Whats Next???

Lasagna

Jerry and myself have been enjoying Zihuatanejo, but this last week we have been having a little string of bad luck.  A week ago Jerry threw his back out while trying to get the dinghy back down to the water from shore, unfortuently there was no one to help, so the two of us drug it down about 20 feet.  Monday morning Jerry woke up and was not able to even get out of bed, it has been 8 days now and he is doing much better and even able to get off the boat, into the dinghy to take me to the pier to drop me off to go get some much needed groceries, while he stayed in the dinghy till I got back.  It is not 100% yet, and he might go see a doctor when we get up to Puerto Vallarta area, but until then he is taking it easy and we deffinetly will be looking into dinghy wheels. 

SOMF at anchor

 So with Jerry not able to move of coarse few things had to happened, we had some large swells a couple of nights due to some rough weather outside the bay, we lost our side boarding ladder.  The dinghy was tied and chained up to the side of the boat, and somehow the ladder got pushed out of the brackets to never be seen again.  Well we learned our lesson, we heard it bounceing around, but thought that there was no way for it to come out of the brackets.  During the same rough swells the dinghy must of gotten pushed under the boat and the chain that we have locked to the outboard snapped one of the motor mount clamps off, but it looks like it is fixable with a little MacGyver type manuvering.  Thirdly the antenna tuner for the single side band radio got some water in it, back when we were down in El Salvador, and now must have corroded some of the internal componants and it will not tune correctly.  Then there is the generator, with the new raw water pump it was working great until one night we heard a clunck sound and noticed that it was not putting out any charge.  We quickly turned it off, then started to smell some smoke.  I lifted the floor board to access the engine room and a cloud of smoke rose out, Jerry new right away that it smelled like a fan belt.  Because Jerry is still trying to rest his back he has not gone in to give a thourogh assesment, I have jumped in and looked around and took some pictures, he is thinking that something caused the generator not to turn and burned the belt, probalby a bearing.  Looking at the specks in the manual it is fixable, but needs to be taken out and it weights about 132 lbs....wow, so that will have to wait till PV also.  So we are back to running the motor to help charge the batteries once and a while, good thing we are getting fuel today. 

Looking toward the motor fan belt

The same main motor fan belt on the generator pulley

 Other than that we are having a great time, playing a lot of cribbage (which Jerry wins alot..I think he cheats), and had an amazing dinner on the boat for Thanksgiving.

Bacon wrapped Dorado, homemade coconut shrimp, homemade cheesy roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and sauteed veggies