Welcome to Vagari’s 7th winter of sailing. We have put 8,000 miles under Vagari’s keel during those cruises but this year like last year won’t be a high mileage year. We just don’t have the lust for the long cruises that we did when we started cruising but we still enjoy living on board and sailing near our homeport. Welcome aboard! We hope you enjoy our blog. Your comments, questions and suggestions are appreciated and encouraged.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Cruising [krooz ing] verb- present participle (1) Repairing your boat in exotic anchorages


The outboard motor saga continues. The seller told me that the fuel shut off value leaked and should be replaced. I played with it in La Paz and thought I had it working. It may have worked when tied to a nice stable dock but the rigors movement of the open sea caused it to leak again. In PV the only fuel valve I could get was for a different brand outboard. I simple modification to that shut off value and it now works.

We used the outboard every day when anchored. One beautiful day, when anchored off La Cruz Huanacaxtle the motor worked fine but the dinghy didn’t move. The shear pin that connects the drive shaft to the prop broke. I took it apart and saw that a wire had been used as a shear pin. I made my own wire shear pin and it lasted for a couple of minutes. As luck would have it was marked day in La Cruise Huanacaxtle. So we went to the market area. I was able to purchase a used long shaft screwdriver with the appropriate size shaft for 10 pesos. Back to the Vagari machine shop (vice grips, hacksaw and file). We had a shear pin and several spares in a few minutes. The outboard has been working great since then.

We were in exotic anchorages when we made these repairs.

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