Boat Ready, Sailing Notes, Mexican Medical Service

It is 12.15 PM and the boat is ready for Brenda's arrival.  I am at present enjoying a "Tsingtao" beer from Viet Nam that Larry gave to me while I wait for my 2-day old leftovers to heat for lunch.  Brenda's airplane is due to touch down at 4.22 PM and Larry has kindly offered to take me to the La Paz airport to meet Brenda.  This is a good arrangement because Larry will be leaving La Paz tomorrow and this will provide a good opportunity for them to see each other again.

To take advantage of Larry's offer to provide whatever transport might be useful to me around La Paz I have emptied the two 10-liter containers of reserve diesel into the tanks and I know that they are full.  I washed the containers to minimized the odor of diesel in Larry's car and I will ask him to take me to the filling station to fill them up.  I find this method so much easier than maneuvering the boat to the fuel jetty for just a few liters of diesel.

In tidying up the boat I transferred some notes from my conversations with Dan of Port Townend Rigging when we all had dinner at Sue's house.  Wow, will Dan's information represent a major change of how I handle my sails!

On managing the sails:
- Make you decisions keeping in mind the trend of wind speed changes (i.e. is it going up, or down?)
- 1st reef when the wind is 18-24 knots
- 2nd reef when the wind is 24-30 knots (My mainsail has only 2 reefs.)
- Go to the storm trysail when the wind speed is above 30 knots
- The weather helm should result in more that 6 degrees angle on the rudder

All of this represents a radical departure from how I have been managing my sails.  In the past I would not put the second reef until 30 knots and carry it to 45 knots when I'd be forced to heave to.  I've never used the trysail.

The trysail and staysail will have to be part of my routine in the future.  Dan explained why I had been so reluctant to use the staysail and I have started planning on the installation of short tracks dedicated to the staysail.  I figure that if the trysail goes up so will the staysail, with the headsail rolled up.  I will heave to with this configuration, unless I think that hurricane conditions are coming, in which case I'll replace the staysail with the storm jib of 30 sq ft that Victor sent to me from Australia.

Dan explained that a true cutter has its mast at station 5, there being 10 stations along the waterline.  A few days ago I came across the hull plan of Pachuca and her mast is at station 4.3.  That makes her a cutter rigged sloop, which I have heard called a "slutter".

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My friend Bob just got Mexican medical insurance which which was a startlingly low $83 per annum.  I asked him what it covers, and he replied "everything", including some dental coverage.  Another friend told me that he had brain surgery in La Paz, for a subdural hematoma.  The operation included a neurosurgeon with two doctors assisting, plus the anaesthetist and other theater staff.  He was covered for that, but had he had to pay directly the operation would have cost him about $4,000 and the hospital charge for 3 days would have been about $5,000.  He said that in the US it would have cost him $130,000.  Oh, and by the way, the doctor made post-operation house calls to his boat for three weeks.

He told me that the charge for medical insurance is related to your income.  He knows of one Japanese woman whose income was so low that she got coverage at no charge.  ... Speaking of coverage, there are no barrier due to pre existing conditions or age.