Puerta Vallarta

First off, I'd like to say how much I despise this monstrosity of an evil keyboard that I must assume is a spanish version of my beloved friend. It}s mis+´placed bits and pieces leave me feeling like an idiot, or at least an aqward duck. But back on topic: Puerta Vallarta. It is no doubt a tourist town, so much so that besides the attempts at agricultural landscaping that are observed when flying it, it would be safe to say that this town exists for foreign tourists that are either looking to get: A) drunk, spun, high, and/or laid. B) a nice set of shell necklaces and authentic parashute solider dude, or C) a false sense of "local experience" on a Mercedes Uni-Mog (apparently German for "one mog") or some other falsly-labeled "eco-tour." I will say, however, that I walked the entire way from the airport to the hostel, then all around downtown, and currently have sore feet. With what appears to be a simese cat rubbing on them, which in truth isn{t so bad. {Damn keyboard. The nightlife here starts (from what I can tell) at around 10-10:30pm when fellow hostel goers buy cheap liquer and beer at the Oxxo mini-mart next door for the in-hostel pre-funk (aka, save your money and get drunk BEFORE hitting the $10 Corona clubs). Once everybody is buzzing, the folks head down into town (we´re up a hill outside of downtown) they hop from disco-disco to disco, then return on average between 2-6am. And that is why I{m sitting here with my Bohemia and tired eyes. : ) I feel like a bit of an old fart, and a bit out of place, but I think I{m going to do some searching for an alledged used book store and chillax on the beach tomorrow. They do have tequila sampling shops here, and oldy enough I{ve been offered weed once from such a vendor, once from a cab driver, and Perkaset (sp?) from some odd fellow near the beach. It must be the beard. Or my red shirt. I will say there are some pretty freaking gorgous women here though, although not the bimboed-out, fake-n-bake you might associate such a statement with back home (I appologize if that is your idea of gorgous, and I just made blasphemy of it). There are Mexican women here that have bodies like supermodels and faces like angels, and they{re all over. How mexican men land these stunning ladies is beyond me, as a mere mortal. Perhaps there is a power of romance they possess, or a secret devotion and nurturing care that they provide that no other man has yet to discover, but whatever it is, I{m impressed. So salude! to the Mexican males who pull in the big game fish, may they keep their secrets for generations to come. But that said, there are some who got an ass-whooping with the ugly stick. Not that there aren{t those in the ol' US of A, but just to bring things back to an earthly level.

One of my favorite things (seriously) about most of Mexico that I{ve seen, are the totally random sidewalks. They offer challenge at every property line, holes in the darkest of corners, and rebar when you least expect it. The lady that sued McDonalds for making hot coffee without labeling it as "hot" would have been killed off by these sidewalks years ago, and that makes me happy. : ) Renting a bike is out of the question, as there is really no good place to ride such a contraption without great inconvenience, and while driving could work out, parking and insurance are rather big hurtles to jump down here. So walking/busing/cabing is it.

Apparently PV is a pretty gay-friendly place, so tomorrow I{m going gay and will report back later. Well, maybe not. But I{m definitely going to check out the "gay beach" as it is locally called and take in all the sights, as I{ve heard the most exotic of women also flock there as a means to avoid the "creapy mexican men" as they were described to me by a fellow traveler here at the hostel. Frankly, from what I{ve seen so far, there are more tight-clothed men with gelled hair and custom accents in Seattle than there are here, but that{s just me, on my first day.

Well, I{ve got to drain off some Bohemia, so until next time, keep it safe, and do stuff that I wouldn{t do, because I{m an odd one with a sense of adventure unique to myself.

Danny

Workin'!

But not for $. Lately I've been tearing out the interior of Rafiki, to the point now where there is nothing but a 30amp shore power breaker and one outlet inside the boat. All the spray-in insulation that was on the ceilings has been scraped off, all of the wood has been removed from the boat and tossed (or kept as a template), and today I finished pressure spraying the interior and currently have two heaters and fans running to dry it all out. Whew! I leave for Puerta Vallarta on Monday morning for 10 days of exploration and diving (Aimee and I are taking our Advanced Open Water Certification), then when I get back it's prep for the boater's swap meet, some ISD/ASC work, and hopefully more fun in the sun! Tonight I took some interior photos of the model cabins on the Wilderness Discoverer, which you see posted above. I also shot some photos of my 4Runner with Aimee last week, and that was fun too. Anywho, I had a rough morning hangover, and I'm feeling the need to hit the bed. So until later, peace yo!

PS - there is a video below (about 2 inches): click on the "Play" symbol in the gray bar!

Sailing!

Yesterday Aimee and I went sailing on Rafiki and we had quite an adventure. It started out like all other sailing trips, and ended smoothly as well, but the in-between part is where the fun was had! I don't know what the actual wind speed was, but I'm guessing somewhere in the 20-25knot range, possibily stretching to gusts of 30....but who knows. Anywho, we ran with just the genoa up from the get-go, and that alone was able to get us clipping along quite well (6.1 knots, the current speed record) on a reach. But after an up-wind knock down that resulted in an attempt to tack, we found ourselves with: A) genoa sheets that I now realize are far too short, B) zero hull speed and therefore no: C) steerage. So we were "in irons" and drifting quickly into the houseboats of Eastlake, to my immediate distress (for the houseboats - remember, Rafiki is a steel titan). Fortunatly we rounded down straight between two of the houseboats where there was an open slip, of all things! I, with Aimee's help, ran my lengthy genoa halyard to the dock and stopped us, then (thank you Gerber, and my habit of always wearing it) cut the already short genoa sheet 8" shorter, and proceeded to roll in the sail. End of story. Ish. Once we shoved off and "rolled out" again we made our way back to general area of the slip where I moor the boat. When the time was right, we rounded up nicely, rolled in the sail, turned on the Minn-Kota, and....nothing happened. No, the faithful engine was humming along fine, putting out it's full 40lbs of thrust, but the windage of the boat was too strong of an opponent for it, and we began drifting yet again. That is when I discovered that my middle finger was a bit ragged and torn, and subsequently a bit bloody. I did what I can only describe as a brief and slow motorboat noise with my lips, went down below, and began plucking WN numbers and charts out of the bilge (courtsey of some of the earlier gusts, and my poor securing). After clean up a bit, and no small amount of grunting on my part, we came back out on deck, let out the sail, took a few tacks, and tried the whole scenerio again, but this time furling the sail upwind of the slip, with plenty of room to drift/motor into the slip. All went as normal after that, but my finger still hurts. I am currently in the market for a pair of fingerless leather-palmed sailing gloves. Remarkably I still have a girlfriend (gosh, she's lovely), and in hindsight I'm actually quite glad for the whole event, as I learned a bit about how my boat handles, and what some of her limits are. That said, I knew it was going to be blowing like stink, and I did rather enjoy the sailing, even if we ended up using more adrenaline than expected.

So, in closing: What is a pirate's favorite letter?

ARRRRRRR!

Danny

Blooming Ideas

Ideas are popping out of my noggin' every single time I think about my boat, and constantly when I'm on her! So far I've decided that my pilot house will be made from 10 gauge mild steel, all windows out of 3/8" Lexan polycarbonate (adhesive mechanical bonding, no bolts), front and top opening windows (waiting for boater's swap meet...Lewmar Ocean's?), and hopefully a SS dogged dutch door companionway hatch with upper window and gas-shock lifted hatch cover. For steering, I'd like to get another complete Autohelm ST4000 linear drive as a backup, and install a cockpit remote control. I plan to remove my old and rotting SS lifeline poles and replace them with beefy re-enforced steel poles and a turbo-strong stern pulpit with intergrated solar panel/accessory/solar-shower rack. I'm currently in throws of how I'll build a spinnaker sprit for the boat, as there are so many different ideas I could use, but I'm sure I'll settle down at some point. An ATN spinnaker sock is something I adore, as we had one on Augusta when I grew up and I am convinced of their superiority to other socks built with SS rod rings - so I'll either build one (I've been yearning to play with fiberglass for awhile now) myself or modify the one that my dad is getting rid of (he's having a Code 0 built and installing a furler - sweet!) to fit my boat. I've worked a dozen different methods of how I'll run lines to the cockpit with my new pilothouse, and shy of a 2-speed self-tailing mast-mounted winch, I've already got most of the components to make it totally sweet. The only running-rigging issue left is how to run boom-gibe preventers...

I've also settled on a coating system for the interior, using Rodda CorroSeal rust converter/primer as a base, MasCoat Delta T (a latex/acrilic-bound ceramic micro-bubble spray-on insulation), topped with Pettit White EasyPoxy. Then I plan to use HDPE or (insert a better stud material that doesn't absorb moisture here) as stud material and other plastic products to re-make my interior, as I really hate wood (for cleaning sake, odor, and maintenance. My cockpit will get a hatch or two installed on the starboard side to access my lazerette space, and the aft lazerette hatch will be cut out and modified to span double the current width and half (or more) of the current height. Interior wise I'm still figuring out how and where I'm going to install refrigeration and a hot water heater, but I'm sure that will become more clear once I have in interior yanked out. Speaking of which, the floorboard material has yet to be determined, but my end goal is to have easy access to nearly every inch of the bilge, and slightly harder access (but not terribily difficult) to EVERY square inch of the boat. I need to be able to inspect everything, and building on top of bolted-down floorboard was not a nice thing for the last installer to do. Tisk tisk. Electronics are still quite a way down the road, but a Furno 1715 radar is in the books, along with solar chargers, 2nd exterior VHF station, dual interior/exterior engine controls, engine-powered cabin heater and ducting, Isotemp SS hot water heater, a second hard-mount GPS, and potentially a SSB (or at least a receiver for weather faxes, etc). I'd love to get a weather station, but they're really freaking expensive it seems like, so I'll have to keep an eye out for one of those.

In other boat news, I pulled out all my sails yesterday and found that I have: a new "storm tri" sail for my main, a storm sail for my inner-forestay, a bigger sail for my inner-forestay, a BIGGER sail for nothing on my boat, and a rather dinky symetrical spinnaker that is in pretty darn good shape. I also have a good++ condition 120-something% genoa on a roller furler, and an old main with odly-placed reefing lines. It was fun to put them up, but I have yet to pull up the "bigger" inner-forestay sail: that is for the next trip out (gotten have a bonus to look forward to!).

The engine of my dreams has yet to present itself to me, (a lightly-used Yanmar, Beta, Westerbeke, or Universal 3-cylinder fresh-water cooled inboard diesel with a V-drive, for less than $5k), but I'm not giving up hope just yet. I'll give up as soon as the pilothouse and interior are finished up, but then I'm only left with the Beta 28 option at over $10k installed...ouch.

Lastly, I need a skiff and outboard. I like the Merc Airdeck idea, in that I can have a semi-ridgid hull but be able to pack it away in a bag when needed. However, that is still a big-ass, heavy bag, and perhaps it would just be nice to have an Aquapro and complain about lack of deckspace while underway? Oh, but don't forget I'll probably be dragging along an inflatable kayak for solo trips, so that's there too. Outboard would ideally be a 5-9.9hp 4-stroke Yamaha or Honda, but I'm really unbiased on outboards at this point, so go ahead and give me a Nissan/Tohatsu or Suzuki, just no Merc's.

Alright, I've got to get back to work (I just bought a new 6-piece DeWalt 18V cordless tool kit) and fix an exhaust leak on my 4Runner and rebuild my Aries windvane.

Cheers,

Danny

PS - I want to run double anchors up front, with a dual-gypsy Lighthouse 1501DWG 12windlass...the problem is that the system I would cost me $7713.28 shipped! OUCH! See the picture, and drooooool!

Sailing, sailing, over the....lake?

YES! This last weekend was great! Working backwards from yesterday (Sunday), Aimee and I completed our Open Water Driver Certification course through Seattle Scuba after two freezing (47-degree) dives near the Duwamish waterway (yuck), we had a afternoon sail on Rafiki in which we flew the spinnaker for the first time, broke the boat's water-speed record (now at 4.6 screaming knots), and I observed Lake Union from aloft for the first time. On Friday I worked like a mad-man on my 4Runner and got a working stereo going (although not the final turbo version) and did other maintenance work on my long-term beast of a SUV... In other news, I'm not going down to Mexico until mid to late April, which was a bummer at first, but then I realized how much time I'd have to enjoy life at home - and now I'm quite stoked for my additional time off! : )

But back to the boat. I've started gutting the interior, and so far I've removed all the V-birth insulation and framework, removed half of the integrated (EVIL) floorboards, sold the old Sabb diesel engine, removed the poorly-designed dodger, thrown away the nasty (and trickster) toilet/head (it tried to sink Rafiki, but failed), pulled out the entire overhead (I'm planning on making a pilothouse addition this summer/fall), and removed just about everything that isn't essential for: A). Floating, and B). Going. With emphasis on the last one. My friend Christian is a firm believer in "Go" and loaned me an electric outboard motor, which is the only reason I'm able to take my dear boat out sailing on a whim; granted, a whim with only 40lbs of thrust. But a little push is all it takes, and without the wonder that is Minn-Kota, I'd have yet another potentially daunting and depressing project clawing at my soul. But such is not the case! I'm on the prowl for 25-30hp 3-cylinder inboard diesel engines with low hours and optimally with a V-drive transmission, but if late fall rolls around and I find myself wanting, I'll deflate my summer savings and do my part to stimulate the economy via Yanmar or Beta Diesel. I also fixed one of my FOUR! self-tailing winches that the boat came equipped with (in fact, those are all the winches I have!) that had been seized by salt-intrusion and corrosion (although not fatal). My plans for this boat occupy most of my free thoughts and many hours googling, CLing, and scouting local shops for all the tid-bits that will bring this beast of a boat to a happy state. I have a "Boater's Swap Meet List" that is nearly a page (typed) long, and I'm already making pre-swap stratagies in my head. I'm obsessed. And I'm living o-so-well.

Anywho, enough gushing - it's time to get crackin'!

Cheers,

Danny