Back at Slip 111 and Fast Progress

Yesterday morning I was towed back to from the boat yard to Slip 111 of Marina de La Paz.  We had a spurting PSS packing due to the fact that the engine end of the shaft is not connected so a mechanic came down and tightened it a bit.  I tied the coupler to a cross piece of timber to keep the shaft from turning as I was being towed.

I walked over to the Marina de La Paz at about 9.30 AM to let them know that I was ready for a tow.  The team had been on the alert since 8.30 AM and literally within 5 minutes two launches were on the way.  There were two men in the towing launch and one man in the trailing launch.  At the dock Joel and one of his colleagues was  waiting which made the total of helpers to 5.  The another four fit looking men decided to stand around and watch the proceedings.  I felt very, very secure.  Soon I was safely backed into the slip and spent the next hour setting up my lines and connecting the boat to shore power and the internet.

That afternoon I had a what in my working life I would have called a project meeting and we got agreement on the basics such as the design of the engine beds and who would do what.  During the meeting I noticed that Joel was working with some skilfully drawn hand sketches of the engine bed design and it turned out that Neil's father Mac had done them.  Neil explained that this is the sort of thing that his father liked to do.  After one 20 minute visit to my boat Mac had gone and sketched out the plans and built a jig with little fanfare before he left on an extended visit  to the USA two days later. (He is still there.)  It was suggested that a man named Mercedes might do the carpentry work.  Neil called him and he agreed to meet Joel and myself at the boat this morning at 8 AM.

Then we went to the Volvo shipping crate to follow up on a suggestion that I move the loose boxes of instrumentation, cabling, and spares to Pachuca.  That led to one of those crises that turns out to be nothing more than a mindless emotion-wasting detour.  Joel and I could not find any gauges in the shipping crate.   I checked the shipment manifest and concluded that three gauges (tachometer, oil, temp) were missing.  After an investigation we concluded that the gauges had gone missing while in the custody of the Marina de La Paz.  Neil saved the day this morning when he visited the boat and asked if I had looked in every box of spares.  ... Well ... no I hadn't looked into the boxes of spare filters.  I passed out the cartons to him and soon he hit pay dirt.  Joel and I had been expecting the gauges to be in see-through plastic when in fact they were in Volvo boxes that made them look like more spare filters and cartridges.  So just like that the crisis was over.  Mark had gone to the trouble of lining up another another set of gauges from Volvo, Neil had put in a lot of time investigating the circumstances of the loss then offered to pay for the replacement gauges and facilitate the importation, and I felt like a chump.  The only favorable thing I can say about myself in this sorry exercise is that at least I didn't freak out, get angry, and start running around alienating people. 

At 8.30 this morning I greeted Joel with Buenos Dias and introduced myself to Senor Mercedes.  I was expecting only a planning discussion with things starting to happen later.  I asked for their help in lifting the sliding engine cover onto the cabin table.  After this was done we spent 20 minutes removing the engine cover base after which it was passed to me in the cockpit and I placed it on the cabin top.  Removing that base greatly improved the prospects for the job.

Then Joel picked up the plywood jig that Mac had made and for the next hour they went at it hard to produce cutting lines, a job that I had expected to have to do.  Then Joel left and Mercedes got to work with a big industrial strength reciprocating saw that had sufficient reach to span the engine beds.  He worked alone in the dust and heat using the saw and a hand chisel until  about 4 PM.  At the end of his day I knew that we had turned the corner on the preparation of the engine beds.  For one thing, they had calculated the cut line with confidence; for another we knew that cutting into the beds was a do-able, practical proposition.  And the third very big thing was that we had found the wood in the engine beds to be rock solid, with no evidence of rot or degradation.  In fact the cut wood gave out the same scent as if it had been fresh cut.  I was amazed.  I had expected the wood to be jarrah but saw that it was a white wood, quite likely "Oregon" pine, which was extensively used in Western Australia boat building.  Mercedes told me that the grain of the wood was very good, making the beds very strong.  Later I could see that the grain of the wood ran vertically along the length of the beds, which explained why he had such a tough time cutting through it.

Mercedes will return tomorrow and hopefully be able to finish the job.

In the morning Brenda exhibited her negotiation skills when she went to pay for another week's stay at the hotel.  The occupancy rate had gone up a bit and I asked Brenda not to let them charge us more than before.  She did better than that.  She told Hugo that because this was our third week of stay maybe he could do something about the charge.  Our week's stay immediately went down from 6 days at $60 USD (7th day free) to 6 days at $55 USD.  That's enough to fund a fine dinner for two.  She followed up that act by going down to a vendor selling fruit and vegetables out of a truck at the end of the drive way and purchasing 5 beautiful mangoes for 10 pesos - that's about 20 Aussie cents each.  We had one with yoghurt for desert and I declared it as good a mango as I had ever eaten in my entire life.

The second photo shows Joel (left) and Mercedes at work using Mac's jig.

The next three photos show the engine bed before and after cutting.  Note the end grain and the color of the wood.

Then there are the three "lost" gauges.

Finally there is a  look at Pachuca's new water line, 2" higher than before.  Note that her high stern will be pushed down when the new engine is installed.

Brenda's Bird of the Day is a follow-on from last time. This time it is a dove that is widespread in Mexico, including La Paz. It is called the White-winged Dove.