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Published: February 6th 2011
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Full Moon Regatta T shirt
Wow, you get a T shirt with your entry in this race. Greetings from La Paz.
(If you click on any picture it takes you to a large size filmstrip of all the pictures for better viewing)
Brian (aka Mike) and I have been here in Marina de La Paz for almost two months. It's a much more convenient marina than Marina Palmira, which we stayed in last time we were in La Paz, because it is more centrally located and is the home of Club Cruceros, the closest thing to a yacht club in Baja. We have been putzing around with boat projects. I have installed a new solar panel controller and it is a big improvement over my old one because the old one created horrible interference on the VHF radio. I also had Ansa's sole refinished.
ECHO is getting some work done here in Mexico too. The first project was to get the external bright work (wood) re-varnished. After stripping it down to bare wood and fixing a few blemishes it was sanded and 8 coats of varnish applied. It looks like new. My companionway (boat entry) has always bothered me. There were two doors and two slats on the way in. I decided to have an
Solar Controller
My new solar controller; a Xantrex XW MPPT 60, the only FCC part B compliant SCC controller I could find. extra step added inside and raised the threshold to eliminate one slat. Next I am having two new doors made that are longer, thus eliminating the other slat. When done I will only have two doors to open to get in the boat. Much better and easier. My carpenter is good but very slow so it is not done yet. ECHO also had doors on an aft companion way that didn't go anywhere. I decided to remove the doors and close up the hole. This is where big things go in and out of the boat so I couldn't glass it in but it is sealed now.
The local sailing club, Valeros de Baja, sponsored a regatta last week, which we participated in. We needed to get out of the marina and do some sailing - we needed to get off the dock! It was a three day race called the "Full Moon Regatta" from La Paz to the bay between Isla Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida, then around both islands to Bonanza beach on Isla Espiritu Santo, then on back to La Paz. ( The Google map doesn't show this very well, to see the islands, click on
Preparing to refinish
Ansa gets some dust covers in preparation for floor re finishing. "Hybrid") The first two legs were very tedious as there was almost no wind. This was a new experience for us, because normally we would motor in such low wind conditions. We spent hours and hours trying to sail at under 1 knot. On the first leg, we arrived at the anchorage well after dark - normally we wouldn't consider doing this, but we knew the anchorage pretty well and it was a full moon. The second day we made it in about an hour before sunset. A surprising discovery was that under these conditions, we could make better time under jib and main as opposed to spinnaker and main. There was so little wind and enough rolling that we couldn't keep the spinnaker full. A totally unexpected result. The third day the winds were kinder, 6 to 12 knots, and we had a nice sail back to La Paz, arriving at 1430.
In La Paz, after passing the committee boat, we started the engine and turned into the wind to furl up the jib. Unfortunately, the furler had an an overide and wouldn't roll up. I kept the boat into the wind and Brian went up forward to
Boat project
Ansa's sole after refinishing. see if he could clear the overide. All this time the jib is flogging furiously in about 12 knots of wind. The jib sheets are flailing and the starboard sheet caught the main halyard, lifted it up off the winch and threw it into the water ( I bet you can see what's coming), the halyard made a beeline for the propellor and ... Horrible noises and no power from the engine. Needless to say, we had a little excitement recovering from this sequence. After we got things under control, we limped back into the marina under power with poor Ansa vibrating terribly. Oh, and by the way, all the flogging ripped up some seams on the jibs UV cover.
I am generally pretty good about being careful about lines going over the side, but I mostly think about sheets. I don't think I've ever really considered the idea of a halyard going overboard, and I was surprised that it was long enough to get in the prop. Well, it was, by about four feet. I normally hang halyards on the winch, don't really secure them to the mast. This was a good lesson earned pretty cheaply since we
Valeros de Baja
The logo for Valeros de Baja, on the front of our free T shirts. were able to recover and get back in the marina without anyone being hurt or hitting anything. From now on, I will consider all lines as potential prop meat.
The race ended on a Friday. Saturday and Sunday we did a post mortem. The ripped seams on the jib weren't too bad, and I sewed them up by hand. I snorkled under the boat and found that the cutlass bearing had pulled half way out of the strut and generally self destructed. Time for a haul out. Hauled out on a Tuesday and had the propeller shaft pulled. The shaft came back Wednesday as OK, so it looks like the only real damage was to the cutlass bearing.
Later this week we'll go to the Regatta awards dinner and get our trophy for being dead last. Oh well, it was fun and we learned a lot. One consolation is we got to sail for the longest time.
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Don McInnes
non-member comment
Looks Like You're Having Fun
Have a cold one for me and don't work too hard.