The parts we had made in Quito (thanks again, Rick!) came in on schedule, with only a minor delay on our end.

Dave called the shipping place promptly at 2pm and asked (in his best Spanish) whether there was a package there for him. The lady said 'yes' and he told her he'd come to pick it up. Well, because yours truly hadn't had lunch yet, he didn't actually get ashore until about 2:45. The office was closed. Why didn't she tell him that he needed to be there before 2:30?

He waited around until 4:45 and they still hadn't re-opened. So he gave up and went in early yesterday morning. But the entire 'air freight' shipping from Quito only cost $4.

The pieces are beautiful--nicely made shiny stainless steel.


In about an hour we had the first one installed--the easy one, on the backstay. We had lunch and then solicited help from our friends on Visions of Johanna--we needed a little muscle to get the forestay one on. Dave also replaced one at the bottom of the forestay with a spare that he already had. He has re-tuned the rig and we are now 'good to go'.

We still have some projects that we are working on--and we are waiting for Infini to catch up. They are in San Cristobal now, and will do the same routine we did--daysail to Santa Cruz, a few days there, and a daysail to Isabela. We are hoping to go out for a 'sea trial' on the day they come this way from Santa Cruz, and meet them.

Other maintenance issues we've been attending to... more leak chasing. We are happy to report that all the leaks we stopped before the Galapagos passage, mainly around the mast and the big windows, are nice and dry. Now we are down to minor deck fittings that need to be pulled up and re-bedded. We just had a big rain yesterday, and those didn't leak, so we're feeling quite dry.

Dave also tightened up the packing around the rudder post. It doesn't leak at anchor, but was leaking quite a bit with the movement underway. (one reason for the 'sea trial' in a few days, to make sure he's got the leak solved).

I've been doing some sewing--Sunbrella covers for our diesel jugs, a Chilean flag, and some screens. There are flies here. I made a 'drop screen' for the companionway hatch, but it's not holding up. I used regular window screening we bought at the hardware store here--a flimsy fiberglass kind, and it just isn't up to the coming and going. After only 10 days of use it has holes and is starting to rip. So I'll have to re-make that one out of some other screening I have.

There are now 3 cruisers in Isabela, and 2 that we know of in San Cristobal, and a couple on their way. The World Cruising Rally, about 25-30 boats, is supposed to set sail any day now from mainland Ecuador to San Cristobal, so it should get pretty crowded around here. Time for us to get going!! (C'mon Infini!)

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Labels: Galapagos, Maintenance

Thanks so much to all of you who wrote us with offers of help and advice with our toggle. The big problem with buying it in the U.S. and shipping it down is:

1-As best we can tell, it is an odd size and not available off-the-shelf from any rigging manufacturer we checked. It is longer than normal for the pin size it uses, and both dimensions are critical to us.

2-Shipping into Ecuador is not really an option unless you have lots of time. I know that UPS and FedEx will quote you 2-3 day delivery to Ecuador. What they don't tell you is that that time frame refers to 'arrival in Ecuadorean Customs'. The officials here sit on the incoming shipments for 2-3 weeks before releasing them--even super-high priority overnight shipments. No amount of whining, pleading, or muscle seems to do any good. Even the Ecuadorean Navy stated that they could not help. And when they release it from Customs, there is a duty... sometimes as much as 80% (ie $250 item, $75 shipping, $200 duty = yikes!!)

Note: This is "by design" I think, because there is a big government push to "buy Ecuadorean", and we do understand the reasoning. It is hard for the local businesses to compete with American quality and economies of scale, even with their inexpensive labor rate. And, without the Customs barrier, it would be much easier to get something shipped in from the U.S. than locate the business that produces a similar item in Ecuador, and get it to where you are. The road system here is atrocious--much quicker to fly it in from Miami than bus it from Quito in many cases. But they will never get out of the third world if they don't manufacture their own goods.

That said, we have again generously contributed to the local economy.

Due to the efforts of a friend, Rick Nelson, in Quito, our needed parts were fabricated in Quito, of better quality stainless steel than the originals. Rick started out as an acquiantance--he's an Ecuadorean/American living in Quito, with aspirations of going sailing some day. He contacted us by email a number o fmonths ago to see if we or any other boats were looking for crew to the Galapagos. We have since met him a couple of times, once in Quito and once in Bahia. We haven't been successful in finding him a ride to the Galapagos. But he graciously jumped in with both feet when we called and asked for help.

Rick ended up driving all over Quito with our part and specs, and finding a manufacturing company to make us 2 toggles and 2 pins in 2 days. They were finished yesterday, and Rick personally picked them up and put them on an air freight flight to us yesterday afternoon. We should have the parts in hand by Monday, and be 'good as new' (or better) by Tuesday.

Meanwhile, we've filled our last few days trying to help our friends on Visions of Johanna get their new propeller hub from England. This is a saga all of its own, and best handled by reading THEIR blog at http://vofj.blogspot.com

But we did call a few of our bachelor friends to see if any of them could break loose and fly the part down from Miami. We almost had a free trip to the Galapagos for Dave's USNA roommate, Jim Neale. But Visions had another friend step up at the last minute, and he will be flying down from Vermont with the parts (and a couple of ours, as well--nothing like West Marine overnight shipping).

At a low point in their ordeal, Bill on Visions looked over his plan for this year--which started out an ambitious schedule, and is now running about a month behind--and almost decided to abandon his Pacific crossing this year. "Not enough time to do what we want." Fortunately, a good night's sleep and an alternate solution has him smiling again and reading up on Easter Island. They hope to finally be underway for Easter by late next week, and we hope to be close behind them.

On another front, our friends on Infini finally made it out of Balboa and are 2/3 the way to the Galapagos. Right now they are in the ITCZ and weren't having a fun time this morning when we talked by radio. But I'm sure they'll get here eventually. http://svinfini.blogspot.com

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Labels: Galapagos, Maintenance

Or... let's all sing the same old song "Working on boats in exotic places..."



In an inspection of our rigging yesterday, Dave found a key component of the rigging broken. It is called a 'toggle', and it connects the backstay to the mast. It is a machined stainless steel part that is very important to keeping the mast up. It would have been a disaster for this to break at sea. And we can't even move out of the harbor here without locating a replacement part. For now, we have a couple of extra halyards helping to hold the rig up.

Needless to say, there is no West Marine in Isla Isabela. And even West Marine wouldn't have this part in stock. So we've been brainstorming several ideas to try to get a replacement. Here are some of the options we've thought thru

1. Have it made locally in Isabela or Santa Cruz. Problem: Need the correct stainless steel bar stock, not likely to be off-the-shelf here

2. Have a friend in Panama, headed this way soon, try to get it made in Panama. Problem: timing issues

3. Gram from Visions of Johanna, anchored next to us, is flying to England to get a new Autoprop (theirs has a manufacturing defect and they need an immediate replacement--due to logistics of shipping stuff into Ecuador, they have opted to go get the replacement vs trying to have it shipped here). Problem: he will only be on the ground in England for a couple of days, probably not enough time to get his own stuff done, much less get parts for us fabricated.

4. Get someone in England to get it fabbed and get it to Gram before he leaves. We have contacted another CSY owner in England, and he said he'd check with his rigger.

5. Have a guy we met in Quito get it fabricated there, with Gram dropping off the old part and bringing back the new part. We met a really nice guy who lives and works in Quito. He is checking with a couple of machine shops to see if they have the right stock and if they can get it done in time. This is our current most likely prospect.

Dave thought he had spares, but it turns out the spares he had don't fit the two big toggles holding the headstay and the backstay. So whatever we'll do, we'll try to get 2 made, and use the unbroken one currently on our headstay as a spare.

Labels: Galapagos, Maintenance

We have spent a good bit of time over the last few weeks trying to make our boat as leak-proof as possible. The leaks have only been a minor annoyance so far, but we will soon be 24x7 at sea, in unpredictable conditions. It's bad enough having a little fresh water (rain) leaking in, but sea water would be unpleasant.

As everyone who owns a sailboat knows, some of those leaks are pretty hard to track down and fix. But ours are not too bad--known spots easy to get at.

First, we (finally) sealed up the mast where it goes through the top of the cabin. Dave taped up the bottom of the hole around the mast (there's an opening about an inch all around the mast), and mixed up some Walmart brand rubber goo (the same stuff that's in brand name product 'Spar Tite'). He poured that into the area and let it set up. Then we finished off the top inch or so of this plug with silicone seal. Once everything had harded up, we tested it by pouring water over it. Not a drop. Then I made a new sunbrella cover for it--keeps out the big water and also keeps the silicone out of the sun.



The other leaky spot has been our big windows. Dave re-did these completely in the past, and cured most of the leaks. But we still have a couple of drips when it rains really hard. So we have taken them all off, cleaned things up, and used silicone (to try) to make a better seal around the bolts and around the whole window. We have poured water over the windows, and so far they are leak free.

Labels: Maintenance, Tsunami