Good News on Engine

By 5 PM I had not received a message from Colin so I made a special run to the marine to try to reach him by telephone. He answered and told me that the head was ready. This was big news not because the head was ready but because it had passed muster. In the back of my mind I had the fear that they might find a problem with the head making it unusable.

I asked him about the injector and he said that the nozzle and spray pattern had been OK. However, he took it apart, cleaned it, and made some minor adjustments with the pressures. He is not inclined to check the other injector and I am not inclined to push the issue. Besides, there has been no evidence of injector or any other problem with that cylinder.

I am to telephone him 8-8.30 AM on Monday because he thinks that he can install the head on that day.

Earlier in the day the wind was calm so I motored over to Adios, a Columbia 35, to see if Bob felt like coming over and discussing the setup of my staysail. I'm glad that I visited his boat because it gave me the chance to motor over the sand bar that separates this side of the bay from the Magote anchorage. It is unlikely that the need would arise but if I were staying long term I now feel familiar enough with that side to take Pachuca there. The Magote anchorage offers the advantage of less current and calmer water. However, it has the disadvantage of being farther from the Marina. Bob had told Arnold and myself that the holding on this side was not very good because of the mud bottom. However, yesterday he told me that when he said that he hadn't been aware of how close to the bar we are, and that the holding ground under Pachuca is good with a sand bottom.

Anyway, Bob jumped in the Zodiac and we came back to Pachuca. We raised the staysail with sheets and discussed how I could overcome the problem of heaving to. When going hard to weather the sheets pass through a narrow gap between two shrouds. But heaving to requires the back winding of the sail which results in the sheet bending around the inner shroud and chafing. Bob's suggestion is to redirect the lazy sheet (i.e. the rope on the windward side that isn't doing any work) to pass inside all three shrouds, tack the boat, making the lazy sheet the working sheet, and after winching that sheet tight tack back leaving the sail back winded with the sheet passing directly from the block to the sail without wrapping bending around a shroud. This leaves the boat hove to on the same side that it had been sailing. If I need to heave to on the other side then two tacks will be required.

He didn't like the improvised way of fixing the tack of the sail to the base of the inner forestay that I had inherited from the previous owners. He suggested fixing a dedicated eye bolt on the deck for the staysail. This made sense and I plan to do it soon. I told Bob that one of my faults is that I tend to accept things the way they are. I should have thought of this myself long ago but on the other hand I have to wonder how this cutter rigged boat could have been sailed for over 20 years without a proper fitting for the staysail tack.

Incidentally, my first question had been whether the staysail (marked "no. 3") was too big, which would explain why I was forced to lower it in 45 kt winds off the Oregon coast. Bob said that it is the right size but in high winds he sails with the staysail only and no mainsail, whereas that night I was beating with the staysail and the mainsail double reefed. So when the wind hits 45 knots I'll have two choices: heave to with the double reefed main and backed staysail (which Brenda and I agree gave us the best hove to angle ever) or drop the mainsail and go with just the staysail.

We discussed my safety jack lines and he agreed that there was no practical way of moving the jacklines to the center of the foredeck to ensure that I could not actually go over the rail. I showed him that if I did go over the rail I would be dragged along with my sternum at water level. This would give me a shot at grabbing the gunwale and climbing back on. I plan to do a static test of this while at anchor. However, under real conditions I would have the rushing water working against me but sheer terror working for me.

Tonight I read a good suggestion from Jak Mang in Port Townsend to run a trailing line set up in such a way that pulling on it would disengage the Monitor wind steering. This would cause the boat to round up and stop. Then while writing this blog I realized that a trailing line would do me no good if I am being dragged through the water amidships. That led to the idea of Monitor windvane trip lines draped along the length of the boat off both toe rails. That way if I fell over the side I would have a pretty good chance of grabbing the trip line and stopping the boat.

This is all off-the-top-of-the-head stuff and I'll have to do a lot more thinking about it. Any suggestions are most welcome.

At 6 PM I visited Noel and Jacky on Pyewacket for drinks in the cockpit. They had been given a quotation of $120 for the clearance rat check. Someone would actually come on board and look for rats. It is unbelievable. Why would they look for rats when you are leaving? I wonder how many rats they have found on departing yachts in the last 10 years. Anyway, instead of going to Mazatlan 200 miles to the ESE they plan to make their clearance from Acapulco, about 600 miles to the south. Jacky showed me the statement in Charlie's Charts that Acapulco is "one of the world's finest natural harbors." She showed me the chart on C-Map and I must admit that entering the harbor and dropping a hook would be a piece of cake, with plenty of room and great protection.

I must admit also that I considered clearing from Acapulco myself, but I figure that the sea miles saved by avoiding Mazatlan would be lost in taking that big loop hundreds of miles out to sea from Acapulco to avoid the Tehuantepec wind tunnel.

The wind picked up so we went below and I joined them for dinner and a movie. I enjoyed my time with them very much and was sad to hear that they might leave on Sunday. But you never know. After all, we met in San Francisco when they saw my Aussie flag and here we are anchored next to each other in La Paz.