Chapter 17: Crossing out old memories. Day# 21.
Sunday February 4th, 2019. Quepos, Costa Rica.
My alarm went off at 6:30am, the sky to the east was a brilliant yellow as the first sliver of sun peaked over the hills. I felt fine physically, maybe somewhat lonely feeling. The cabin seemed very quiet today, the sofa looked different.
While the Bialetti espresso pot was heating on the stove I grabbed the flashlight and did my morning rounds. First step was to check the bilge, I lifted the cover and only saw dry fiberglass floor. I stuck my head down below the deck to light up the propeller shaft seal, make sure it wasn't dripping, then I shone the light on the two lines from the engine out the hull for coolant water, neither of them was leaking (all three were replaced last December).
Next to check was the battery compartment under the captain's bunk. I lifted the bed frame then propped the pole like the hood of a car, then I could see the fiberglass tray that held eight deep cycle batteries, they were all 100% and all had good fluid levels too. The radar checked out, the GPS and VHF radio all had good batteries too. The diesel fuel tank and the city water tank were full. The sewage tank had a few days of three people using the toilet and sink, so it could be dumped out at sea.
The windsock near the harbor entrance was blowing towards the northwest but I'm sure the direction would be different 100 miles from shore. I sat on the back deck in the morning sunshine in my swim suit feeling all clean and rested.
When the pot started to gurgle I poured it into my clear acrylic mug and sat back down and enjoyed the peaceful morning sun. After two cups I spent more time making sure the rest of the boat was ready to sail. All hatches were closed and locked, and the entire boat looked ready. My last check was to walk the piers and visually inspect the parts of the hull I could see. At the captain's desk I saw the NAV lights were back on, I had no idea how that kept happening, other than the Ghost of Susan. Maybe I was sleepwalking and switched it on when I was supposed to be asleep in bed. I could set up my cell to record the area but in all honesty I was worried about the actual cause, out on the ocean there was nothing I could do about it. If I sleep walked off the boat out at sea it would be impossible to survive that unless I did it with all the sails down. I had two satellite tracking ankle bracelets but was reluctant to use them.
With my little signal mirror I walked the piers and used it to reflect sunlight on the hull around the waterline to look for anything wrong, aside from some slight green fuzz the hull looked fine. She leaned slightly to port but that was okay considering how she was loaded.
With some slight hesitation I dropped the lines and very slowly motored out on battery power. When I got to the straight waterway at the harbor entrance I ran up front and raised the mainsail then opened a bottle of cold water. Back at the helm I set the plastic bottle in the cup holder and watched the speed slowly increase as I zigzagged due west to get clear of any coral reefs or submerged shoals. I sailed west into the wind until I was ten miles out and Mexico had mostly disappeared behind me. At that distance it was a dark line on the horizon.
Forty minutes later I started my turn to the northwest and shuffled up front to raise the two foresails then changed my heading again. Next, I used the GPS menu to bring up the route I programmed weeks ago to take me to Puerto Angel in Mexico with the option to stop in El Salvador but only if needed. The map said 800 miles and I'd be sailing directly above a deep ocean trench, I think that was made by a pacific plate sliding under the tectonic plate beneath Central America and Mexico. For the rest of my trip if those plates slipped I'd be the first one to know.
Since the sun was up and hot and the wind was strong I cranked up the stereo and played some music on the back deck speakers (they sounded like crap because they're waterproof).
Around 1pm clouds overspread the area, the winds changed, and the seas got rougher. Bow spray flew in the air and splashed hard against the windshield. The sails were really flapping and snapping in the wind, I shut off the radio at 1:30pm (because it was getting hard to hear). The wind had changed and it looked like a storm was building behind me to the south, but I was ready for almost anything. I even put on my life jacket and tied a rope around my ankle that ran to a gangway cleat. Something else I never did before but I tightened the straps that held the rear deck canvas cover on top of the tubular metal frame. That cover was really snapping in the wind too. It felt like the temperature suddenly dropped fifteen degrees too. Then I lowered all three side panels and fastened them at the bottom, which made everything sound weird on the back deck.
By 2:50pm the storm's center arrived with thunder and strong winds, it gave me a powerful tailwind for several hours. The GPS said I peaked at 22mph! I turned on the radar and watched the storm center rotate on the tablet computer screen as it pushed me along in front of it. The ride was horrible but I made fantastic time.
I rode the storm most of the afternoon and moved the mainsail at dinner time which slowed me to 18mph. I even ran the engine to power the microwave oven for the last serving of homemade tacos and hot sauce. I also drank two bottles of Pepsi and a beer chaser. By 10pm the storm had moved off towards (the northeast) Mexico and I slowed to 13mph by 1am. That storm would be over Dallas in a day or two and eventually upstate New York because all storms on the planet eventually ended up over Albany!
Monday February 5th, 2019. Day #22, to Thursday February 8th, 2019. Day #25.
Every day alone on the ocean I read a lot, fished but caught nothing, ate very little, and tried to keep myself company by singing and messin' around on deck. I spent hours every day seated on the back deck by the helm not wearing clothes and enjoyed the feeling of the ocean winds and sunlight on my flesh. I carefully shaved my body mostly because I had little else to do. I bucket showed every other day on the back deck and thought about our erotic nights on Panama Bay. While I missed their companionship I certainly didn't miss sharing my tiny floating home! I think they saw Susan as a transport thing, but she was actually my home. Before the sun went down I made notes in my sea log, one read: Dearest Smartguy, if you're going to bring books to read at sea and you're going to try to catch fish, perhaps you should bring books about fishing at sea instead of Constitutional law books, just sayin'. I should probably devote an entire cabinet to a series of books with titles that ended in: ... at Sea for Dummies. And if they didn't exist then I should write them! Some of my ideas were: dental emergencies, first aid, fishing and seafood prep, stomach ailments, pirates, pets, cooking, food storage, drinking water, communications, weather, gay sex, personal hygiene, electrical repair, hull damage, sleep, and entertainment.
I wondered if I published a book titled: Gay Sex at Sea for Dummies, how many copies it would sell? How to Pick-Up a Guy at Sea, Sodomy & Sailing on the High Seas, or Masturbation and French Cuisine on the Pacific Ocean. They were just a few ideas I had to help pass the hours.
I kept an eye on the GPS and saw a waypoint I entered as I sailed past the point where I would have turned towards the harbor in El Salvador, not stopping would shorten my trip by two days or more, but I didn't need supplies and I felt fine. When I sailed past the border between El Salvador and Guatemala I was one hundred two miles off the coast, staying directly above the western edge of the deep trench that paralleled the coast. My maps did not show if the trench had a name and I didn't want to call someone on land on the satellite phone at three bucks a minute just to find out. I was going to stay that far from land until I passed the Guatemala border with Mexico tomorrow then I'd aim for my next stop in Puerto Angel.
Puerto Angel was not pre-paid, they didn't have a marina. The bay should give me a chance to drop anchors and (hopefully) get some sleep, a chance to stretch my legs, and maybe eat some hot food. My two biggest concerns when I planned this trip were running short on: water and sleep. (Beer and toilet paper too but that was my secret).
On the day before Puerto Angel (pronounced: AHN-hell) I noticed the tropical humidity had lessened again, it felt cooler and dryer, of course it was also winter but I was still very far south. Compared to the USA I was straight south of Houston Texas, 96 degrees west (of London) and fifteen degrees north of the equator, just out from the Bay of Tehuantepec, and still over the trench. I was still further south than the big island of Hawaii. My estimated arrival at Puerto Angel would be 6am tomorrow and I'd probably need to drop the foresails so I didn't arrive before the sun. I looked at it closely online back in Florida, the channel going into the bay gave me some worries, luckily the radar was working fine and the tide should be low.
Friday February 9th, Day #26.
I dropped my foresails overnight to slow to 9mph. I called on their VHF channel but couldn't raise the harbor master until 6:15am, my guess was they didn't have it staffed overnight. Let that be a warning to other sailors.
Puerto Angel, Oaxaca, Mexico.
What I read about Puerto Angel (on travel web sites) turned out to be rather incorrect. Allow me to describe the town:
The town was built around a small natural bay, maybe a half mile across and forty feet deep, it was protected from high seas by a line of solid rock along the shore with a gap for boats to enter. The boating channel was about two hundred feet wide but one side was littered with boulders that barely stuck up above the water.
The terrain around town was very hilly/rocky so the streets were never straight or flat. Houses were stacked up on hills and the entire town looked like it's had some significant earthquake damage in the past too. I'd guess shark attacks were possible here too. I read somewhere the town was like a resort area for (third world) wealthy people from the city of Oaxaca (pronounced: Wah HOCK ah).
The bay had two white sand beaches and one commercial pier for unloading fishing boats or maybe a small cargo ship. This town was 100% about beach tourism. They had no marina and no provisions for world traveling sailors but the bay's shape reminded me of Waimea Bay on the island of Oahu. It might be safe to anchor here for a passing hurricane but it lacked facilities. The harbor master told me where to drop anchor: on the west side, sail into the bay on DC power, and make a curve to the left and anchor near the cluster of foreign sailboats. If I was staying longer than one night I'd needed to visit immigration by the commercial pier. He neglected to mention the boulders in the entrance waterway, but luckily they showed up on the radar so I made it just fine. I think I entered the bay at low tide.
Sailing in or out of the bay was like a two lane road, but one lane was blocked by a landslide and was not usable except by kayakers and fish. The best analogy I could come up with was the bay was sort of like sleeping in a rest area along a US interstate highway.
The water was crystal clear and beautiful. About all I could do here was sleep and eat lots of authentic Mexican tacos.
Puerto Angel looked very Third World. Construction was cheap and rough. There were some very nice looking homes but the streets were bad and I wondered where the sewage went (like I couldn't guess it went untreated right into the ocean?). The next biggest city was Oaxaca (100 miles north). This part of Mexico was known for growing quality coffee, manufacturing, and quality ganja (no stems or seeds, which you don't need!). The name of the state was also Oaxaca.
It took me almost an hour to un-strap the dinghy from the cabin roof, attach the motor, the fuel line, the gas tank, and get it in the water upright and floating at the end of a rope. Finally it was ready (after I pumped in a little more air). People on a nearby sixty foot sailboat flying the flag of Australia were watching and enjoying my little clown show, titled: Dork does Dinghy. I went below and got into my swim suit and unpacked my snorkel gear.
Like they said, two pulls and the outboard started. I whizzed towards an empty part of the beach and pulled Lil' Susan up on the sand and walked to a food stand near the beach where I was certain to find happiness, the sign on the roof said: TACOS!
Despite being the only Gringo walking around the white sand beach I went inside three stores with my American dollars and purchased food, Cokes, and twenty pounds of ice cubes. I carried them across the hot sandy beach to the dinghy and pulled it out into knee deep water. I set the bags inside and climbed on board, started the engine, and sped back to Susan.
While I sat on the back deck eating I used my binoculars to see how everyone else anchored themselves and saw I did it wrong. I just didn't have a good gut feeling about my anchor placements. I seemed to recall something in my mariner's class about anchoring off a beach.
After lunch I pulled up the rear anchor and tossed it off the bow about twenty feet from the other one, pulled them to the same tightness and then it looked better. We swung around more in the breezes but it just felt locked in place now. The stern was now about 150 feet off the beach in 25 feet of crystal clear ocean water. I parked Susan so I was about the same distance from the beach as all the other sailboats.
While I relaxed on the deck with my fresh hot tacos I figured out how to program the GPS to alarm if we moved more than forty feet. Using the dinghy I tested it too and it worked. As I sat now I was about 150 feet from the beach and 500 feet from the nearest rocks and 200 feet from the next sailboat. The water below my keel was about twenty five feet deep and crystal clear, the bottom was sandy with scattered rocks. I could even see the lighter colored fish but a few dark fish hid near rocks on the bottom.
I was near the southwest corner of the bay where there was a small gap in the rock that separated the bay from the ocean, I could see a place where someone might be able to kayak out to sea and there was a tiny beach too which I found very tempting. With a few hours of sunlight left I got in the dinghy and motored over to the tiny sand beach and walked around. Since the bay was nearly bathtub warm I snorkeled under around and had a good time looking at the tropical fishies and got lots of good exercise, I even saw a seven foot long Tarpon swimming under the school of tiny fishes. Since I was swimming I motored over by the boat and tied up to her and examined the hull all the way around but she looked pretty clean.
There was a patchy green film in places but not enough to slow me down. I should have brought a telescoping arm with a pad for a scrubber so I could clean most of the bottom from beside the hull. After a total inspection I climbed the ladder back on board then pulled the inflatable on the back deck too.
The hull maintenance kit I bought came with a snorkel facemask that connected to a fifteen foot long plastic hose, it had a valve so you had to breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose, the exhaled air left the mask via a valve. This allowed you to swim most of the way under your boat. I brought along my flashlight and inspected the water intake for the engine coolant, but it was wide open. I slid my hand on the hull around the intake to wipe off the green fuzz. Then I inspected the prop and tested each petal to make sure it hinged freely. This prop collapsed like a flower bloom when stopped so it was ideal for use in shallow harbors. They usually stuck renters in the worst spots so you had to be careful when parking or leaving any rental spot so you didn't destroy your prop. I had the old one with me just in case, it's about two feet in diameter. After my inspection I got back in the dinghy and motored around a little just because it was fun.
I motored around the inlet to the bay, I tried to park the dinghy near the boulders but there was nothing to tie onto. I got it tied to rocks along the wall then swam out to examine the waterway. To me it looked about 20-30 feet deep and about 80 feet wide. When I saw sharks enter the bay I went quickly back to the dinghy and got out of the water. Since all the weight was in the back I had to climb back on board at the bow. Having seen the entrance under water I doubted I would ever sail in here again with a large boat. It would be fine in a tiny sunfish sailboat, like we had at summer camp. On the way back to Susan I opened the throttle to see how fast the little Honda motor would go... I think it got up to around 10mph.
Since I had sunlight and time I looked closely at the side of the boat near the shower deck and used my hand to wipe off the remaining soap residue from our showers at Naos Island. When you used the shower spot the water just ran down the side in two spots. On some boats they used one of the foresails to create a shower room on the bow and with a bucket on a rope they bathed with some privacy out on the bow. That water ran down the gangways and dribbled down the sides. After that you still had the bow deck to clean and might get the sail dirty too. On the back deck there was no privacy but minimal clean-up.
Using the angled transom of the sailboat I pulled the dinghy back up on the back deck and removed the engine and gas tank and strapped it back on the cabin roof.
At sunset I drank some beers and ran the diesel and nuked four more tacos and ate them for dinner. I played the radio and had a very nice evening. The weather was perfect and I had little to do except relax. Every time I looked at the neighbors boat they were watching me, not sure why. Maybe I was the only thing of interest to watch. Three people sat on their back deck looking in my direction. I thought about putting the camping toilet on the cabin roof and taking a crap up there, give them something to watch, or maybe I could walk around my back deck naked with a boner.
With three beers in my tummy and the dished cleaned I put the motor back inside the fish tank (beside the shower spot). Before I went to bed I made sure the NAV lights were off, just the red light on top of the mast.
My face hit the pillow at 9pm and slept until the sun woke me up at 7:30am, I woke feeling great and very relaxed. The bay was very calm overnight and I was anchored too far from the beach to feel any waves so Susan barely moved at all overnight. It was such a fun place I wished someone was with me to enjoy the moment but I had a wonderful evening last night.
Saturday February 10th, Day #27.
I left Puerto Angel at 9am vowing to never return here again (by boat). The beaches were beautiful but worthless to sailors. I would come back here on a tour bus but not by sea. What this town would be good for is a place to own a nice small cottage overlooking the bay, understanding that the town utilities were to never be relied on. I think Mexico City had the same problem. Lots of areas in that enormous city (22 million residents) had no running water.
When you're alone on a heavy sailboat departing an anchorage can be gut wrenching. Just because I'm always afraid of losing control of the boat I ran the diesel engine and had the DC motor running at its lowest speed, then I went up front and quickly pulled both anchors onto rubber mats on the bow deck then dashed back and hit the throttle and motored away from shore. Luckily the wind and waves were minimal on the bay so it was easy to escape disaster on the alluring white sand beach.
The worst moments were when I was on the bow and started pulling up the second anchor. I had to pull fast and drop the chain on the deck then carefully set the anchor on the rubber pad then dash down the gangway to the back deck and bump-up the throttle before the boat drifted far enough towards the beach to hit bottom. I drifted about 40 feet but did okay, it's just very stressful. I'm sure my heart was racing once I started pulling up the anchors.
Sailing from the bay out to sea I made a long wide arc that would take me back to 100 miles from shore, above the trench. My next stop should be Acapulco. My arrival date was too far away to estimate back in Florida so I never made reservations but I researched the price and amenities. I was going to call them tomorrow with credit card in hand. I knew the bay was popular with the billionaire class that lived on boats too large to tie up to most piers. I always wondered what that lifestyle would be like, like you owned a cable TV company and soaked your customers for all you could get so you could live on a 150 foot yacht and sail the planet trying to impress the other trashy billionaires.
When I was a few miles from shore I went back up front to rinse the mud off the deck with the shower bucket, then secure both anchors and chains in their deck mounts and strap everything down. It always felt weird to be alone on the bow deck because if something went wrong that was probably the wrong place to be. I supposed sitting on the toilet would be almost as bad as standing on the bow with a muddy anchor in my hands.
By 4pm I was back on my GPS route, sailing along the coast. I took time to tighten the straps that held the dinghy to the cabin roof and did a detailed inspection of Susan, including the mast and sails and ropes. I used my binoculars to look at the very tops of the sails for cracks or rips. So far on this trip Angel Bay was the one place where the radar was actually necessary, it even paid for itself by keeping me away from the barely visible boulders in the entrance waterway.
Because of glare on the water from the sky I could barely see the left half of that waterway was dotted with surface breaking boulders, but they showed up fine on radar. Susan was happy I used the radar too, or she'd be on the bottom of Angel Bay right now. And sure enough the NAV lights were back on again. This time I taped the switch in the off position, and I finally remembered to remove the registration paper from the windshield for crossing the canal, I carefully peeled the tape and let the wind blow it away. I also raised the side panels around the back deck because the weather out here was absolutely beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, 1-2 foot seas and I maintained a steady 9mph.
That's how the entire day went, so I drank some beers and made a nice lunch and used the last of my bread and sliced ham.
I took some short naps when the radar was clear of any echoes and maintained that routine all night. Two hours nap, check position, then two more hours nap. In my sealog I wrote that the trip into Angel Bay was a waste of time, never sail there again.
Sunday February 11, 2019. Day #28.
This morning I used the sat phone to call Marina Acapulco and was able to reserve a slip and a hotel room for three nights. This was a four star hotel with a large marina with all the modern amenities. It would be the most expensive stop on this entire trip (not counting Canal fees).
Not sure why but I kept thinking about C&D today and how much safer they would have been if they'd rode along to Puerto Angel, they could have avoided all the drug gang crime in Guatemala. It wouldn't get them home any sooner but it would have avoided the war zone.
The winds had switched and were blowing down the coast (N>S) which slowed my progress, but the weather was fantastic, sunny, warm, nice breezes, a few clouds dotted the beautiful blue sky. The sea was nearly calm but I had to zigzag which slowed me to around 6mph and delayed my arrival time to around 2am tonight. I told them I could call on the VHF radio about twenty miles out. The GPS said I had fifty nine miles yet to go. Slowly I was closing the distance and aimed at the entrance to the bay, mile by mile, hour by hour I moved slowly closer to land. When I called them we used maps to confirm the pier spot since I was likely to arrive at night.
Before I left Florida I printed several different satellite photos of Acapulco Bay and the harbors and marinas so I had detailed maps/images of the area.
The bay itself was nearly ten miles wide (E-W) and eight miles wide (N-S). The entire Acapulco metro area measured about seventeen miles east-west and north-south. There was a peninsula that divided the bay from the ocean, that's where the marina sat, in the far west corner of the bay where the land was hilly with lots of exposed volcanic rock and hilly streets.
That was a common feature of the Pacific coast of Mexico, there was a wall of rock along the beach with bays on the inside, sometimes there was an opening from the bay out to sea, sometimes not. The entire coast was prone to earthquakes but not so much to severe hurricanes, but they occasionally got severe Pacific storms along the coast, the further north you went the less storms they got off the ocean.
The phone rep told me to look for their lighthouse, my pier spot would be south-east of it. I told her I had a satellite photo of the bay, she told me to look for the F-shaped pier, my spot was at the end of the middle pier, but not the very short one. I told her I saw one spot where a boat could tie up along the pier, it was at the very end on the side closest to shore, she said, "That's it! Its slip #12, there is a sign there with the number twelve." She said when I arrived if I needed help they would gladly send someone out on the pier with a flag to guide me in, I told her I'd arrive at night and might need someone with a flashlight to catch my rope.
Beyond the pool sat the Hotel Verano and one block south was a grocery store and a full service marine repair shop. And let me tell you, in season, I was lucky to get a spot (on the pier) but paid out the ass for them. The hotel was no five star resort but it was close to the marina and had a very popular restaurant. If the marina piers were full you could pay to drop anchor off the beach like I did on Angel Bay but then there were no utilities or security.
The entire complex was owned by one company but it was spread out weirdly, they even had a small beach (search on g-maps for: Playa Honda, Acapulco) by the hotel. I think the town was laid out weirdly because the west coast of Mexico was volcanic they had to build things where the ground allowed it. The marina had a beach but their pool sometimes had live bands and parties. The street (Costera Miguel Aleman Avenue) ran in front of their eight story hotel. A tree lined sidewalk joined the marina to the pool and another hundred feet to the hotel entrance. The satellite photos looked like they were in the process of getting ready to build a new hotel tower beside the pool.
I stayed awake knowing I'd arrive tonight, which was not something I liked to do; sail into a strange port at night. But they had someone on the radio all night to direct me if I couldn't find it myself. I had a decent image of that part of the bay I printed off g-maps and was pretty sure where to go.
The rep on the phone even gave me the exact coordinates for the slip along the pier. The spot I was assigned was sort of like the one at Naos Island, at the very end of a long floating pier. From that spot I had to walk 200 feet to shore and 200 feet more to the hotel lobby.
Monday February 12, 2019. Day #29.
Acapulco, Mexico, pre-dawn.
Approaching Acapulco the boat traffic increased. I saw fishing excursion boats starting their days very early in the morning, all of them heading out to deeper water. The entrance to the bay was over a mile wide and the bay itself was sort of shaped like an atomic mushroom cloud. I remembered to hang all the bumpers along both sides just in case I had a last second change of mind about which way to park.
Acapulco was huge and densely populated. The entire Acapulco metro area was enormous and nestled between several mountain ridges. The marina I was going to required a large curved course to the left, to the west end of the bay. He told me to steer towards the large yachts at anchor then about 200 feet away turn sharply to the left towards the lighthouse. Then 300 feet from shore turn my search light around and look for the shorter floating pier, I would park on the back side of the pier at the south end. All around that part of the bay were boats at anchor, so this was a Danger Will Robinson situation. I dropped all sails as I slowly entered the bay relying totally on the radar and what I could see with the search light. Too bad the aiming handle for the search light was ten feet from the helm! But at that moment the radar could see in the dark better than I could with the light.
As I sailed into Acapulco Bay I was amazed by all the condos and super expensive homes crammed together around the bay and stacked up on the hillsides. This was a town for the super wealthy, I had money but not Acapulco grade money, at least that's how it looked at 3am. I thought it was fine to visit for a few nights, who knows I might even meet a horny Mexican boy with a fat dick and nice mushroomy nips to suck on too. I've never picked up a guy in Spanish before but I definitely liked Hispanic bodies.
Relying on the radar I crawled into the bay, the directions I got over the radio were 100% accurate and getting to the right spot was scary as fuck but it worked. Drifting a 40 foot sailboat into a pier is a terrible thing to do, especially in the dark but I did it without damaging anything or scraping the bottom. They had a marina security guard on the end of the pier so I could toss him a rope. I had ropes sitting out on the decks ready to throw.
Luckily the wind was dead calm and the harbor flat as glass when I arrived and moved along at a literal crawl. The dialog inside my head reminded me of watching old films of the astronauts practicing docking in orbit.
The marina guard flashed his light at me which helped a ton and I got turned around, and slowly drifted the boat to within 50 feet of the pier and threw the rope as hard as I could, he caught it and slowly pulled me in. Then I threw the other one and he pulled the bow in.
Touchdown! 3:51am local time.
When the bumpers pressed against the pier I shut off the motors. We'd successfully docked to a floating pier in Acapulco! I was beyond happy and shouted thanks to the guard in uniform. Then he ruined my moment by asking to see my passport to compare to the rental slip on his clipboard. He flashed his light in my face to see if I looked like my passport photo. I tolerated his mall-cop act and he soon walked away to resume his job guarding the sidewalk entrance to the marina.
I got out the power cord and plugged into shore power. Then I connected the white garden hose to water. Next, I went below and propped up the captain's bunk to check that the batteries were charging (listen for the 60 cycle hum from the charger and look at the amp meter). The batteries were warm but not hot. Then I removed each cap, one at a time with the headband flashlight on to check fluid levels and charge state. They were all at 94% and bubbling, I added a small amount of water to almost every cell.
Finally at 4:15am I was done and ready to go ashore. Looking down the gangway I saw the NAV lights were off and the red light on top of the mast was also off so I stepped onto the pier with my airline suitcase. I rolled the case down the pier in the dark and stopped at the guard shack, he said the front desk at the hotel didn't open for almost two hours but I could stretch out in the lobby and wait for them. And that is exactly what I did.
It sort of alarmed me to see what looked like five guys asleep on the manicured grass along the tree lined sidewalk that ran from the end of the pier to the front door of the hotel, and past the entrance to the pool. Then I saw a few taxi cars and figured those were the cabbies waiting on an early morning fare. I pulled my suitcase down the sidewalk and inside the hotel lobby and got comfortable in an overstuffed arm chair, propped my feet on the suitcase and closed my eyes.
I'd read that crime was up in Acapulco but staying around the marina would be fine. I didn't stop in Mexico to take a bus tour, I had one stop planned: the grocery store. The rest of my time here would be at the pool or on a real bed in the hotel room. I had a lot of sleep to get caught up on.
Contact the author: borischenaz gmail
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