Pierless Adventures - March 27 - Cinco De Bago

 

From Scott:

Happy Cinco de Bago!  Today marks the 5th bag of ice we have been here.  Time moves differently here.  If we were in Greenland, we would still be on bag one proving my Theory of Smellativity.  Simply put; the more a place smells, the more ice you use and, hence, the slower time moves in an inverse ratio due to the metric system.

We lost a dear friend today who will be sorely missed.  Brian and I would go out of our way to pet him and bring him treats and we will both miss the way he'd get excited when he saw us.  Yes, Ernesto is gone. No, not Chester!  Chester is fine, by the way, and sleeping off a pizza hangover.

Ernesto vanished this morning just hours after attaining statehood.  I suspect he is either headed to New York to take his seat with the United Nations or headed to a better life in El Norte.  Whatever the cause, long live the United Collective of Ernesto!  No other giant hairball can take your place.  Vaya con shampoo, amigo.

From Brian:

Domingo (Sunday) is usually a quite day in the boatyard.  Today was no exception.  The local boatyard workers did have a family party at the marina pool, but that was the extent of excitement here.  That is, of course, apart from finishing boat projects!

Plumbing was again on the agenda.  We succeeded in replacing the sump pump and associated hoses in the head.  This was a fairly difficult project due to lack of access where we had to work.  We made some modifications with the new installation to make future maintenance much easier.  We still have to finish plumbing the toilet...

We installed the new wind instrument on the top of the mast yesterday.  It measures wind speed and direction.  When we turned the device on, nothing happened.  I was concerned we had a bad cable, in which case we would have had to come up with another plan as we are not ready to run new cable up the mast.  This evening, as I was working on the steaming light, I noticed the cross-connect for the wind instrument was not hooked up.  After hooking this up, everything worked!  I do like the easy fixes!

One of the great disappointments so far has nothing to do with Mexico.  It is UPS.  Last year I learned that sourcing parts and equipment here can be difficult at best.  I was determined to bring everything down that I would need for our projects and not have to depend on local sources.  I managed about 75 pounds of gear on the flight and shipped another 50 pounds UPS.  I had to go UPS since there were items that cannot be carried on a passenger plane (paint, oils, epoxy, etc.).  Well, our local UPS store was apparently not up to the task.  It took a week for it just to leave Langley.  Then it came back and Tracy had to deal with it again.  Second time it made it to Texas, only to be sent back to Langley!  Very frustrating.  I think we will just ship it to San Diego and I'll pick it up there...

 




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