End of September 2015 - House sitting At private slip in Nuevo Vallarta in Banderas Bay, Mexico Because
I need a new hip and we will be going to the VA in the USA for the hip surgery, we are lightening the load. We are shedding our land ties here so we can be more
portable. For instance, we own a Mexican-registered car.
It has been our experience that the IMSS insurance for Mexican workers is not for us. I originally thought that it would
be the solution for our health care. We have cruiser friends up in the Sea of Cortés (Gulf
of California) that raved about it. They possibly were not looking for the level of
care that I was. He also had VA benefits in the US and was right across the
border being up in the Sea.
We purchased the Mantus Chain hook and bridle system. We also got boat show pricing which made it even better! We, like other cruisers, anchor for months at a time and use a bridle every time we anchor!
I wrote to A-Z Marine in San Diego where we purchased or four 6 volt Mastervolt AGM batteries and asked if the needed to be equalized. The response is below.
Middle of September 2015 - At private slip in Nuevo Vallarta in Banderas Bay, Mexico For as much as we anchor (a heck of a lot) I do not know why we never spent the time and money to get\make a great and easy-to-deploy snubber? From what I understand the bridle should sit about a foot under water at all times with a healthy length of chain for a loop.
Middle of September 2015 - Currently in Paradise Village Marina in Banderas Bay Mexico So we sent this off to the Beta Marine support forum to see about the leaking plug. Note 2018: We think we found out what happened and the fix for this leaking zinc problem. Beta 38 hp engine zinc leaks - found out why, NPT or BSP We have a Beta Marine 38 hp engine with about 640 hours on it. We changed out the zinc in Zihuatanejo, Mexico and then sailed and motored back up to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and the bolt that holds the zinc in leaked the whole way. Not bad but enough to drool salt water onto the engine and motor mount. Not good. At the time we did not want to take a chance on stripping it out as we were not by any services.
Beginning of September 2015 - t private slip in Nuevo Vallarta in Banderas Bay, Mexico Our Standard HorizonGxX150 now gets GPS data from the Q7000619A antenna. From Standard Horizon tech support: "Press and
hold Menu for 2 seconds. Go into the General Setup. Scroll down and select NMEA
Data In/Out. Make sure 4800 is highlighted"
So this was news to us. We changed this from 3800 to 4800 and we got data. Now we will need to change the settings on the Garmin 740 chart plotter to get AIS data. So happy days with no more alarm!
Of course we are tied up so no speed data etc.
As safety goes this is a good thing because we do not need to depend on the chart plotter to be working to get data to send if we press the "Emergency" button.
Debbie took off the bimini and she is making modifications for the Kato Marine Island Davits. We re-positioned the Kato Marine Island Davits last year in the summer and this summer made some changes to the bracing so the mods to the bimini and the stern 90% phifertex shade screen are getting done.