9. Retired and in Mazatlan - Boat Repairs

Jan. 7th - Feb. 22nd: We made it! We had an awesome bon voyage/retirement party with many good friends on the 5th and boarded the plane to Mazatlan on the 7th. Wow, it's finally here.

Our plan was to spend 3 weeks in Mazatlan, then head south to Puerto Vallarta and beyond. Our first lesson about cruising and schedules was about to be learned! Weather and boat repairs don't care about schedules!

The weather was what several locals described as the worst in a dozen years. Northers blew every few days or so and lasted a couple. The Port Captain kept closing the port so that leaving, even to go 10 miles south for our scheduled haul-out was impossible for quite some time. And sweatshirts became a part of the morning and evening attire. Sweatshirts? Yep.

We finally got to the drydock, Astilleros Malvinas, to: 1) Service the saildrives, 2) paint the bottom, 3) replace the saildrive skirts (should be done every 5 - 7 years). Since the yard only accepted cash and preferred dollars, Diane and Bill made regular and daily runs to the only ATM that dispensed US dollars. We also learned that if you push your bank (Wells Fargo), they'll raise your daily ATM withdrawal limit ... which we did. We stayed on the boat during the yardwork, enjoying sunset toasts in a commercial drydock. Needless to say, we had no other cruising couples in this "posh" environment. The only really noteworthy thing was a norther came through while we were up on the blocks, delivering winds of 45 kts. plus. We were wondering about the security of the blocks Wirewalker was sitting on ... but they held.

Four days later, we were in the water again with happy saildrives and bottom. So, while we thought we'd done "the repair thing" for the season, we were about to learn more. Both water heaters failed, both fresh water pumps failed, the port engine injection pump failed (requiring a new one from Sweden ... 4 days from Sweden to the docks in Maz!), failed anemometer, dinghy engine failures, etc. Ouch!

By Feb. 22nd we'd had enough and it was time to head south. As we started up the boat to get under way, the primary GPS failed to work ... then the secondary GPS failed to work! Geesh, are we cursed? Our mechanic looked at it, scratched his head and said, "you got a handheld GPS?". We said, 'yes'. He said, "Then get out of hear! If you don't leave now, you may never leave. Boats grow 'roots' if you don't leave" We left and that was a very good thing to do.