Back in the Water and a Surprise Sail

The splashdown yesterday morning went without a hitch.

The items on the bill were exactly as quoted, with no surprise ad-ons.  The final bill came to $1866 USD (21832 pesos).  Of this, $660 USD was for the 3 gallons of antifouling.  The gallon of primer would not have been cheap either.

Dynaplate in position.  Note large gaps filled by epoy bed.

I told Antonio that I was very happy with the work done on Pachuca.  I was particularly impressed how the senior Abaroa, patriarch of the wealthy family, presented himself at the boatyard every morning to discuss and oversee the various activities at the yard.  He was the ultimate quality control person and checked my boat carefully before it was lowered into the water.

Bob Carroll arrived shortly before the appointed hour of noon to find me tied to the jetty because the splashdown was an hour early.  While helping  remount the long VHF antenna at the stern he suggested a short motoring cruise around the bay to exercise the engine.  We headed down the channel pleased to be doing over 6 kt over the ground with the engine running at only 1500 rpm.  We must have been getting an assist from the ebbing tide.  Bob noted how smooth and quiet the engine was.  It was the usual bright and sunny day and after a couple of comments about the fine sailing breeze we decided to go for a sail using the jib only.

It was a splendid sail, banking WNW along the Mogote on a beam reach off a 10 kt (average) breeze from the north.  A clean hull must make more difference than I had thought because the boat zipped effortlessly through the water at over 6 kt - just on the jib.  Due to the impromptu nature of the sail all I could dig up for lunch was black coffee and a small can of tuna each.  It was a shame because I had a refrigerator full of bananas, mangoes, pears, yogurt, pineapple juice, etc, but that that was a small price to pay for a great sail.

After two hours we headed back, sailing close to the wind in order to clear the Mogote and make the entrance to the La Paz channel.  At times the boat was sailing 30 degrees to the wind, according to the instruments.  We were amazed.  We tried flattening the jib way beyond anything I had ever done before and we lost significant boatspeed.  We found that we got much a much better result by easing the jib sheet and getting some "belly" in the sail.  Into an apparant wind of 11 kt we were doing close to 6 kt.

I enjoyed very much having the new GPS on the binnacle.  We could trim the sail and instantly see the result. What luxury.

During the sail I checked out the chart plotter, radar, AIS, and the autopilot, which we used a lot.  All of those systems were working fine.  The autopilot had been a concern because we had done a lot of crawling under the wires that connect to the autopilot's linear drive.

It was my first sail in Pachuca since April.  For the last 3 months my perception of Pachuca had become fragmented: she was no longer a boat but rather a series of work sites according on the project of the week. In those few hours she became an integrated boat again and it was great to have her back.