Back in the Yard

As we came down from the mountains so the temperatures climbed along with the humidity. We climbed back up the ladder to our home on stilts and viewed the work that had been done in our absence. Unfortunately our spare parts from Sweden had not yet arrived and with weekends and holidays approaching it was looking like we would still be in the yard for another two weeks. We set about completing as many jobs on our list as possible, making the most of the time. I serviced a number of pumps, cleaned and repainted any rusty fittings I could find and ordered a new 15hp outboard engine as our 8 hp is just not ma enough to get our dinghy on the plain with 3 people in it. 

It's amazing how problems escalate on boats; whilst replacing the stainless steel end cap to the exhaust muffler I decided to gave a look at the exhaust elbow, which from the outside looks in excellent condition but having a look inside revealed that the elbow was severely corroded and had to be replaced. Luckily I had a spare in the boat but when taking the old elbow off it revealed another problem and that was that the turbocharger was seized, due to major corrosion incursion from the exhaust elbow. I have no idea how long the turbo has been seized but it could be many months or even years! So I set about trying to free the turbo drive fan and after a few hours managed to get it spinning freely. Not knowing how much other damage has been done I will have to have the turbo professionally serviced very soon. 

Over the next two weeks I removed the rudder bearing, lip seals and skeg bearing, which was no easy task and caused much frustration, sweat and foul language but in the end we had a beautiful boat with new bottom paint, new blue stripes, polished and waxed top sides and a rudder bearing I am confident will get us across the pacific and last quite a few more years. 

As a farewell to the wonderful people at Active Marine Mazatlan we had a restaurant bring in a couple of kilos of delicious pulled pork and had lunch with everybody from the business. I the evening I went out with a couple of the guys from yard. We had a great evening, starting off at a beach side restaurant with a live 10 piece mariachi band and from then on we went to a few more bars ending up on Parker's boat where I had one scotch too many. A great and memorable night.

Thankful to be back in the water again, we washed the decks of Sarita getting all the dust and old paint off and provisioned and prepared for our trip south to La Cruz for Christmas.