After a week of playing it is time to get serious about the boat again, Cheri ( Jerry's sister) is coming down the end of this month, we are going to move the boat into the marina for the week. That means we need to get the motor running and the windless working so we can move. Through a local cruiser we found Christain Gonzalez who owns Gonzales motor shop, we took the bus to downtown Puerto Vallarta and started walking blocks trying to find his shop. The was a south and north address, one on each side of the main road. We ended up having to ask few different places, but we found it. We walked in, and Christain was at the front counter, and he spoke perfect english. We described what we needed done to the shaft on the windless and he said he would have it fixed, and would deliver it back to the marina entrance in La Cruz, wow too good to be true. But it was perfect, two days later he emailed Jerry saying it was ready and the price of 450 pesos, and that he would meet us at the entrance of the marina at 10 am. That morning we walked up to pay for the part, and asked if he would be able to take a look at the motor of the windless also, and change the brushes. He said he yes and would have it back in two days, and it was!!
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| The only thing Jerry had to do to the windless motor was modify a drive pin |
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| The windless shaft that needed a bushing replaced |
One morning Jerry went into the engine room to check the fresh water coolant, and the cap broke, due to salt water getting into the system. Salt water is getting in through the heat exchanger, we knew this was something that was going to need to be replaced up in San Carlos, but we decieded to do it now instead of waiting. So he ordered and new cap, new thermostat, gasket and had that shipped to Casa Maru in La Cruz. The parts cost $64 and duty cost $20 and shipping was $15, and it got here in 7 days. Then he orded the new heat exchanger and that was a different story, it cost $750 and shipping was $150 and dutie was around $200, after all said and done it was about a $1200 part, but it needed to be done. We heard from Ben on SV Jase of a man who lives in San Diago who actually walks it across the boarder which saved about $300 dollars, so we had it shipped to him, then he puts it on a plane in Ensenada and had it flown into PV. Well we got it in about 14 days and it all worked out...just not going to be able to go out as much this month, but that is all part of this awesome lifestyle.
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| Brand new heat exchanger |
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| Header tank and pipe |
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| heat exchanger painted |
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| Header tank painted with new cap |
Jerry and I one afternoon put on our wetsuits ( the water is cold) and jumped in to clean the through holes and try to clean the prop and rudder as best we could. The bottom is loosing all its bottom paint and had thousands and thousands of barnicals growing after three months since the last cleainng. We were not able to do it all, because we do not have our hookah system working and the barnicals are so tough to get off it would have taken us three weeks to try to free dive on it.
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| Jerry coming up after diving down to attack the growth!! |
