Ready to Start Cruising!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

027-55.342 N
110-53.051 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

I'm happy to report that we're ready to drop the dock lines and head out cruising. We've had an intense 2 weeks down here working 10+ hours a day to get BlueJacket ready to leave, but we're finally ready. She's in great shape and we're really looking forward to departing.

We flew into Hermisillo, Mexico via Phoenix two weeks ago and drove about 80 miles to Guaymas, where BlueJacket spent the hurricane season on the hard. I never knew that 80 miles could be so long, but this road takes your through the Senoran desert and it just seems to go on and on and on. And boy do they drive fast down here. I was going 70-80 MPH and was passed constantly by cars flying by. And I'll tell you, you do not want to go off the road as the shoulder falls off rapidly into a ditch. From all of the crosses lining the road sides, it's not a good thing to do...

We found BlueJacket dusty and dirty, but in good shape. The sun shade that we made last year was the envy of many other boaters in the yard. It was still in good shape and it appears to have helped, as nothing was melted together in the boat. We spent many days cleaning, polishing and waxing the boat. Considering that BlueJacket is a 15 year old boat with 40,000+ miles on her, she looks great!

We had a list of about 45 items that needed to be done and some of them were multi-day jobs. One of the most worrisome ones got created when I tried to take the cover off the engine heat exchanger and a bolt snapped. None of my extractors could get it out and when I re-drilled it, the hole shifted about 1/8". That wouldn't work, so I had to fill the new hole with a product called J-B Weld and then I was able to re-drill it and tap it. I was sweating that job, as if that hadn't worked, I don't know how I would have fixed it.

After BlueJacket wast launched, Sue bega provisioning on almost a daily basis as foods appear and disappear constantly. At this point I don't think that I'm allowed in the refrig or freezer as it's absolutely full and might explode if I move something the wrong way...

Guaymas is a working town. It's defiantly not a tourist town, they have a very nice board walk (Malecon) which runs along the waterfront and is used daily by all kinds of groups and is a great place to walk. Sue and woman from another boat take daily walks along it and they're quite amused by how many people size them up as gringos and come up to talk to them with varying degrees of English skills. In general it's a nice town where you can get a lot of stuff, but I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time here.

Today we'll pull of the docks in the afternoon and position ourselves in a bay near the entrance to Guaymas. Tomorrow at daybreak we'll depart for Punta Chivato on the Baja side, which is about 72 miles away. From there we'll work our way down to La Paz and from there we'll cross back to Mazatlan on the mainland side. Then we plan to work our way down to Puerto Valarta and then head back to Mazatlan where we'll leave the boat for hurricane season.

The weather down here has been wonderful, especially when compared to the blistering heat that we had in June & July. It's typically been in the upper 50s at night and 75-80 during the day. Almost like at home this year! Sure glad that we didn't stick around for the sking...

For the next several weeks we'll be without Internet access. If you want to get in touch of us, use "bluejacket at geoffschultz.org" as an e-mail address. We hope that you're all doing well.

-- Geoff & Sue

For the cruiser: If you're looking for a hard working, diligent person to help you with boat work or to watch your boat, we can highly recommend Carlos Ramirez. We worked with us for 3 days and did great work. His phone number is 044-622-126-1858 and his e-mail is charly_ramirez33 "at" hotmail.com.

Log ID: 1475