Journal Entry - Monday November 1, 2004

Author: Scott and Pam

We awoke determined to leave Turtle Bay. We would have a fully charged battery from Reel Attitude and a backup charger possibly charging at Rosario’s house. We jumped in the reinflated dinghy and rowed to shore. Rosario met us on the beach and handed over our charger. Upon inspection the charger was not charged and Rosario’s outlet was faulty. Rosario told us that he found an electrical mechanic and he would be here in un momento. Although our mind was made up to leave, we decided to have breakfast at Maria’s and see who turned up. It was our first taste of eggs and bacon in quite some time, and although they had no orange juice and only had sprite or beer to drink, we were well fed. At the conclusion of breakfast Rosario introduced us to Carlos. Carlos was a seemingly knowledgeable and laid back guy and he spoke some English. What have we got to loose, lets give it a try.

We started rowing out to Tournesol to meet Rosario and Carlos and were fighting the wind, when along came a guy in a dingy to tow us over to Tournesol. “Hello” said our new acquaintance in a heavy Dutch accent, “I just dropped off your battery on your boat”. John dropped us off and we set out to work on the electrical charging problem. After three hours of work and after being fed the leftovers of our blueberry muffins Carlos had determined the problem, our regulator was not working. Of course we had to remove, clean and reinstall our alternator before we came to this conclusion. Meanwhile, John showed up in his dinghy again, and introduced himself as the owner of Western Grace a 55’ charter sail boat that he operated with his wife Joanne. John came on board and discussed our charging problem and wanted to investigate our steering issue, moments later he was up to his elbows removing parts of our wheel steering with complete confidence. Carlos finished up with the electric problem by jury-rigging a switch to bypass our regulator and charge our batteries. Carlos was off leaving John to work with us on our steering problem. “Oh this is not good” said John, “I am sure we can fix it”. As John worked we leaned he had owned his boat for three years and charted it out to people who wanted to cruise Mexico, Central America, and the North West. John was patient as he worked and spent time teaching us what he leaned while repairing the wheel. In an hour and half he had repaired what Anderson’s boat yard could not even diagnose and had saved us hundreds of dollars while making Tournesol much safer. We made an invaluable new friend that we were sure would teach us much more about the cruising life.

We now had a functional electric system, a repaired fuel impeller, and a wheel that worked like new, we could leave Turtle Bay! However, while all of this work was being completed the wind had kicked up to 40 knots and a dust storm hit Turtle Bay. We could not leave today. We waited out the storm as Tournesol turned brown in the dust and laughed at the irony of the whole situation. Our spirits were up and not even the dust storm could break our mood.

Dinner was raviolis that we ate holed up in our cabin to escape the dust.