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It is a never ending battle to keep the boat bottom clean. In fact, I think it’s impossible, but we try. You get three kinds of growth. The sea cabbage grows all over the bottom. Its is leafy it is easy to remove by running a wide blade putty knife along the hull. There is a slimy but that seems to prefer the sunny side of the hull along the water line. It only comes off with a fairly aggressive (black) 3M \ Scotchbrite pad. And lastly there are the barnacles. They grow very sparsely along the hull and cluster on anything which is metal and thus not bottom painted, as well as LOVE the overhanging stern section which is always bouncing in and out of the water. On the hull they pop off with the putty knife. On the waterline and metals bits you really have to hack at them to get them off which uses considerable oxygen\energy.

We had been able to keep up with the waterline and the bottom fairly well by snorkeling. The stern is always a bit of a mess though, and the brand new paint on the waterline stripe is now scratched up badly.

The metal bits (deeper in the water) are just too hard to do via snorkel. I can’t hold my breath long enough and without a weight belt, you spend most of your time trying to keep from floating against the boat. Today we borrowed a dive hookah and weight belt from another boat, and man was it awesome. I spent about a half hour in the water and was able to hack all of the barnacles off the prop, shaft and gudgeon. Maybe that 1.5kts of boat speed we were missing will come back!

We use Petite’s Barnacle ban on our metal bits (prop, shaft, gudgeon). It seems to ban nothing, but when I did scrape them clean the grey paint was still there where it didn’t get scrapped off, so I think its doing ok.

Our boat sits perfectly on its waterline in calm water at the dock. But there is RARELY calm water at anchor. This is why people raise their waterlines. Not because they’ve overloaded the boat, but because at anchor your boat is always bouncing around and at all times 4-6 inches of your waterline are bouncing in and out the water. Filter feeders like Barnacles LOVE this! When we redo the bottom paint this next year I am going to look into raising the water line and I’m going to paint the stern overhang completely in bottom paint.

Zincs at Shilshole Bay Marina were replaced every six months. We haven’t been in Marinas much at all since November and the zincs are about 1/2 gone at 9 months. We’ll have the divers replace them when they clean the boat while we’re gone.

After today’s experience I can really see the benefit of a dive hookah. You could even use it for snorkeling in general. Unfortunately, retail dive hookahs cost \$2000 to \$5000 depending on the make and model. Not something that is in my budget right now, but it is possible to build your own for less than \$500 and I think I’m going to start looking into that.

First off let me say we have no immediate plans or dates or tickets or destinations or anything yet, but I can tell you we will be touring the US this summer.

Dawn and I both had not been looking forward to going back to the Sea of Cortez for the summer and we were both not looking forward to the oppressive heat anywhere in Mexico. I was not excited about leaving the Pacific Coast of Mexico to go to the waveless and surfless Sea of Cortez. I’m not that into snorkeling and haven’t been very impressed with it anywhere (in the world) so I wasn’t excited about that as a trade-off. Dawn was probably more into that, but she (and I) were also a bit homesick for the US. Neither of us were very excited about making more overnight passages just to get North to avoid storm season. That’s kind of the why’s behind all this…

SO…. we decided we’re going to put the boat in Marina Riviera Nayarit (AKA Marina La Cruz) at some point this summer, fly somewhere in the US, buy a crappy RV or a Bus and do some visiting, see some places we might want to live, etc.. The official Storm Season is 1 June – 31 Oct, but we probably won’t leave Mexico till closer to July. Weather is still pretty benign, not yet oppressively hot or humid surf is still good and we will have some to-do’s to do to decommission the boat.

Anyway, just wanted to let y’all know that and when we know when and where we’re headed we will let you know!

photo by sv Camille

location: Punta de Mita

Let's see if the facebook thing is working...

Update 2022: We don't Facebook any more

I’ll crank out one more post and tell you about my surf experiences here in Mexico from the beginning…

For our wedding anniversary (Last weekend in February) Dawn and I take turns and trade off planning something. This was Dawn’s year and she took us to Sayulita for surf lessons. We walked the beach and ended up going with Patricia’s Surf School.

Surf lessons are composed of two phases. A brief dry-land training and then in water practice and instruction. The dry-land training consists of some do’s and don'ts and general orientation information. Then the art of learning to “pop-up” from a paddling position to your surf stance. Once we all mastered this (there was one other couple). We took our boards down to the water where we were going to re-learn to do the same in the water.

The great thing about a lesson is the instructor will position you properly on the wave and give you a push to help you catch the waves for as long as you need it until you master popping-up. This is worth every penny because the more tries you need the more tired you’re going to get and the less you will be able to paddle to try and do this yourself. So if you’re new to surfing DEFINITELY take a lesson! After about 3 waves I was done with being pushed and was paddling in on my own. Lots of failed attempts and the instructor was still there to give me tips on my positioning on the board, pointing out if I was popping or crawling to my surf stance. It always felt like a pop to me, but I guess not. Anyway, we had a great day and I was hooked!

On March 13th during the morning VHF net in La Cruz, sv Convivia had a 9’6” Murphy Shapes longboard by Pacific SurfGlass to give away which was exactly what I needed! I did a little bit of repair to it to try and seal the rails and a week or so later we went up to Punta de Mita to try it out.

There are several surf spots around what is commonly called Punta de Mita. The one I am going to is actually called Anclote. It is directly ashore form the anchorage. I mention this because the proper Punta de Mita surf spot is actually out and around the point from the anchorage and Punta de Mita the hotel area.

From the anchorage I paddled in to the surf lineup (about 200 yards) and did ok catching a couple of waves. Bill on sv Pegasus (AKA Mister Surf) was kind enough to give me tips and I basically followed him around and tried to copy what he was doing. That helped me a lot, but he is a lifelong surfer and I was a newb so I was still a little discouraged at times. After about 2 weeks and a couple of days of 4-6 foot high swells (which make it easier) I was doing better and the bigger waves had me even more hooked. I was even starting to get picky!

That was about a month ago, and between now and then we had gone back to La Cruz for some parties and to start the paperwork for our FM3 Visas (more on that later). But now we’re back at Punta de Mita and I’ve been back in the water at Anclote for almost a week.

The surf this week has not been as big or as consistent as it was, but it’s decent. I am trying to copy what the locals are doing. I’m paddling around more trying to catch the wave in the right spot which ultimately is easier on the arms but harder to do right so I’m missing more waves but getting better even as I do it. But I catch my fair share of waves and that is the fun of it! Surfing is like hockey was for me in that its something physical I can do where I can learn and see myself improve over time. Two of my favorite things: Learning! Improving!

So what about this board? Well, its an old beat up board. It has sections where the fiberglass skin is delaminated on the deck and a big 2 foot long section rail to rail where it was previously repaired and a lot of other rail repairs as well. Two days ago I noticed some water weeping out from the inside of the board through cracks in the board. I was taking on water which is the first step to the death of a surfboard if its not just broken by a wave on a rock. I took the board to Mictlan Surf here in Punta de Mita. Tzahui Poo (pics of Tzahui surfing), the owner, is also a shaper (i.e., makes boards) and does repairs. I’ve not yet spoken with him directly, but one of the guys who works there thinks it will be a better deal just to buy a used board. Not to mention it will probably take a week to do the repair because you have to let the board dry out. Yikes a week out of the surf! The extra water weight in the board isn’t helping things either as I’m paddling around out there.

So that’s where we stand today. I am hoping to talk to Tzahui tomorrow and we’re also going to jump on the bus and go on a board hunt to see what else is available in the area. Not sure what I’ll end up doing yet. I will keep you posted!

The outboard has been running like poop. It will not run at anything but slightly above idle when in gear. In fact sometimes when you lower the throttle that little bit you were able to get above idle it even goes faster! Out of gear you run the darn thing wide open. Go figure!

Anyway, we can’t get any parts for our engine in Mexico. There is a Yamaha distributor in PV and everything just nothing is in stock and it would take 2 months to get anything from Japan. I think the person at IMEMSA (The Yamaha Importer) was trying to explain to me that this has to do with Mexico's import laws, but I’m not sure.

Anyway, I got another can of cleaner, and I’m going to let this stuff sit overnight. I don’t have enough cleaner to really immerse the entire carb and let it soak so this is probably all for not, but who knows. Last time I tried this I was unwilling to take the float off and this time I did that and there’s another pin\jet doo hickey under there, so maybe this is the magic time it will all work.

Wish me luck and if you have any expertise with 4-stroke Yamaha F8 outboards please do drop me some hints.

We dropped the surfboard off at Mictlan Surf. We have to wait for Tzahui to get back to us to see what it would cost to fix or maybe what other board I should be considering instead. In the mean time it's a rest day I guess...

Yet another toe injury. I had been in the water for a couple hours and my feet were soft, then I managed to slice my toe on the porthole again.

Not serious at all, but it will be annoying since I basically sliced the callous on my big toe and it's now a flap held on with the bandage.

Dr. Rodney is tending to my wounds and she tells me I will make a full recovery.

I was going to make a video or shoot some pics of me cleaning the carb on my Yamaha F8 outboard, but this guy’s video about his Mercury is perfect already. Its not a Yamaha, but all the bits looked the same to me and the disassembly was exactly the same. Enjoy!

This button is way more badass than the other buttons! AND you are less likely to accidentally flip on the AIS distress alert.

I dedicate this button to CB_Midkiff. GARBANZO!!!