Solar in La Paz!

Full moon the first night in La Paz

Well what can I say, we love La Paz, this is such a great city, and amazing city.

Jerry had the largest "gringo" large quasadilla

SOMF at anchor in La Paz

It has everything from your local 10 peso tacos to home depot and even a solar shop, MZ Solar to be exact. The amazing thing was these solar panels with controller and wire are the same if not cheaper than buying them up in the states and trying to bring them back down after having to pay the duty on them. Here these US brand solar panels have no sales tax or duty to pay, so we bought two. This is going to be a great addition to SOMF for we have been having to run the generator a lot this last month of anchoring out to keep up with the battery power used by all the things in the boat, especially the refrigerator. When we started in October the generator had 1200.4 hours on it and when we got to La Paz it had 1294.3 hours on it, so yeah we have been running it a lot. I am not saying we are complaining, it has been a blast having our friends over for cocktails and having plenty of ice without having to buy any, and being able to laundry without having to wait for a port with a laundry mat. But with these new solar panels we will be able to have an extra 260 volts of power coming into the boat when there is sun, and luckily we are in Mexico and even in the winter there is always sun.

Well after buying the panels yesterday and getting them on the boat, with about a 10 knot wind which was a feet in its own, we started trying to decided where and how to mount the panels. Dan from SV Akupara had some advice about mounting them with rail mount that he used for his, so we went to Lopez Marine shop, which if you don’t mind paying the higher prices has everything, got a couple of rail clamps and a gasket for the wire to go down through the deck to the batteries. The panels will be mounted to the rails in the aft deck one on each side. With a few other thoughts about what we need to start the project from Home Depot, we decided to take a brake and play a couple of games of cribbage. After Jerry kicking my butt on two games we went to dinner with Dan and Kate on SV Akupara, which we were so happy so see again after they left us in Escondido. We were going to go to this taco stand that they knew about, but with this being Mexico and I guess last Saturday was a holiday for them, it was not open, so we decided to go to Mr. Azucars which Jerry and I had gone to last time we were here with Steve from SV Liquid 8. After having a great dinner and catching up on the last week of their travels and of course the shot of tequila that you get after a meal no matter what time of the day it is, we came back to the boat.

Kate, Dan, Jerry and the owners of Mr Azucars

About 3am I heard sound like the anchor was pulling on some rocks, when up to check it out and realized the snuber and the safety line on the chain by the windless had fallen off. And La Paz being known for the “La Paz Waltz” because the current is so strong in here, every time we swung around I was hearing the chain being pulled on the windless. Jerry saved the night and everything was nice and peaceful again.

Today we are going to go to the open air market which is supposed to have great produce and meat, then off to Home Depot for parts for the solar panel project and then to Wal-Mart for a few items including a new bed for Skeeter, after a 1 year of cruising with all the salt water it is time for a new one, plus he deserves it since his birthday is the 24th… Happy Birthday Skeeter!