Cmdr. S/V Reliant – Page 2 – Sailing Vessel Reliant

(7) Acapulco to Cabo – COMPLETE

LEG 7

(7) Acapulco to Cabo! – Dec27th – Jan3rd

Reliant made it to Baja! We knocked out another 800+ nm, and are finally on the same coast line as California!

Wednesday after Christmas, we arrived in Acapulco to a messy boat. The end tie that we thought was such a cool rockstar parking spot turned out to be a bird poop magnet. In all the places we’ve left the boat over the summer, I’ve not yet returned to the deck conditions we discovered in Acapulco. It was like the Pearl Harbor of guano attacks!

I spared you pictures, but suffice it to say we spent a lot of time cleaning underway.

Departure from Acapulco was mostly uneventful. We encountered un poquito problemo with the ship’s agent over paperwork, and there was a small frustration with some canvas work that turned out modestly rougher than I’d anticipated. Hard to imagine me actually not happy with work quality on the boat, right?

According to Nathan, the negotiations were somewhat…’heated’ I believe was the word he used.

The upside is we finally have a working full enclosure for the fly bridge. It’s a must have for heading up the coast this winter, and it turned out we got it just in the nick of time. The average night time temp dropped near 30 degrees from the coast at Acapulco to the mouth of the Sea of Cortez.

Seabirds, and crocodiles, and whales… oh my!

I’ve selected three pics to illuminate our encounters with wildlife on this leg. The first being Pablo Pajaro(no relation to Pablo Dinkins). He made numerous carrier landings on the bow, and rode not one, but two days perched atop the forepeak as we traveled up the Mexican mainland coast.

The second was one of the Crocs we saw on the river expedition in Tenacatita. Liam took point and I ran the skiff. There was some controversy over whether these were actually Caymens vs. Crocs, but my sources called them Crocodiles, so the captain ruled Crocs.

The third speaks for itself, all though we aren’t sure if they were grays or humpback.(videos in the Leg photo album at bottom)

Trip up the coast from Acapulco was sweet. No significant weather. No wind, but flat seas made it fine motoring.

We stopped in Tenacatita for the river trip mentioned above, which is a five mile river that runs up from the beach and ends at a large lagoon. Neat change of pace for anyone transiting the coast line down near Mazatlan, and the anchorage is great.

Further up the coast we stopped in Bahia de Chamela. Chamela get’s the must stop award for leg 7. For some reason, the anchorage was completely empty, except for a few Mexican pangas and a nice Canadian couple in a 40′ sloop. Great beaches with really cool local bars on the beach. Groceries near by, and plenty of cold cerveza. If you are heading down the coast and looking for a relaxing place with just the right mix of activity and quite, try Chamela.

We bypassed Z-Town(Zihuatanejo) and Puerto Vallarta to get some of the crew to Cabo in time for flights.(the big R will be back down someday so no problemo) We departed Chamela direct for the tip of Baja and spent New Year’s underway.

ADVICE FROM THE CAPTAIN
When you’re in a deep peaceful sleep, with the comforting drone of a marine diesel inboard in proper calibration drowning all worries away from the outside world, and you are suddenly jolted awake by the sharp loud crashing clanking sound like that of a sail drive transmission that has suddenly exploded and is allowing thousands of gallons per minute to flood the compartment that is directly behind the bulkhead of your captain’s berth, try not to have a heart attack as you leap out of bed to save the ship… it’s just Liam banging on a frying pan to ring in the new year…

Oustide of that, New Year’s was a blast on the Reliant. Really!!

Arrival to San Jose de los Cabos was ideal. The marina is expensive, but probably worth the price. Brand new beautiful docks, neat restaurants and facilities at the top of the gang way. Our local hangout has already become el Marinero Barracho!(the Drunken Sailor) I can’t think of a more fitting palapa style Mexican bar to greet the crew of Reliant. The fish and chips are even decent, but what is it with Mexico and vinegar? A sailor don’t eat anything without malt vinegar! They act like they’ve never heard of it down there. Weird.

Anyone who wants to head down for a weekend, give me a call!

Cultural Addendum: Nathan and I spent the day in Ciudad Mexico, where we explored the mysteries of the church of Rome in the largest cathedral in North America, Metro Cathedral of the Assumption, toured the remains of the Aztec temples of Tenochtitlan(the dudes the Spanish took Mexico City from), and spent a cultured afternoon at the Museo Nacional de Arte. Never fear, we are still Americans, we like American food, and we speak American, which makes google translate all the more important in a foreign country.

Reliant is currently on the east side main channel docks at Puerto Los Cabos Marina, Mexico

Leg 7 Complete.

LEG 7 PHOTO ALBUM

(8) The Baja Bash! – COMPLETE

LEG 8

(8) The Baja Bash! – COMPLETE

Reliant has reached Ensenada, the drop point for boats shipped from Florida to California. Distance from the border is 48 nautical miles. I call that mission accomplished!

To begin, I’d like to remind everyone how arduous the so called delivery experts said a northbound passage on the Baja coast would be in the spring time. I’ve included the following picture to demonstrate the ordeal(note the ferocity of the seas in the background)…

…and that’s an emergency flotation device in Tim’s hand, not a bottle of Pacifico…

To every delivery captain that says NO to northbound baja deliveries after January, TRY CHECKING THE WEATHER dude, it helps!

Did we get lucky? Maybe, but out of a 10 day window in March, there were enough easy days to piece together an uneventful motor north.(it’s all about the Lows, watch for them coming in off the open Pacific to break up the NW flow)

Starting early Sunday, we checked the famous Cabo arch, then made a 30 hour run direct to Magdalena Bay.

We anchored in Santa Maria Bay, on the northwest side of Magdalena, an easy in and out. Unless you are fuel critical, Maria is a better rest stop than Mag.

There we made a great trade with local fisherman: Spam and Oreos for Lobster! Monday night, Reliant hosted Lobster dinner for the only other boat in the bay, a southbounder out of San Francisco.

Tuesday morning we continued north, tucking close to shore inside of Punta Abreojos. (cruiser note: there’s a light counter current if you get near shore, especially before Abreojos, good northbound push for a slow boat) We passed several groups of Gray Whales traveling northbound near San Ignacio. We also made VHF contact with boats southbound on the San Diego to PV race.

Wednesday we reached Bahia Asuncion, and spent all day ashore so Hannah could say she’d been to “real” Mexico. Dinner was at Loncheria Mary, a three table establishment which was pretty “real” Mexican and the only open joint in town. Highly recommended!

Having plenty of fuel on board made stopping in Turtle Bay unnecessary, and with good weather potential developing for a north bound sail over the weekend, we decided to make for the San Benitos on Thursday morning.

The Islas San Benito are a group of three volcanic rock islands, barren and uninhabited, except for a small fishing camp on the middle island. They

give shelter from prevailing NW weather, and are a great jump off point for the last part of the passage north. (cruiser note: try this instead of Cedros unless you need fuel, better point of sail to Ensenada)

The weak low pressure center promising a reverse in wind direction by Saturday, stalled about 200 miles off shore. If it had moved further in as predicted, we would have enjoyed a 10 knot breeze south to north on Sunday.

Realizing there would be no good sailing, we shoved off on the final leg for Ensenada on Saturday afternoon.

Arriving Ensenada Sunday, we spent one very crowded night at the Hotel Coral Marina. The crew used Margaritas to distract me from the noisy power transformer next to our slip. I mean really, it’s the 21st century, do power transformers need to make that much noise??!!

I strongly recommend against Coral. It’s not a terrible marina, but the docks and facilities aren’t nice enough to make up for not being able to walk to town. Plus it costs more.

Cruiseport has much nicer concrete docks, 50 amp service on all, plenty of room in the ways and double wides, and is right across the street from the nicest part of centro. You pick up soot from commercial and cruise ships, but it’s no dirtier than Marina Del Rey, and just as quiet as Coral. The intel I received on these places was incorrect. Do Cruiseport, you won’t be sorry. (cruiser note: CP is dirty, and your rigging will be coated with a gritty stuff if you stay more than a month, but if you won’t be there long it’s not a factor)

Back to the trip, we spent Sunday and Monday enjoying Ensenada and Tuesday departed for Estado Unidos by bus, foot, and rental car.

The crew requested I detail why we had to cross the border on foot instead of flying back with pilot buddies.

We had a plan for evac by Cessna with the help of Dave Karlsberg and Eric Roth(thanks for trying guys), because there is no commercial service in Ensenada. We just forgot to tell President Trump.

Mr. Trump decided to inspect his future wall the day we were planning to fly out. Since the secret service shuts down the National Airspace surrounding any VIP movement, because Cessna Skyhawks are so dangerous(do I sound bitter?), we had to hitch a ride to the bus station, bus ride from Ensenada to the border, walk across the border, Uber to Budget Rental, and drive back to LA.

I’ve been waiting for a tweet apology, but no shout out. Guess he isn’t plugged into the adventures of Reliant. You’re Fired!

Getting back to the crew, it is amazing to hand your credit card to a guy at the Budget Rental counter, and in 5 minutes drive off in a brand new car full of gas for destination wherever. Only in America. Also, kind of nice when the guy at the border crossing says welcome home. Still the best place to be.

I guess that’s as good a way as any to end the blog. I’ve missed a detail or two, but I’ve covered the highlights.

Reliant is now resting at Cruiseport, Ensenada, Echo 3. Weekend trips are approved. All former crew, you know where the key is.

Final Leg and grand trip complete!

Reliant actual, out.

(9) The Voyage Home – COMPLETE

LEG 9

(9) The Voyage Home – Ensenada to Marina del Rey, CA – COMPLETE

Hard to qualify the trip from Ensenada to MDR an actual Leg, since it’s almost like a weekend cruise to Catalina, but just didn’t feel right not taking the blog readers all the way to the home port.

We split the trip up with an overnight in Cat Harbor in Catalina. Time up to Cat from Ensenada was about 14 hours of calm motoring. Uneventful except for the crossing into US waters around 5am.

We departed Ensenada a little after midnight on Sunday and proceeded direct to Catalina.

It was pretty cool getting to walk up to the bar at Harbor Reef and tell the guy I had just landed from Florida via the canal with my crew. I left out the 5 months of stops in between, but I still felt like a rock star.

After all the years of sailing out to Catalina and dreaming about really going some place, getting to brag a little at that old bar was sort of a bucket list thing. Hope I didn’t lay it on too thick.

Who am I kidding, Jim always lays it on too thick…

Monday morning we departed Cat, rounded the west end, and made for MDR. 3 hours total, and about half the average time of Sierra Wind. Certainly a game changer for weekend trips to the island.

Karlsberg rolled out in his Swan to meet us in Santa Monica Bay. Thanks Dave!

We dropped the main, I turned the bows down the main channel, rounding the south jetty like I’ve done a thousand times before. I was a lot higher on top of Reliant than I ever was on old Sierra Wind, so maybe it felt a little different, but mostly it was familiar.

The day before in Catalina it occurred to me that entering Cat Harbor was the very first place since the moment I started the engines where I had even seen, nevertheless navigated, a place I knew while piloting Reliant. I barely knew to turn right or left when we pushed off the first dock in Ft. Lauderdale.

Going into Cat after a good trip up from Mexico was so exciting and noisy, I didn’t have a chance to ponder that feeling deeply, but entering the main channel of MDR was more quite. Anti-climactic maybe.

There were no banners or flags waving. No one really knew who we were, or cared. We passed the Coast Guard cutter, ran down battleship row, and found the open end tie at DRYC. Just another boat.

Nick jumped off and worked out our lines, we made them fast, I shut down the engines…and that was it.

Not sure what I expected, but I think something. You plan for provisions, weather, routes, crews, spare parts, emergencies, but not for the trip ending. It just ended.

Still, Nick and Aimee and I had a blast, and a good share of Buffalo Milk! I guess I should be grateful I got to do it, and glad I got the boat here in one piece.

Pics will be uploaded soon.

Welcome to your new home Reliant! She’ll be on one of the end ties at DRYC. Come find us.

LEG COMPLETE

Baja Update

Thanks for responses from all.

We missed a great weather window this week(week 1), so I’m bummed that my work schedule was the hold up. Forecasts for the next 3 weeks are:

week 2 – not ideal, heating up towards mid week, so I say 100% out

week 3 – Long range forecast looks even worse, so I’m 90% sure week 3 is out(I’ve got a couple of you as maybes for week 3, I’ll contact direct if forecast improves)

week 4 – Long range also shows flow weakening Thursday, looks promising

That makes Week 4(Mar 3 to 11) the target. Crew so far is:

Jenny (definite)
Stefan (definite)

Tim B. (maybe)
Gary (maybe)
Michael C. (maybe)
Matthew S. (maybe)
Dave (maybe)

Would like to have at least 3, and 4 would be better since Jenny will probably do watches with me.

Let me know as you can firm up schedules.

WHEN A YANMAR DIESEL RANDOMLY REV LIMITS

THE YANMAR MYSTERY REV LIMIT

If you had an engine that randomly would begin rev limiting itself, would always work fine for the first hour or more of operation, and otherwise always ran smooth even when rev limiting, what would you think the problem was? Slipping throttle cable? Bad fuel pump timing?

Oh, so you’re the smart guy that thinks it’s the fuel filter.

Ok mechanical genius. What if I then said it started working again after the engine cooled off. Explain that smart guy!?

Normally, when a fuel filter is dirty or a fuel line is clogged, and engine will idle rough and sometimes be difficult to start, and always get’s worse over time. In this case, the problem “rev limit” would come and go, and only happened when the engine had been run for more than an hour. Sounds more like a heat problem, right?

I even had an ‘expert’ mechanic look at the engines in Panama and he couldn’t find anything wrong. I called a couple of Yanmar dealers, and they were no help either.

It took two half brained pilots(Dave and I) to figure it out. I guess two wrongs do make a right after all. 😛

For the sake of crew 4, or for anyone that ever has a Yanmar 4JH4 series engine, the following is a description of the problem and the solution.

On the 4JH4, Yanmar built in a manual fuel priming bulb(a little hand pump on the side of the engine that looks like a bell, with a spring underneath) It is attached to the fuel filter housing, and is inline with the fuel lines to the intake side of the injection pump. The idea being you can pump this thing a few times after you change a fuel filter or work on the engine. In other words, it helps you bleed the fuel system of air.

The old fashion way to bleed diesel fuel systems was to crank the engine over and over while you crack the line to an injector(old timers know this trick), until you spray fuel all over the place. Clearly a real clean, and starter sparing operation.

Most modern engines build in a self bleeding feature to avoid the mess. Yanmar does too, but then they go a step further, and their solution should never effect the engine in normal operation, right?

Wrong. Turns out if you start to have a little restriction in the fuel flow(not enough to make the engine run bad, but just enough to create suction in the fuel line) the plunger on the hand pump starts to “suck” in. Since the hand pump chamber is inline with the fuel system, it slowly opens. If you run the engine long enough, with enough suction to overcome the spring in the hand pump, the pump chamber is eventually “opened” completely to outside air.

Turns out that Yanmar, by accident or design, built the hand pump return orifice exactly the right size to pull in enough air to limit the engine to run exactly 2100 rpms. How do I know that? Because Reliant has two of them, and they both did the exact same thing.

What caused the restriction? Just fuel filters. Not so clogged that they didn’t work, but enough to create the ‘rev limit’.

So do you call this a flaw in the design, or failsafe? Since I read the service manual cover to cover twice, and found no indication of the ‘issue’ in the troubleshooting guide, I’m going to call it dumb luck.

What’s the good news? You don’t have to install an inline suction gauge to read the condition of the fuel filters on a 4JH4 install. Just wait until the engine stops reving past 2100 rpms.

Reliant in the Pacific!

Be advised, the big R and crew are now the scourge of the Pacific! We downlocked to saltwater at 5pm today, and captain and crew are ashore at Balboa Yacht Club.

Things could get rough here, as there is a large variety of spirits available in Balboa, and we are sampling all. We fought off howler monkeys and caymans to arrive here, so the crew is well deserving.

Weather is great, wish you were here, next stop Costa Rica!

(5) The Canal Transit! – COMPLETE

San Blas Islands/Panama

Would be nice to get one last Caribbean trip in before transiting the Canal. Anyone interested in a San Blas Islands trip at the end of the month?

Confirmation and Details for all Summer Legs!

Greetings all,

I’ve finally got enough info together to firm up the summer route. Expect a series of leg update emails later today to confirm all routes through the Canal and into the Pacific! Big adventure is planned!

Remember, weather can always bump the schedule, but if you are confirmed on a leg, you are a go for plane ticket purchase. Check leg details for airport locations.

A makeup trip to Key West last weekend completed most of the deferred prep from Leg 1, and left Reliant in good condition for departure from the States next weekend. The solar panels worked, confirming the potential for cold beer at the start of each leg! Most important.

Notice to Scuba Divers: Duties as “Sailing Master” leave me short on capacity to double as “Dive Master”. In the spirit of El Caribe pirate ship democracy, I’m leaving dive research and planning to the crew. Study your leg and pick some spots. I’ll get the boat there and fill the tanks. Any volunteers for “Dive Master” on a leg are accepted with pleasure. No resume required.

Happy Mother’s day to all the moms, and below is an important message from the Quartermaster(aka Mom) on sea sickness:

“Here is the link to the Relief Band https://www.reliefband.com. If you use promo code “GH2017″ when ordering, you get Free Shipping and 20% off. Not sure if it works, but it’s worth a try and it’s drug-free.”

“Another option is prescription scopolamine transdermal patches. I’ve used them before and they worked for me, but it can make you drowsy if you’re especially sensitive to its effects. Not everyone gets seasick, but for those of us who do, it’s important to prepare so you can enjoy every moment of the voyage.” Debra Oates

Crew Assignment Page, 1MC Page, and Leg 1 Update!

This is my first attempt with blog notification. I called it 1MC(for those familiar with Navy terms). Hope you receive loud and clear!

Leg 1 is complete! Read here https://svreliant.org/2017/03/29/keywest/

I’ve also added a Crew Assignment web page, and a NEED TO KNOW. If this notification thing works, you’ll see changes to route segments, dates, and crew assignments. Will make it way easier to keep everyone informed.

I’m playing catch-up with work this week, and have a lot of stuff to do for the boat(insurance, paper work, etc.), but should be fully organized by the end of the month. If you’ve made a leg request and don’t see your name, just send again. More dates and details to follow!

1MC – 1 Main Circuit

The 1 Main Cicuit is the shipboard channel for broadcasting to all parts of the ship, therefore addressing the entire crew. Any posts here are special updates for the crew of Reliant!