May 3, 2023 - Wednesday

Pierless is a fiberglass boat.  The interior is trimmed with teak, but the deck only has a few areas with teak trim.  This wood is subjected to the sun and salt year-round and tends to get dried out over time.  I started the day applying teak oil to the deck wood.  Some people prefer varnish.  It certainly has a nice bright look, but is a lot more work when you need to refinish.  I'll stick with teak oil for now since it helps protect the wood and is quick and easy to apply.  I try to do this in the morning so it has time during the day to dry.

Oiling the teak

In addition to the relentless sunshine, Mazatlan is a dusty place.  Some of this is just a consequence of the hot dry climate (it is humid, but no rain this time of year).  The other source of dust is ongoing construction.  There are at least three active construction sites I can see from my boat.  The dust accumulates on deck and some of it finds its way down below.  I rinse the deck off about once a week, but I have noticed the companionway hatch is starting to sound gritty...  

Companionway

The companionway is the entrance to the cabin below.  The cabin is protected from the elements by the hatch and the hatch boards that slide into the front of the companionway to seal it up and protect the cabin from weather and seas.  To remove the hatch, you take out the two teak strips on either side and slide/lift the hatch off.  Once off, you can clean the slides and apply a little dry silicone lubrication.  That done, you just reassemble the parts and all is good.  The hatch slides nicely now and is quiet.

Shannon came by in the morning to get some help moving her boat again.  She has been in the first slip near shore and found it noisy and exposed to everyone walking by.  She wanted to move several slips over so it would be quieter and a little more private.  As before, we used mooring lines and roped it over to the new location in the morning before the wind came up.

After lunch, I finished my immigration forms and emailed them back to my contact.  I asked him to let me know if I made any errors on the forms so I could fix them before going back down.  I hope to hear back before the end of the week.

I went over to the boatyard to see if the bottom brackets for the windvane were ready.  Rafa is the mechanic at the shop.  He sent them out to a machine shop and they were back and ready to go.  The work looked good and they included the bolts I needed.  Rafa gave me the parts and said "no charge".  That was very nice of him.  I'll put it all back together tomorrow or Friday.

My last task for the day was to take a look at my second electric bilge pump.  It was not working, but it was not clear whether it was a wiring issue, the float switch or the pump itself.  The wire connectors were not the waterproof type, so I was suspicious of them.  I started by diagraming the wiring setup.  I'll start taking it apart tomorrow or Friday to figure out what is wrong.