Cabo San Lucas
We have been stuck in Cabo San Lucas for the last 6 weeks or so. Some days have been spent recreating and many days have been spent working on the engine. It can be hard to do work in this anchorage because it is constantly awash in the wakes of parasailing boats, sport fishers, and the ubiquitous ignorant tourist on a Jetski.
They are told by the rental company to stay at least 150’ away from the anchored boats. For some reason, even though this harbor is massive, they will do donuts around my sailboat. Sometimes they blast by close enough that their rooster tail jet of water actually comes on deck.
A few weeks back one of them hit the transom of S.V. Amazing Grace. The CT41 was gouged in the transom and some of the teak name board was chipped off. The jetski on the other hand was crunched to the handlebars and the two adolescent girls who were riding it were injured.
It would be easy and petty to wish ill onto these people but one must remember they are not mean, they have no clue whatsoever. Still the air is filled with 2 stroke exhaust all day long. When there is heavy wind in the anchorage it is far more placid than on calm days. I love it when it blows 30 knots in here. My dinghy ride is wetter but the boat is far flatter.
Anyway, Cabo isn’t the best place one could be stuck but at least it is finally warm. After inspecting the brand new drive shaft and finding the old rusted key that the professionals I paid to make this bulletproof put into it before we left, I decided I would have to get a new one. 2 days were spent hunting down new key material and cutting it down to fit the keyway. Then a further 3 on trying to hammer the crap out of the coupler to get it onto the shaft in the small confines of my hot engine room. Once that was done I got to work on the engine mounts.
This whole problem started when the rear starboard mount shook loose from it’s stringer and threw the motor so far out of alignment that the shaft shook loose of the coupler. Unfortunately it looked as if the mount had only been half bolted down. The other half was dangling in mid air. The half that was bolted down was bolted into rotten wood. I was easily able to pull the lagbolt out with two fingers.
To make a long story short for a change, many days were spent getting key material and repairing the shaft decoupling problem. Then 3 different attempts at engineering a solution for the motor mount failed and I missed a nice rare southerly weather window so I spent some time provisioning and getting the boat ready to leave under sail if need be.
With water, propane etc. on board I tried my last attempt at fixing the mount. I bought a very long 1” wood boring bit and drilled out the hole and surrounding rotten wood. I then filled the 1” hole with epoxy and then stuck a 1” piece of dowel into the wet epoxy.
I slathered thickened epoxy all over the rear of the stringer where there was nothing but air to bolt the mount to and then blindly squished a piece of dowel in to that mess.
The end result much to my surprise was that I had successfully secured the rear starboard mount. Unfortunately after aligning the shaft I found that the prop rotation pushes the motor up several inches each half revolution. If I use the engine for propulsion it will shake itself to death.
So we are leaving Saturday morning on a light air weather window for La Paz. Unfortunately La Paz is our first upwind destination. If ever there was an area where a motor would come in handy it would be the northbound trek into the Sea of Cortez.
I have a 3 horsepower outboard on my dinghy to use as a tug if the wind totally dies and I need to get around a calm anchorage but we will otherwise be engineless. I can shake it to death if we have some emergency need to get off rocks or something but prudent seamanship should keep us away from such dangers.
I will be traveling with S.V. Bellatrix. He is an old Piver trimaran with much the similar problem we have. He broke a motor mount and will be engineless too.
Wish us luck!
