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

Pancho, the gentleman who takes care of Vagari during our summer absence, told us that when he tried to start the outboard before our arrival that it wouldn’t start so he took it to the shop. A few days later he told us that the engine needed some major work. It was due back the day before we planned to leave. So we don’t see Pancho until the day after we are scheduled to leave.

During the check out in front of Pancho a part of the electrical system flew off and damaged the spark generating system. As luck would have it, the broken part was not available in the San Carlos/Guaymas area. It would take two weeks to get the part from the US. So we left without it. Pancho will hopefully ship the repaired motor to us in La Paz.

Next the windless, the device that raises the anchor broke a couple of days out. This is of some interest to me since I now have to pull the anchor up by hand. The chain weighs one pound per foot and the anchor weighs 44 pounds. We typically put out 100 feet of chain when we anchor.

What happened was that the “key” that transfers the load from the drive shaft to the winch broke. We didn’t have a spare but we stole from Peter to pay Paul and made another one. That broke during the first test because the clutch was frozen. So we fixed the clutch and made another key. The windless now appears to be working.

We were in an exotic anchorage when we made this repair.