Eight By Michael

Eleanor loves flan.

When Eleanor was in the womb, strangers on the bus or Metro would ask Windy when she was due. Windy would tell them October, 31 and then add, “Halloween!” or something like that. On more than one occasion, she got a very strange and somber response, a shaking of the head and sincere condolence. “Maybe the baby will come early,” they would offer.

Well, she did come early, a couple days early. And nobody is more pleased than Eleanor that her birthday is associated with such a magnificent holiday. My girl has enjoyed dressing up and making her own style for as long as I can remember. Even when she was tiny, she would screech some of her first words to remind us that she needed no help getting dressed, “Me do it!”

Her nickname is Boo.

Most kids are eager for their next birthday milestone. It’s clear because they will state their ages in terms of how close they are to the next milestone, “I’m almost 10.” Eleanor doesn’t seem to care about the milestone as much as just being older. She yearns to be older. She carries a strong sense that there is a mysterious adult world that is beyond her age. She wants to penetrate that world today, to know it now, everything. Since she could speak, she has been attuned, hyper attuned to anything that might serve as a clue. She asks a lot of questions.

Eleanor loves flan so much, she
asked at a local restaurant if they
would teach her how to make it.
Here she is at her cooking class.

Eleanor didn’t want a party this year. She wanted only to hang out with us, shop for Halloween accoutrements, and get ice cream at least twice. She asked to go out for lunch and to spend late afternoon-till-dark on the beach, using her mask in the water and exploring on the rocks. It all happened, just as she wished.

No, it was better.

I don’t just love Eleanor, I love her company. She is a neat person to spend time with. She is perceptive, sensitive, and clever. She is surprisingly innocent despite her desire to be worldly. She spends so much time in her own head, focused on a thought, an insect in her hand, or the look of her own shoes striking the ground as she runs, that it is challenging/frustrating/exasperating to teach her to notice the street as she crosses it.

I love that since we started our journey as a family in May, Eleanor has bonded with her sister in a way that was unimaginable one year ago. The two girls are yin and yang, night and day. I’m heartened to have learned recently that Eleanor appreciates the value of this more than anyone.

I’m eager and excited to begin my ninth year with her, spending more time in her company than ever before.

Happy birthday Boo.

--MR

Eleanor loves key lime pie too. You can't really tell from this picture, but Tami from
s/v Andiamo III made Eleanor a key lime pie in her favorite color tonight, blue.
Fortunately it still tasted really good.

Uhg, The Rigging By Michael



Crevice corrosion attacked this chain plate right where it passed
through the deck. The resulting stress crack will result in a rig
failure if left unchecked.



To quote myself from yesterday’s post, “I am pleased.”

Even though they looked okay to my naked eye, I had the two upper chain plates cleaned up really good today. I knew that all of the surface rust and staining would have to be removed to determine whether any problems lurked.

Problems lurk.

I’m not pleased.

We’re going to replace these two chain plates and pull the four lowers sooner rather than later. And pitting I found on the underside of these chain plates leaves me considering pulling the fore and aft external chain plates. Especially at the bow, if not sealed well crevice corrosion could be eating the thing away, unseen. There is no evidence of rust, but I’m going to look again, closely.

The chain plates I pulled are ½-inch-thick, two inches wide, and two feet long. Seeing cracks in this beefy stock may make sense after more than three decades, but has me worried about the others.

--MR

This is a better view of the crack. Windy says she sees others, this is the most apparent.



The Rigging By Michael



Here is the port-side upper chain plate, visible with the wood
trim removed. Note the tell-tale signs of long-term water
intrusion. Note the Japanese characters penned on the plate;
it's likely this thing had never been removed and cleaned
in the past. After 33 years, I was afraid of what I would find.



Sailboats are characterized by masts, those tall sticks used to hoist and support sails. Like most, our aluminum mast is not built strongly enough to both support itself and to bear the enormous forces imposed by the wind in the sails (this is by design as the weight of an aluminum mast capable of such loads, would be prohibitive). So, heavy cables (called stays) are attached to the mast and led to the deck, three on each side and one each at the bow and stern. Stays, in turn, are connected to large solid points attached firmly to the hull. These large solid points are called chain plates. Collectively, this whole system is called the rig.

A nightmare for any boat owner is the prospect of losing the rig, meaning losing the mast. If this happens, the sailboat loses its primary means of propulsion and likely sustains damage (or injury to the crew) from the mast and stays crashing down to the deck and cabin top. And once down, the whole heavy mess of twisted, broken metal has to be either discarded or secured to prevent further damage, such as puncturing the hull and sinking the boat.

Unfortunately, potential failure points are often difficult to identify: hidden where a stay attaches to a fitting, aloft where stays attach to the mast, or in the dark places where chain plates pass through the hull.

We had our rig inspected before we bought Del Viento and knew we had likely failure points: distorted connections where wire cable attached to fittings (swage fittings), visible cracks in the same connections, and evidence of water penetrating the sealed areas where the chain plates pass through the deck. The first two problems we addressed by replacing all eight stays. Total cost was about $3,900. This includes labor costs in Mexico and 16 Norseman mechanical fittings, all new turnbuckles, and hundreds of feet of wire cable we brought down from the States.

The top of the chain plate extends through the
deck and attaches to a turnbuckle fitting. In this
picture, I've removed the deck collar plate and dug
out all of the bedding from around the chain plate.
The rust staining you see on the chain plate here,
combined with what I saw on the collar plate, and
the evidence of water leakage below, were the
causes of my concern. 

But all new standing rigging does nothing to prevent a dismasting if there remains a weak link in the proverbial chain. Our remaining potential weak link was the chain plates.

Chain plate failure is uncommon. On a good, solid boat chain plates are overbuilt. On a well maintained boat chain plates are re-bedded on occasion to prevent water from seeping and weeping into the sealed space where the chain plate passes through the deck. The danger is that water here can cause and accelerate crevice corrosion of the stainless steel. Unchecked over time, this corrosion (totally hidden from view) can lead to a catastrophic failure of the rig.

Our rigger (Rob) noted that the bedding around our chain plates is an old product (popular in the 1970’s and 1980’s) called Dolfinite. It is still available, but I suspect its use to seal our chain plates is an indication that they’ve not been cleaned out and re-bedded in a long time. Also, there is rusty evidence of water leaking on most of our chain plates. Topsides, where the through-deck holes are sealed with a plate around each chain plate, more rust is evident.



The heavy fiberglass strut with the
chain plate removed. The rust stains
are superficial. Note the through-
deck hole at the top.



All of this led me to believe we may have serious crevice corrosion on our chain plates and may have to replace them before we can sail anywhere. To determine whether or not we have a problem, I had to remove the chain plates. (Note: the fore and aft stays on our boat are external, meaning they do not pass through the deck, creating the need for a collar of sealant, devoid of oxygen and where water may penetrate, causing corrosion. For this reason, problems with these chain plates are less likely to be hidden.)

I started with the uppers.

Uppers?

Stays on the sides of a mast are called shrouds. Shrouds generally extend either from the deck to the top of the mast (uppers) or from the deck to about halfway up the mast (lowers).

I first loosened the port side upper stay, until there was no longer any tension on the plate. Then I went below and removed the pretty wood trim that hides the port-side upper chain plate from view. Rust stains were on all the bolts and on the chain plate itself. Up around where it passed through the deck, there was additional rusty evidence of long-term water penetration. Then I removed the six massive 15/16” bolts used to attach the plate.

I learned that these bolts pass through nuts that are fiberglassed to the back of the strut to which the plate attaches and completely inaccessible. This is fine, but what if one of these is stripped or breaks free? Remedying that would be a major undertaking.

Once all of the bolts were removed, I went back out topsides and pulled the chain plate up through the hole in the deck. There I was, holding the heavy thing in my hand. I was pleased. I am going to have it polished so that I can be certain, but it appears to be one solid, intact piece of metal. I will pull the starboard upper today. If both of these uppers look good, and if the bedding material I dig out from the lowers is dry, I will re-bed all six shrouds from on deck and not pull the lowers at this time.

Once this re-rig project is complete, we can take our first sail as a family. It's been a long time coming.

--MR

This is Rob, an expert gringo rigger who helped us replace ours.
Above and behind him is Fisher, his expert gringo rigger
assistant.

Busted! By Michael

I've learned from our Ford Escort experience to buy a car
only after several years of that model have been
produced. Having spent most of my working life in
software development, I understand that a car, like software,
is a system that takes several builds before it is a stable,
reliable system. Our dear vehicle was the last iteration
of the Escort wagon when she was deployed in 1999,
and boy was she reliable.

Just after 9:00 p.m. last night, I was pulled over by Mexican police in an SUV. I was in a left turn lane across from the Walmart in downtown Puerto Vallarta. The light was red and they were behind me, lit up like a Christmas tree. They spoke over their loudspeaker, but I couldn’t understand a word. Folks stopped in the cars around me turned to look at me, the back of my head and the inside of my car ablaze from the light of a glaring spotlight. I shrugged at everyone and mouthed, “N-o    e-n-t-i-e-n-d-o.” I must have seemed ridiculous.

When the cars in my right lane moved forward, the police pulled up alongside. I now understood they wanted me to pull forward against the light, across the intersection, and stop. I clarified, in Spanish, whether they wanted me on the right or left. “Izquierda,” the driver responded.

He started by asking me whether I spoke Spanish or English. I offered that I spoke a little Spanish. He then explained my transgression: I should not have used the intersection a ways back to transition to the lateral, the name of the outside lanes from which left turns are made in Mexico. Windy suggested the same thing several times recently, so I nodded and asked, “Really?”

With my license in hand, he pantomimed writing a ticket and told me he would do just that. He said in Spanish that I could pay the $500 peso fine on Monday and pick up my license at the same time. I scrunched my eyebrows in a worried look I inherited from my mom and said, “I don’t understand.” He repeated everything in broken English.

I could see where this was going, but I wasn’t hurrying us along. “Where do I go on Monday? Where is the police station?”

“Do you want to pay it now?” he said.

“You said I have to pay Monday. I’ll need to get my license back. Where is the police station?”

“Two-hundred pesos, you pay now.”

“You said five-hundred, on Monday, at the police station. I’ll need to get my license back. I’m confused.”

He handed me my license in a bid to help me understand. In broken English he made it clear that I could pay now and avoid the hassle and big fine on Monday, my choice. I put the worried face back on and dug around in my pockets, it was still dark in my lap. I knew I had a couple of 500-peso notes and a couple of very small notes folded together. With slight-of-hand that would have impressed Houdini, I presented 70 pesos as all the cash I had. They accepted my offering and drove off.

During more than three months driving in Mexico, I was never pulled over. During our entire road-tripping odyssey from D.C., I was never pulled over. I haven’t been pulled over in probably eight years. Why was I in the left turn lane across from Walmart late at night? To hand over the keys to our car’s new owner, waiting for me in front of Walmart. I was less than a football field’s length away from never driving this car again.

--MR

Hopefully we can convince Frances to stay inside the lifelines when we are out sailing.
Lifeline netting is coming soon. Also shown here are the newly completed additions to our pulpit.
The metal cage at the bow is now stiffer and more enclosed. Before we leave,
we plan to add a seat up there, and a second anchor roller.

The Saw By Michael

I asked him how old his band saw was. He bunched his face
up in thought before replying, "No se. Compre esta sierra
mas de cuarenta y tres anos pasado." I smiled and nodded.
I told him that 43 years is a long time, that his saw is
strong, "esta muy fuerte." He agreed. I felt awkard asking
to take a picture of his saw, but I shouldn't have. When
I suggested he get in the frame, he did so without
hesitation, even grabbing a small piece of wood as
a prop.

I found Chuy’s shop (called Los Chotes by the locals) only after two hours of driving around and talking to several carpenters (carpenterias) about the work I needed done. Remounting the windlass on a block about 6-inches tall, I needed a cut out to match the outline of the oblong hawse pipe, so that it could mount flush on deck, beneath the gypsy. I learned there are a lot of carpenters in the local towns, but after visiting several, I determined only one has a band saw. I needed a band saw.

The shop is behind a house in a residential area of Bucerias. There were heaps of unfinished wood spilling onto the street where I parked. Two older men sat out front, shooting the breeze and watching the local comings and goings. I asked if I was in the right place.

The carpenter was interested when I brought out my big block of primavera. I showed him the area I wanted cut and he nodded and walked through a narrow, dark, alley-like passage. “Paso?” I said, asking permission to follow.

After about 25 feet, the space opened into a small, uncovered yard. I saw a huge, ancient-looking planer, tables and lumber all around, and in the middle, a harp-shaped band saw that must be made of cast iron. He set the block down and then went to throw a breaker switch. Before he could return, the thing came to life. The two large metal wheels began to turn, speeding up slowly. It rumbled a bit and sounded like there might be a failing bearing in the electric motor.

He spent 10 minutes carefully cutting until it was perfect. He shut off the breaker and went about looking for drill bits and hole saws with which to make the different holes I also needed. After about 20 minutes, I asked how much I owed.

“Cinquenta pesos,” he said. I gave him 60 (about $4.40 USD) and thanked him for his time.

Having obtained the services of several different tradesmen in Mexico, I find it interesting that no discussion of price seems to happen before work is started. Think about how radical that is. And it isn’t just me; I’ve watched the interactions and transactions of Mexicans before me. The work is described by the customer, the tradesman affirms his understanding of the work and his ability to do it, the customer nods or says, “Esta bien,” and work commences.

I think people accept that the price charged is fair. I think that word-of-mouth is a very potent communication tool in these small communities. The merchant knows that to overcharge a customer would not serve his business interests. Furthermore, in my experience, small jobs happen right then and there, while you wait, even if the tradesman is in the middle of another project. It would be a new experience for me to present a small job to a tradesman and be told (in Spanish), “Yeah, write your name here and a number where we can reach you, this should be done by Friday,” or, “I’m sorry, I need to you stay in the waiting area, no customers allowed in the shop, insurance rules.”

No, not here.

--MR

This is one taco stand we haven't tried. They sell only head tacos. Yes, head tacos.
The entire cow head is boiled until everything falls off (and out of) the skull.
What remains is put between a tortilla and called a head taco. This stand is in
La Cruz and belongs to Carrillo. The smaller print on the sign assures patrons
that their tacos will include cheek, eye, brain, snout, etc.