Dear F&F,
January 9, 2009
We were up early in hopes of heading to The Boiler dive site. But we saw Nautilus Explorer leaving the anchorage & when Scott radioed them they were heading there with their 22 divers. No fun for us to be in a crowd if we have a choice. Plus the swell & wind kicked up early & the dinghy ride would have been rough for us. So we had a leisurely morning instead. Fried eggs & toast – new jar of blackberry jam opened was the highlight.
We are still having a generator glitch so Scott spent a couple of hours researching it this morning, trying to find out if there is 2nd coolant leak or why the heck the failure alarm/auto shut off keeps happening. Big concern… But it was a beautiful & rare sunny day so I dragged him out to dive finally at 11 am. Usually we are back from our morning dive by then & I\’m starting to think about lunch. Anyway, I had a pre-dive granola bar & mocha since the early breakfast had worn off.
No sign of mantas on the surface, but not knowing where else to go, we returned to our 25 foot mound. The current was up pretty good, but the visibility the worst ever, barely 40 feet. We hung around hoping a manta would come to the playground. After 10 minutes or so, we swim down the ridge of mounds to the deeper area called \”The Canyon\” where we have seen hammerheads. Sure enough there are tons of \’em. Well, what we can see through the murky water. It is kind of eerie to be down at 100 feet & straining to see, as if through fog, and in the distance see a bunch of sharks, but very cool. We watched them for about 5 minutes, but our air goes fast at that depth, so we know to get shallower soon. While we are still focused on the sharks, too distant & too poor visibility for video, a dolphin buzzed by & scared the bejeezus out of us. We are thinking sharks & a large grey thing comes at us at high speed. We laughed at the prankster & enjoyed seeing its gang of 3 zoom off. We swam back to the mound area & hung out visiting the lobsters, zebra fish, eel, jacks & usual suspects. After a while we popped the anchor, went to our safety stop & as we were drifting along 15 feet below holding onto the dinghy we saw another fairly shallow mound & decided to plop the anchor back down & go check it out. We still had plenty of air, so did a little exploring in that area. Saw a couple of pretty trumpet fish. The visibility started to improve near the end of the dive.
By the time we got back it was close to 1 pm. Without the incentive of seeing mantas, we decided one dive was enough for today, plus Scott had the generator concern weighing on him. We rinsed the gear, showered, ate turkey sandwiches & listened to 60s music on Sirius radio. Later Scott napped & I read. Then I made dessert to take since Chuck & Linda on the other sailboat invited us for dinner. I found a lemon pudding cake recipe in the pressure cooker cookbook. It had pretty much the same ingredients as a lemon dessert I\’d made in the oven before. Very cool that it only needed 5 minutes at pressure instead of 1 hour in the oven! Except for the fact that I had pre-mixed my white & whole wheat flours together it turned out fine. The whole wheat gave it a rather organic taste, not as nice as if all white flour had been used.
Tonight we told Chuck & Linda a lot of stories from the time our boat was being built in France. Seems like a long time ago� \”Beach House\” will be 5 years old on April 15th, 2009.
Linda cut her own hair quite short today. Hers is thick curly & grey. Now she looks like she kind of has a short Afro. Practicality over styled for us boaters. I have nearly been driven to chop mine off too. I get horrible snarls at the back of my neck. You would think I sit underwater twisting & twirling it into knots! I love being able to put it up in a pony tale so am holding off extreme measures for now.
\”Nautilus Explorer\” pulled back in the anchorage. When Scott talked to Buzz, the divemaster on the radio he said it was a bit lumpy at the Boiler, but they did 4 dives there & saw mantas. The bums! We asked if we could bring them our trash tomorrow since they will head back to Cabo tomorrow night. They said sure. Nice!
We are running one engine to charge our batteries since the generator won\’t start. Scott just tore apart the salon cushions to get to his storage area behind the long seat & dig out generator spare parts. He emailed the Mastervolt dealer in Florida to get any ideas or suggestions. It may be a bad coolant temperature sender if that means anything to you, (doesn\’t mean much to me, but when Scott tells me I try to look appropriately interested & concerned). In my mind I am already thinking that the worst case is we had a great 3 weeks & we will head back to somewhere that we can get this thing fixed. But when I mentioned that returning to Marina Mazatlan may be necessary, Scott was insulted. \”I will not be defeated by an alarm sender!\” So he is out there now at 11:30 pm with his headlamp, box of spare parts, having actually read the service manual & going at it with great determination. Keep your fingers crossed.
Scott & Cindy