In the morning we headed into town to find some decent WiFi. Our cell phone connection works for email, but not for blogging or web browsing. So after getting an internet fix, we had some breakfast.
Then back to the boat to see about getting the main sail fixed. Chuck from Ullman Sails came aboard from their boat French Curves. He is a professional sail maker and his company has sail making facilities in Anacortes and San Diego. He runs their sales operation, but is an expert on fixing sails. How lucky could we get? It took him about an hour to sew new webbing back on the sail and get the clew fixed. We discovered in the process of lowering the main sail that it got stuck half way down. So while the sail was being hand sewn by Chuck, Dave went up the mast to see why the mast was sticking. Turned out that one of the numbers on the sail (which are plastic and applied with sticky backing) had come off the sail and gotten itself stuck in the roller furling. Dave managed to extract it. And then we quickly set about removing all the other numbers from the sail as they are useless to us – and clearly can cause us issues. We suspect this may have been part of the reason that we have struggled with pulling the main sail out and getting it to roll up properly again. When we raised the main and rolled it back up – it went in smooth as butter. Chuck told us that the main sail will last till Cabo. However, he left us with some additional needle and thread and instructions on how to put in another row of stitches – which he says if we do sometime in the next few weeks – the sail will last for years. None the less we got the name of a reputable sail maker in Puerta Vallarta where we will take the main and head sail when we get there to have them further reinforced.
Today was the big party on the beach with all the Baja HaHa’ers. It was the biggest pot luck we’ve ever seen with near to 500 people in attendance. Melissa baked three orange glazed pound cakes for the occasion.
Having Kinston aboard to translate has been incredibly useful. On the dock in town today there was a fairly desperate cruiser with a water maker that was kaput. She was trying to get the Mexicans on the dock to bring her 50 gallons of fresh water in 5 gallon containers so that they could fill their tank. Kingston helped her out – which was a huge relief – though in the end they got the water maker fixed. Then we went to town for
groceries, where he was able to find Melissa her sour cream, avocados, and a host of other stuff. He then negotiated with the for a 12 to 1 exchange rate (typically people do 10 to 1 to make the math easy – but that’s a 20% overpayment with the current exchange rate).
