Patrick Schulte's Blog, page 117

San Juanico

We moved north up to Caleta San Juanico today mainly because we have been soaking up so much battery power trying to run the AC fridge and squeeze out a degree or two of coolness out of it that our batteries are dead. So instead of running them all day at anchor we just run a couple of hours north to the next beautiful anchorage.

This huge bay is empty and we had the run of the beach today. Lowe promptly gave himself a dead puffer fish needle shot to the bottom of the foot. He’s been having a rough run lately—a few days ago he shoved a nice long sliver into his foot that required all of my strength to remove. The boy was not thrilled about the tweezers coming out and put up one hell of a fight. We got it out though and it was pretty funny to watch him go from blood curdling screaming to happy calm the second he put his weight on his foot again.

We also found this big turtle shell prominently laid up on a sand embankment overlooking the beach. It reminded me of the guy hanging by a noose in the town square to warn off any other ne’er-do-well in the old Western movies.

Green Agua

After a morning dip in Ballandra we motored a couple of hours to Punta Pulpito where we dropped the hook in twelve feet of green water.

“Green agua Papa, why?”

“Yep, it’s green. I don’t know why.”

“Me no like green agua—like blue. Why green Papa?”

The island is a volcano with big black boulders strewn about on a soft white sand beach. Pretty gorgeous actually. The afternoon was spent, as per usual, on the beach and in the water.

Find Sand Dollar Papa

Motored out of Puerto Escondido today and just a few hours north to Puerto Ballandra where we enjoyed a few days earlier this month. For hours Ouest repeated the phrase, “Me want you to find a sand dollar, Papa.” Cute at first, annoying as hell after number one hundred.

Fortunately I managed to find one. Just one. The last one in the ocean apparently. Got a pretty darn good smile out of that.

Refrigeration is a disaster right now. The engine driven has crapped out on us completely. I’ve no idea why. None. The compressor just cycles on and off over and over again. It never runs continuously. Messing with the refrigerant produced no joy.

So we resigned ourselves to having to use the AC system, which I soon realized wasn’t working either. The refrigerant wasn’t just low, it was gone. Or at least appeared to be. I added some more and seem to have us running again, but we’re now down to half a can of refrigerant.

I have to say that all of the boat issues are wearing me down. Boats always have problems and to-do lists, but I’m getting tired of it. Oh so tired.

Chicken

We found a copy of the movie Chicken Run and thought maybe it was time to let Ouest watch these sorts of full length cartoon movies. Twenty minutes into it she was crying.

Why is that man being mean to the chicken?” she screamed with tears welling up and then spilling down her cheeks. Literally screamed.

Ali was with her and calmed her down, but that was the end of that little experiment. This girl does not like mean people, period.

A few minutes later I said to her, “You didn’t like the movie, huh?”

The tears came back immediately and she rambled on in one giant run-on sentence about the mean man and the chicken and how he couldn’t fly but there was a nice chicken that was trying to teach him how to fly but the mean guy… She told me all this with her wet cheeks buried in my chest.

I wonder if she’s ready for The Wizard of Oz?

Mer-Kids

Ouest took another leap forward with her swimming today—swimming underwater. She’s been putting her head under while swimming for months, but always just for a second. Today she stayed under and stroked, and stroked, and stroked. And every time she came up she was smiling as wide as her mouth would allow. She was very proud of herself. She knew she’d conquered something that had been beating her for a while.

I don’t think I mentioned Lowe’s swimming the other day. He basically began doing the same thing Ouest just did—swimming underwater—though he doesn’t seem to realize, or care, that he can’t make it back up on his own. If I’m within about twenty feet of him he’ll look at me, smile, and dive in. He then kicks and paddles like a madman, but can’t get any more than just his eyes back above the waterline. He’s getting close. A couple more months and he’ll be there. For now I just grab him after a couple of seconds underwater, and hold him under the belly while he heads straight back to do it again.

We’re getting ready to leave and sail north. We needed to pick up a bit of diesel, which sounds like a simple process, but is anything but right now in Puerto Escondido. The marina is being sold and the current owner (the government) is determined to finalize the sale with the fuel dock on E. Kind of like selling a used car for ten thousand dollars but making sure you start the new owner off with an eighth of a tank.

Anyway, the current workaround is for a guy to fill up fifty-gallon drums loaded in the back of his pickup, then deliver it to the boat at the fuel dock with a long hose and an electric pump running off of his car battery.

So I stopped in at the marina office on Saturday, told them how much I needed and set an appointment for two o’clock Monday. Then at noon today I went in and confirmed that they would be there. “Oh yes, no problem.”

We pulled up at two to the sound of crickets. A while later the guy that works on the dock called the diesel delivery guy and told me he’d be an hour.

Okay, whatever. An hour.

An hour, more or less, he reiterated while wiggling his hand back and forth.

At five o’clock he went home for the day and we still had no diesel and none on the horizon.

This Puerto Escondido Marina is a well oiled machine—top notch employees. No doubt about it. If I had two million lying around I sure would be happy to throw it at this place. Think of all the money I would make.

Fly This Car to Minnesota

We stood on the sidewalk of the airport this morning and said goodbye to grandma and grandpa. Grandma cried, told Ouest she’d be back soon, and then disappeared inside. “All right Ouest, let’s go to the market,” Ali said.

“No. Grandma’s coming back. She’s going to come to Bumfuzzle.”

For the past twenty-four hours there had been a lot of talk discussing them leaving, including jokes about where grandma and grandpa would sleep on the boat. Ouest announced that grandma could sleep with her. Grandpa? In the dinghy of course.

“Sweetie, Grandma is going on an airplane and going home to Minnesota to see her puppies.”

“Nope. Grandma’s coming to stay with us.”

I had to leave Ali and Ouest on the sidewalk so Lowe could drive the rental car around the parking lot. After a few minutes they came bounding up to the car all smiles.

“Papa, I’m going to use my pixie dust on the car and you drive and catch grandma’s airplane and fly the car to Minnesota.”

She reached into the little pouch around her neck that was filled with tiny flower petals/pixie dust, rolled down her window, threw a handful onto the car, and I drove out of the parking lot weaving side to side in as graceful a flying motion as our Hyundai would allow.

By the time we reached the highway the drama was over.

Back on the boat tonight and it feels good. Back in our own beds, our old routine, surrounded by water and toys that have been tucked away for an entire week, and new sailing grounds just a couple of days away. Good visit and good times ahead.

Generations

Too bad great-grandma can’t be here too. That doesn’t sound right—she’s in Minnesota, not dead.

The Grandparents in Loreto

Really just taking it easy this week. No writing, not a lot of pictures, a 15-3 lead in cribbage tournament with Grandpa, and a lot of time in the water with the kids.

It might look like a bus stop, but it is actually the town library.

Yes, that is indeed the wheel of death. Ali’s dad tried to spin me around but I couldn’t hang on. I used duct tape to hold Lowe on.

Loreto

We walked around Loreto today. There really isn’t much to this town, which is fine because walking around towns with an entourage is always slow going anyway. There is a main road through Loreto that consists of a grocery store (where you will find quite possibly the only Mountain Dew in Mexico) a few restaurants and half a dozen car rental agencies. A block behind that is the pedestrian friendly road with the old Mission and a bunch of knick-knack shops. The kids always like to explore churches but if there are people inside whispering into their folded hands like there was today we keep them out. We did pop into a few of those shops, but I honestly don’t know why—we never buy anything. Who does? Overhead must be dirt cheap.

In the afternoon we drove down the road from the house to a golf resort where we thought we’d poke our head in and see if we could hang out on their beach and drink their booze. We walked into the lobby and were warmly greeted and told we had the run of the place. A nice beach, good food and drink, and an okay pool. And of course about the only people there were the cruisers who just recently discovered this friendly place.

Catching Up

Grandparents are here and the kids are happy as can be. Been spending mornings at a cafe down the street, then to the pool, and afternoons in town. I haven’t written much because I’ve been very busy running up an 11-0 cribbage record against my father-in-law.