Farewell Bean! By WindyLA PAZ, MEXICO



Bean glowing in his new home
aboard Nomatia.

This is a story about doing something good.
This is a story of a determined little girl.
This is a story of a broken-tailed, bat-eared, goat-legged pup, born on the streets of Guaymas, Mexico.
This is the story of Frijolito Negro De La Calle, more often called Bean.

On a dusty street, in a busy Mexican town between the desert and the sea, lived a broken-tailed, bat-eared, goat-legged pup.

When he was hungry, which he always was, he ate a wind-blown tortilla chip or a scrap of something dropped and forgotten.
When he was thirsty, he drank from the car washer's bucket.
When he was tired, he slept in the shade of a rusty blue truck.

At the tortillaria, the shopkeeper hissed, "¡Vas!" Go! and wielded her broom.

At the bus station, the buses surged, and roared, "¡VAAAAAAS!" GO!
At the tienda, an old woman paused with her bags of groceries and whispered, "Pobresito." Poor little guy.
But mostly, he was invisible.

Bean and Frances, about a
week after the rescue.

Frances liked to explore the dusty streets of Guaymas with her family.

She liked the icy paletas from the bicycle vendor.
She liked the steamy tacos from Julio's stand.
She liked the crispy churros wrapped in paper.
She didn't like seeing the broken-tailed, bat-eared, goat-legged pup.
To her, he was not invisible.

"Can we help him?" Frances said.

"I don't know sweetheart," said her mom.
"If we can help, we should help," said Frances.
And so they did.

She fed him chicken and rice.

She washed him, thrice.
Dr. Franzoni said, "He's too thin. Feed him more!" and gave him three shots.
"What shall we call him?" said Frances's mom.
"Bean," said Frances, "because he looks like a little black bean."
And she placed a shiny green and blue collar around his neck with a big plastic heart on which she wrote, ¡Adoptarme! Adopt me!

And the paleta man said, "¡Que guapo!" How handsome!

And the security guard said, "¡Hola Frijolito!" Hello Little Bean!
And Frances said, "¡Sientate!" Sit! and "¡Abajo!" Down! and "¡Hablas!" Speak!
And Bean did.
 
Dominga was a woman with a strong white dog.
Dominga saw Bean with his broken tail and his big, big bat ears, and his long, long goat legs and his big plastic heart with the words, ¡Adoptarme! Adopt me! and she said, "¡Precioso!" How lovely!
The strong white dog said, "WOOF!" and Bean said, "woof" and they played and played and then Bean went for a sleepover at Dominga's house.
And then another.
And then another.

And Frances said, "I will miss Bean."

And her mom said, "I'm glad we helped."
And Frances said, "Yo tambien." Me too.

--WR

NOTE: This is a very simplified version of Bean's time with us, written in children's book form, absent illustrations. The point is that Eleanor and lots of other folks were heavily involved, not just Frances. Though certainly it's Frances's sentiment that carries great weight when it comes to this family helping animals. Also, Dr. Franzoni, a Sociedad Humanitario de La Paz (SHLP) boardmember, volunteered his time and resources in terms of getting Bean vaccinated and fixed and cared for.

Frances and Bean kayaking.

Bean with his stuffed animal, just before he left
Del Viento for good.

 

Answering the Call By MichaelLA PAZ, MEXICO

NOTE: Rather than use the real name, I made up the boat name Pantheon for this story, simply because it’s a personal matter and I don’t know the boat owner well. Of course, everything is otherwise true. And in case you missed the previous post, you should probably read that first.

It's hard to work on a boat at this angle.
But at least the water, inside and out,
was warm.

I lost VHF contact with the Pantheon crew before dusk, the same day they wrecked ashore. Nobody in La Paz had heard from Will, the guy who jumped in his SUV after my first contact with Pantheon and headed north to San Evaristo to make contact and retrieve crew. Nobody knew exactly how bad the roads were and we weren’t even sure Will ever made it there.

Shortly after sunrise, Christian on Mana Kai offered to drive his extended cab Ford F-350 on the four-hour trek north to San Evaristo and to the wreck of Pantheon. Tom on Eagle and I gathered tools and food and water and joined him. Thirty minutes into the trip, my handheld VHF crackled and we all learned that Pantheon’s crew and skipper arrived back in La Paz at midnight the night before, that some of his stuff was in a pile on the beach. We hailed him and said we were en route and asked if we should continue and if so, when we arrived should we continue salvaging stuff from his boat.

It was obvious from his response that he was still in shock, but he did ask us to please continue on, to salvage everything we could from his boat, and then he thanked us profusely. He said he planned to retrieve his jeep and trailer, drop family off at the airport, and head for San Evaristo a few hours behind us.

It was a long, rough road and the suspension on the F-350 is jarring. We were taxed when we arrived at about 11:00 a.m.

The sight of a 40-foot cruising boat on the beach, her port lights underwater and sand berms forming around her, is disquieting. Climbing aboard to find familiar things like the galley oven, underwater, is worse. Doing so when the boat is heeled over 60 degrees is surprisingly difficult.

So we got to work, unscrewing solar panels, winches, cleats, blocks—anything of value, and making an ever-larger pile on the beach. The thought that kept going through my mind was how great the difference was between the time I spent removing things and the time that someone spent years before to purchase and measure and tap and bed and attach each of these same things. Where things had been carefully installed, we pried and cut and ripped to remove them as quickly and easily as possible. Screws regularly fell and hit the deck and disappeared into the surf and it didn’t give me pause. We cut standing rigging to retrieve the Norseman fittings and then watched the mast buckle and crash to the sand.

But other things, like a new, 30 GPH CruiseRO watermaker, had to be disconnected carefully to preserve its value. Tom spent nearly two hours waist-deep in sea water, on his head, with one hand behind his back and a flashlight in his mouth to untangle the system—especially the engine-driven compressor from the Perkins 4108.

Inside, I alone was the arbiter of what to take and pass up through a hatch; I couldn’t get it all. Some items were obvious, like a small, ornate keepsake box filled with black and white photos and war medals. But I left piles of books, any one of which may have held meaning for the owner, but which may be wet and irretrievable by the time he returned.

In the end, we did an amazing job, literally stripping the boat nearly bare in four hours, then loading trucks for the longer, slower ride home.

The San Evaristo residents, largely members of a small fishing co-op, will use and repurpose most of what we didn’t remove. The mast and other aluminum parts have intrinsic recycling value. All of the stainless we didn’t remove will be repurposed or sold—along with the few winches we didn’t remove. The engine will be a bear to extricate, but they’ll do it and its service life may outlast many of us. I’m sure that by now they’ve removed the 8D battery that was still high and dry and that they’ve pumped the diesel tanks empty. The other, submerged batteries will be sold as cores. All of the teak bits will be reused.

And that leaves the hulking fiberglass hull. I remember when I interviewed Jeanne Socrates ahead of her record-breaking trip, she said that one year after she wrecked her Najad 36 on a Mexican beach (just south of Zihuatenejo, roughly 60 miles short of completing a circumnavigation) she returned to thank the people who helped her. All that remained visible of her boat was the tip of the mast, poking up through the sand, the rest of it subsumed. Pantheon was already, obviously starting that journey only hours after she washed ashore.

Oh, and what caused the loss of a boat and dream? Well, when the same front that passed over La Paz hit San Evaristo, Pantheon’s CQR held fast, set in about 25 feet of water. The rode was about 50 feet chain and then rope, secured to a Sampson post—a Sampson post that was hollow and appeared cast. It sheared under load, leaving the boat hanging on the rode where it had been attached downstream of the post. But the jagged metal base of the sheared post quickly chaffed through the rode and set Pantheon adrift and unplanned events in motion.

It’s likely, at the next cruiser’s swap meet here in the La Paz, that much of the stuff we removed from Pantheon will be sold for a fraction of what they cost. Her former owner will get a bit of relief, but he won’t be close to being made whole. As I suspected, his boat (like ours and many others) is uninsured. Maybe he’ll gather the resources and the disposition to start anew, with his next boat. More than likely, he’ll close the cruising chapter of his life and move on.

--MR

 

Livestock, ever present on Mexican highways.

This is Christian and Tom, retracing our tracks on foot to
recover stuff that we realized was launching off the
truck as we bounced along. I'm following them in the
truck, shooting as I drive.

 

The drive was always beautiful though--this is Baja.

 

 

A Call For Help By MichaelLA PAZ, MEXICO

NOTE: Rather than use the real name, I made up the boat name Pantheon for this story. Of course, everything is otherwise true.

"Pantheon" on the beach in San Evaristo.

I was all of the way forward, in the v-berth, focused on writing. I wasn’t sure what I heard on the radio, but I glanced up, listening for a response. Nothing.

We’re in La Paz* and 22 is the VHF hailing channel for a huge community of cruising sailors and liveaboards that span seven marinas and nearly one hundred anchor-outs. The frequency is busy and I normally tune it out unless I hear Del Viento. It was almost noon and I’d just spent an anxious 45 minutes in the companionway, the engine running and my eye on the wind speed indicator while the brunt of a dense front passed overhead, moving northward. Rain pelted and the wind topped out at 36 knots. It wasn’t severe, typical summertime weather activity for this area. But it did cause two boats to drag and a lot of radio commotion from folks saving those boats and protecting their own.

But the front had passed, the engine was off, the radio had been quiet, and I was writing. But the voice caught my attention, desperate and far away.

Then I heard it again, ten minutes later, the same scratchy transmission, the same voice, a bit more clear. “If anyone can hear me, please answer on 22." There was again no response and this time I caught a boat name. After 15 more seconds of silence, still not hearing any reply, I got up and went back to the nav station.

“Pantheon, Pantheon, Del Viento, let’s go to 68.”

The response was urgent: “Yes! 68! 68!”

On 68 I hailed a few times and waited, but heard nothing.

As soon as I turned back to 22, I heard him hailing me, the transmission clipping and breaking up, still that voice, desperate. I answered and the response I heard back made my face flush and my heart race, my limbs alert and jumpy. But I didn’t move. I keyed the mic.

“Umm, okay. Pantheon, your transmission is rough and I didn’t catch it all, but I copied that your boat is wrecked, your crew is not injured, you’re in San Evaristo, and you need help. Is that correct, over.”

A transmission followed and I understood that Pantheon copied me, but nothing else.

I paused on 22 for a bit, I knew at least dozens of boats and businesses had copied my transmission. I figured someone would chime in and take over, or at least tell me what to do next. The radio was silent.

You’ve got to understand that this is La Paz. I could get on this same frequency any time of day, ask the most arcane question, and half a dozen people would respond with an answer. Here an emergency had presented itself and I half expected a net controller to jump in, tell me thank you, and then take it from there.

“Attention the fleet, attention the fleet. This is Del Viento. The vessel Pantheon in San Evaristo just issued a distress call over the radio. Did anyone else copy, over.”

I waited through ten more seconds of silence and then realized I had to step up.

“Okay. I just got a call from the vessel Pantheon. Apparently his boat is wrecked ashore in San Evaristo. All persons aboard are safe, nobody is injured. His transmissions are weak. I tried talking to him on another channel and that didn’t work. I’m going to have to ask that everyone stay clear of 22 while I communicate with Pantheon.”

I took a deep breath.

“Pantheon, Pantheon, Del Viento.”

For the next ten minutes, the signal varied from strong to weak and unintelligible. It was mostly the latter and I asked him to repeat things over and over. At one point, after I’d asked further about the condition of his boat, he said he was having a hard time hearing me because the sound of his keel breaking off from the hull was drowning me out. In the background I could hear tremendous cracking and scraping noises.

He was obviously in shock, it may have been only an hour before that everything in his world was normal. At this point in our dialog, I think he was still coming to terms with the likelihood that his boat and home were irrecoverable. He asked me to notify the La Paz port captain of his predicament. He had family ashore he wanted brought to La Paz. He wondered if the Navy could come to save his boat.

I relayed his needs and concerns to the La Paz fleet and everyone’s help was urgent and efficient.** People talked to the port captain and the navy and got back to me with responses. San Evaristo is a small fishing community with limited resources. It is only 60 miles away, but the driving time estimate was four hours given the state of the long dirt road portion. Nonetheless, a cruiser got in his truck and headed straight there, to pick up Pantheon’s crew and get them back to La Paz.

I assured Pantheon that help was coming. I told him a Navy boat was coming too, and that both the truck and boat should be there by sunset. Pantheon’s batteries were getting weak and he was reticent to transmit. I told him I would relay info with the understanding that he was receiving.

An hour later, I told him the Navy had called back their boat, that their mission was search and rescue, loss of life stuff, and that his situation was out of their purview. By this time he’d come to the realization that his boat was lost and asked me what his responsibilities were. Could he just leave it there? I told him I didn’t know. I told him he should talk to whichever of the fishermen in that community is in charge. I told him he should salvage what he could. I asked him if he wanted another truck there with more people who could help in that effort. He said there was water everywhere and he didn’t know how much time was left. I worked with the La Paz cruising community to arrange for another truck and men and tools to leave the next morning, shortly after daylight. I told Pantheon the news.

He said he would stay with his boat overnight. Like us, everything he owns is aboard. Hopefully, unlike us, he has some kind of hull insurance. But I doubt it.

Most of the Baja peninsula is a deserted, inhospitable place—much like many parts of the world that cruising sailors venture. Things happen, things like this and things like injuries and illness and breakdowns. Especially in the blistering heat of summer, and when you travel beyond the few population centers, it’s a place where self-sufficiency is required. But when you are in a pickle, when you’ve tapped your own resources and you need the help of others, it’s available if you can communicate that need. But the lesson here is that even when you can reach the cruising community, nothing magic happens—and when I say magic, I’m talking about the magic of a 9-1-1 call in the United States, whereby events are set in motion and overwhelming resources are automatically brought to bare. No, instead, when you make that call for help on the VHF, you don’t get a trained and experienced person on the other end who can reassure you and do what is proscribed, you get me, another guy like you who has less experience with the trouble you’re having than you do. A guy who isn’t exactly sure what’s right, but who will do exactly what he would want others to do for him. And in a best case scenario, it results in a bunch of other self-sufficient folks coming to your aid as best they can.

I’ll provide an update to this post when the outcome is known. It’s early morning and I’m on my way to San Evaristo.

--MR

* Well, I’m in La Paz, Windy and the girls are six days into a three-week trip back to D.C.

** It’s crazy because during this episode and this evening I’ve talked to several people who were on the radio for the entire event and nobody could hear anything but my side of the conversation. Del Viento is anchored in a thicket of boats, right outside Marina de La Paz. I can see dozens of boats anchored out in the open in the direction of San Evaristo--60 miles north! Our mast is relatively tall, but it must have been a weird propagation thing that we were the only boat that could copy Pantheon.

Rudder Knowledge By MichaelLA PAZ, MEXICO

A familiar walk through the yard,
Bean always in tow.

…the most curious of the projects by far.

When we hauled Del Viento in 2011, we did so only to paint the bottom. I also re-greased the Maxprop. We were back in the water in just a few days.

But I noticed that during those few days, the concrete beneath our rudder was wet, all the time. A slow drip from the lower hinge assembly was the source of the water. I did nothing about this and we launched.

The notion that our rudder was filled with water bothered me and nagged at me, for about a month. Then, the discovery of bigger boat problems pushed all thoughts of our water-logged rudder aside.

In 2012 we hauled again, this time for the express purpose of installing transducers for our new instruments, out and back in. But a persistent drip over those 48 hours reminded me that we still had a rudder filled with water.

I Googled about this and read everything from horror stories of rudder failures brought on by water intrusion to platitudes seeking to reassure me that all rudders leak. Accordingly, remedies ranged from rudder replacement to drilling drain holes and epoxying them up before launch. This year I resolved to cut a panel out of the side of our rudder to see what’s what.

Maxprop is all greased up
and clean.

Part of what informed my decision was my understanding that rudders are constructed with an internal framework comprised of a vertical post (the part that passes through the hull and which the tiller or wheel rotates) and flat bars welded to it (perpendicular) that transfer the rotational force of the post at the leading edge of the rudder to the rudder’s surface area that extends aft, to the trailing edge. Then this framework is covered in foam that is shaped like an airfoil. Finally, an outer fiberglass skin is applied over the foam layer.

The danger I read about with regard to water intrusion is corrosion. If the water enters the rudder at the difficult-to-seal place where the fiberglass skin meets the rudder post, then it can be assumed that bond is compromised. And if that same water corrodes the welds that attach the flat bars to the post, the rudder can fail such that the post rotates independently of the flat bar, foam, and outer fiberglass skin assembly.

So knowing we’d spend a couple weeks hauled out in a hot, dry place and craving the piece-of-mind I’d gain from seeing what was happening inside, I attached the cutting wheel to my grinder and went to town. Once I’d cut completely through the 3/16”-thick skin, it took only a small bit of prying to pull the cut panel off.

At the bow, between the boot stripe and
the bottom paint, I painted a small, stylized
E and F. Knowing the girls would be pleased,
I walked the family around to the starboard
side and announced that I'd painted an E
for Eleanor. I told them that it would be
there forever. I gave Eleanor a big hug and
asked Windy if she liked it. Frances stared
up at the E, quietly regarding it, before
something finally sparked and she ducked
beneath the bow to see the port side. Then
she beamed.

By this time, I’d read everything I could find about rudder construction and repair. There, beneath the panel, was foam like I expected, but not the foam I expected. This was foam from my childhood, that orange-colored 1970s stuff that is not very dense and turns mealy when you rub it between your fingers. I could poke my finger into it and leave a hole. And it was saturated so water squeezed out of it when I did. Only a portion of it was not delaminated from the fiberglass panel I removed.

I grabbed a big piece of it and pulled it out. There, halfway to the other side of the rudder was a thin wall of resin—I’m guessing polyurethane resin. It was cracked all over and brittle like the sugar melted over crème brulee. I suspect it was used to bond the two sides of foam, but there were wide gaps between the two halves.

I dug deeper, until I reached the other side of the rudder. I removed all the foam and resin. That’s all there was, no flat bar or webbing to connect all this to the post.

Where was the post?

I dug forward, removing all the foam I could towards the leading edge. It wasn’t a post I found, but a solid fiberglass wall. The post was seemingly encapsulated in a cavity immediately aft of the leading edge of the rudder and it seemed the skin was a part of this seeming exoskeleton.

I sent pictures to a respected colleague who works for Good Old Boat and Professional Boatbuilder magazines. He hadn’t seen this before, but asked if he could publish a picture I sent him, to solicit reader knowledge. That was good, and I am eager to learn more, but I’m on the hard in the Sonoran desert. It’s over 100 degrees every day, there are biting ants everywhere, and I’m struggling to stay hydrated and finish these projects so we can get back in the water.



Eleanor and Bean.

So with the knowledge that the rudder was working fine when I opened it up, and with a nod to the Japanese craftsmen who constructed it more than 36 years ago, and with the confidence that I could put it back together at least stronger than it was, I set to work.

First I drilled four drain holes near the base of the rudder and let everything sit in the dry air for two weeks while I attended to other jobs. Then I came back to the rudder and cleaned everything I’d excavated, vacuuming foam bits from the crevices and wiping the surfaces down with acetone. I mixed more than two cups of West System epoxy and poured it slowly into the spaces between the foam halves and the gap between the skin and the lower section of foam. Then I pushed thickened epoxy into the vertical gaps I couldn’t pour into, re-bonding surfaces that appeared to have not been bonded for a long time.

Once everything was cured, I sprayed nearly a full can of dense, closed-cell polyurethane foam into the spaces where it could stick and expand and harden without falling out. Then I epoxy-wetted big areas of the inside surface of the panel I cut out, pushed it into place, and used scrap lumber, rope, and clamps to hold it in place, with pressure.

This is one of the down days of the long
haul-out. About a week after we hauled,
I removed the main sail in preparation for
removing the mast. There in the folds, not
only had a couple finches built a nest, they'd
already left an egg. Frances was devastated.
I wanted to eat it, but instead there was a
proper yard burial.

I’d noted the areas still requiring foam and drilled five holes in the outside of the rudder to spray through, carefully working the straw up as I sprayed, filling every crevice until foam oozed out of the seam and holes. Once dry, I removed the lumber and clamps and used the grinder to expose just over 2.5 inches of raw fiberglass on either side of my cut, a shallow angle that would allow me to make a scarf splice-like fiberglass repair.

I cleaned the entire surface with acetone and then wetted it with epoxy before wetting and applying 5-inch-wide strips of woven glass over the seam. Then I built it up with a 2-inch strip, another 5-inch strip, and then coats of thickened epoxy the next day. Once faired and sanded, the rudder was stronger than when we hauled and all that was left was bottom paint.

I still don’t understand the construction—it may be that there are perpendicular supports attached to the stock down lower, or perhaps this design, as it is, is perfectly robust—but I am confident it is stronger than when we hauled and will probably remain so for the next 36 years. I do look forward to hearing any feedback from the Professional Boatbuilder readership.

We’re back in the water now, underway with a clean bottom, a rudder mystery solved, a transmission not threatening to dump all its fluid, and a mast that will never again interrupt a peaceful night’s slumber. Oh, and even close-up, Del Viento now gleams, looking prettier than ever.

--MR

If anyone has seen similar construction, I'd love to hear about it.

Our view for nearly a month--good to be back in the water.

Launching. Will you look at the reflection on that hull.

There is a restaurant in a house just outside the yard. Here
the girls lounge outside.