it is all of 10:30 and Omar, our beloved engine mechanic, has arrived to do a final test run before splashing.  Listening to the happy rumble of those Volvo Penta's was an omen for a good season.  

More jobs:  a quick run to the screw store, securing the windlass cables (Alan installed the windlass yesterday as it had been removed for the deck painting), get the zipties on the chain and the chain into the anchor locker, inspect the forward water tank before filling, tighten a few trampoline bolts, thread halyard messenger lines through stopper blocks, pop rivit a fitting on the mast (long story from yesterday about losing a messenger line and how we spent 5 hours getting it back....), cleaning out a forward bilge of a bit of water, starting the Honda generator, filling the diesel tanks with the jerry cans, installing screws in the end fittings on the reaching poles (they had just been painted), WHEW. Besides that, it was 85 degrees here today with no wind!

Somewhere in there lunch was gobbled down and a huge Coke emptied.  How else do you keep the pace??  Then suddenly, Horatio appeared with the travel lift to get us in the slings.  We are positioned so that Francisco can finish applying our bottom paint (the main coats were done on Saturday).  He'll be back very early tomorrow to do the second coat.  There is nothing quite like watching your boat being swallowed by a huge travel lift.  Those cables are one nasty greasy dirty thing.  Only there are 4 sets per side of the boat.  So we were running up and down trying to fend off the grease from our lovely, newly painted,  topsides.  Jamming cardboard, foam, plastic, sail cloth between the cables and our boat.  Finally, we had lift off.  We went up about 10 inches.  Enough to be off our blocks and for the painting to proceed.  We can still climb up and down our ladder.  Everyone left.

And then it was very quiet on Magic and 2 totally exhausted folks slumped in the salon.  SO CLOSE.

Tomorrow at 10:30 we will go in.  But there will be a few more jobs, a bit of painting, the engines will be run.  Once we are in the water, we will check all the through hulls and start the engines again.  We are going to just ease on out of the ditch and over to the fuel dock.  We will tie up, Omar will come aboard and we will run the engines for 30+ minutes.  Putting the engines through their paces and testing our new throttle and shifter controls.   If we are pleased we will go out and motor around Guaymas Bay. And then to a marina slip for a few days.  A few more "in the water" projects (like putting on the sails) before we can go out to the anchorage.  And there we will flop, recover, and wait for a weather window to head south.