Papinoa to Acapulco

Gave Mom a call. The apartment is decorated for Christmas and she was getting ready to bake cookies! With snow on the ground I am sure no one wants to know our weather in Mexico!

01-Dec-14 the first day of December! And as David pointed out - 24 shopping days til Christmas! It just seems weird to be thinking about Christmas when it is 30 C and I am running around in a bathing suit! And at this point in time we do not even know where we will be on Christmas Day! No real shopping as birthday and Christmas presents are things we have accumulated on the way and who knows when anyone will actually get them. The further we get from Canada, the harder it will be to send things home. Oh well - guess people will just have to wait!

Peaceful night. No swell. Slight breeze through the forward hatch. Woke up to blue skies and a bit of wind.

Couple of laps in my salt water pool. Chores done. Emails read. Shower on deck.

1407: anchor up. There is a slight 2 foot chop and the wind is out of the southeast - just off our nose. Not enough wind to keep the sails full on their own but managing with the motor. So we are motor sailing again, making water, recharging the battery and the fishing line is out. We talked to our friend Ivan yesterday and he is also a fisherman. He told us that Mahi Mahi like a yellow, red, white and green hootchie being pulled at around 5 knots.

1633: fish on! But then very quickly fish off! And when David pulled in the line the hootchie was off too! Guess we will be having chicken for dinner after all.

1700: Mexican type Paella with only chicken and peppers and onions. There is enough left overs plus half of a salmon sandwich  for the Captain on his watch as he always wants to eat. Unlike myself who just wants tea and Oreo cookies!

1739: Captain goes to bed. I get to watch the sunset by myself and a beauty it is!

1805: Sunset

Dagus Moon at 66% to light my way.

2000: So it started out as a nice uneventful watch. The iPod is on and I am motor sailing at 4.5 knots. David poked his head out to check on me. I reported that everything was AOK. Can you feel me leading up to something? Well David had just gotten back into the bunk when the motor started making that funny noise again. I pulled the throttle back and put the motor in neutral. Then the motor died. And of course there was next to no wind!

First guess was the fuel filters - they were due for a change anyway so why not do it - in the dark - 5 miles offshore - and no wind! Can you hear my sarcasm? So David changed the primary and secondary fuel filters - accomplished in about 20 minutes - while I attempted to keep the boat parallel to the shore. We started up the motor and it ran well in neutral. But whenever we tried to put a load on it and put it in forward, the rpm's would not respond. We tried priming it a couple of times but it still would not stay running. Now David was thinking that it could be the primary fuel pump - not good as we do not have a spare!

Nothing to do right now so David told me to get some sleep. I said a prayer to St. Anthony as I climbed into the bunk and I guess he heard me as the wind picked up and David was able to manage about 3.5 knots. He had one close encounter with a freighter when he first took over and was dead in the water - got to within 1 nm away but after that everything was OK.

0300: I got up and relieved David. The wind picked up a little more and I was able to average 4.5 knots for the next couple of hours.

0500: winds started to drop off again and I was down to 1 knot. A pod of dolphins even came along to give me a push. They played around the boat for about an hour. It was really cool as you could see them approaching like a radar screen due to the phosphorescence in the water.

053: David was up and said that he had time to think about the fuel issue. The fuel bowl on the primary filter was empty so this made him think that it was not the pump but rather an air lock forcing the fuel to gravity feed back into the tank. So he tightened all of the clamps, primed and then we started her up. Everything looked and sounded good. Just goes to show that it is better to sleep on it and not panic and a simple solution may just present itself!

0600: I went back to bed and David took over til 0800. He got to see the sunrise!

I figured we could both use a good breakfast so I put together one of my famous scrambles. 

We continued to be entertained by Dolphins. The pictures give you a little idea of the show that they put on.

1047: starting to see all the development around Acapulco. Talked to Dave on Palagio - they are on their way to the Sea of Cortez.

1300: spent half an hour looking for a place to anchor in Alcapulco. There are an incredible number of boats on mooring buoys. We settled for a spot in 58 feet of water between the Marina Acapulco and the Cruise Ship terminal. It was kind of like anchoring off Stanley Park.  We could actually hear road traffic for the first time in a long time.