This year, the plan was for me to go to Magus in Puerto Rico a week before Jenny, so that I could get some work done before she arrived. Like all plans, it hasn't gone perfectly, but quite a lot has been done. Magus was made seaworthy enough to move her from Salinas to the boatyard in Ponce, and she was hauled, and they started to paint the bottom. A few other projects have also been started, and she might get back in the water on Monday or maybe Tuesday. Jenny arrives on Tuesday at 5:00 am at the Ponce airport, so that will be good. And then there are a couple of other boat things that might take a day or two, and of course there's the whole provisioning thing.
The best news is that the termites seem to have been eliminated by our massive treatment effort last year-- that's an article that I haven't seen in Cruising World, yet. I still seem to have plenty of other projects to get all hot and sweaty, over, though. I realize that I really like coming up with plans and improvements for the boat, especially while I'm in the comfort of home. Actually doing them, however, is real work, and it's not exactly fun-- until it's over. Here are some photos of the nastiest dirty job I did so far, installing a “fuel polishing” system, with two filters, plenty of valves, and a little high-tech pump.
This is the work in progress, and the finished set-up, down below the floor of the pilot house. The new filter unit is obvious, but they are both Racor's that take the same replacement filters.
The next somewhat nasty job will be changing the engine oil, but now that I know the “system,” it won't be too bad. The boatyard crew is supposed to clean the bilge, and that will be money well spent, if it happens.
When I first got to Salinas, things went slow, partly because I wanted to deal with the Puerto Rico registration renewal, and that is an all day job, as it turns out-- I won't bother with all the details. And not knowing Spanish hardly at all doesn't help either.
As I did all the little preparation things that I needed to do, I found that the two forward turnbuckles for the mizzen mast had serious stress cracks-- one all the way around the fitting. It was lucky that the little marine store near the marina had the parts, so they got changed out. When I showed the old fittings to Boyd on Elusive Dream moored next to Magus, his reaction was “You need to put in a temporary parallel connection until you can get new parts, those are ready to fail.” I could say, done.
The daytime temperatures are really not that bad, like low 90's, but it's not comfortable if you're doing anything. This photo shows is a cute little meter on Magus; that's humidity on the right, not the temp of 90 F on the left.
Besides doing boat work, it feels a little like vacation. I'm having fresh squeezed orange juice from Puerto Rico oranges every morning, and I fond the time to write this. Here's the view from the club patio:
OK, so where are we going this year? Well, we didn't get anywhere close to my grandiose plans for last year, and it was completely a good time, so we'll probably just do about the same. I'd like to visit with Erol on Jost Van Dyke, and there's a lot more of the BVI's that we didn't see. I also would like to stop at Coral Bay on St. John. Just that itinerary could fill up the two full weeks that is about all we will have, after provisioning and getting back to Salinas in time to make plans to leave. Life is good.
