Log 13 - Lessons Learned from the First Year and Expenses 

Things that Worked

Ventilation: We increased Breila's cabin ventilation prior to leaving, with 4-3" dorade vents, 8 Hella fans, 2 Caframo fans, hatch wind scoop and our ShadeTree sun awnings (which act as a wind tunnel across the deck). We will be buying several more Caframo fans, which we found move the most air for the least power and have no radio interference. This made our cabins comfortable for sleeping in all weather. In mid season, we added an engine exhaust fan to vent the hot air off the engine and out of the boat. In addition to helping keep the boat cooler, this system extends the life of the alternator, as most alternators fail from overheating.

In order to keep ventilation going when the "skeeters" are out you will need good screens. We have Sogeman screens that drape over the hatches and actually are fine enough to keep out the pesky "no see-ums". We also have a double-bed-size mosquito tent that drapes over the entire cockpit for use in really buggy anchorages. 

Canvas: We brought along extra material to make UV covers for boat items along the way. Even if you do not sew, bring extra fabric, as it is very expensive to buy out of the country, and there are good canvas workers available. We now have covers for our dinghy tubes (chaps), outboard, jerry jugs, instruments, life raft, barbecue and a soft bimini. We also made spray curtains with pockets and lifeline gate doors. The list of future canvas projects includes jib sheet bags, winch and windlass covers, dodger window covers and more sun curtains.

Sun Awnings: In addition to dodger and bimini, sun awnings keep the sun off the decks, keeping the cabin cooler, plus making the deck bearable to walk on. We have two Shade Tree awnings, which are wonderful. They are very well engineered, relatively easy to set up and the tunnel shape funnels cooling breezes across the deck. 

Little Miracles:
   Zip lock bags - the sturdier the better, all sizes 
   Plastic vice clamps -1001 uses 
   Baby wipes - for in between showers, plus cleaning feet at dinghy landings 
   Head-mounted flashlights - for hands-free working in tight areas 
   Kayak dry bags - for carrying clean laundry or groceries through wet surf landings 
   Pressure cooker - cooks fast, saving fuel, keeping cabin cooler 

Email
 The most effective, cost-efficient means of communication. We had some difficulty originally as our SGC HF radio did not work well with our on-board email system, so for the first six months we relied exclusively on finding internet cafes for emailing. Once we installed our new ICOM M802 radio, we could use Sailmail, and sent and received email daily from the boat with ease.

Dinghy
 There is a big disparity in what is the right size and type of dinghy; ask any two cruisers and they will give you different answers. We had heard that you should get the biggest dinghy and motor you can handle. That's good advice if you can handle the weight on the boat. We have a 11'-6" roll-up Avon dinghy with a 15hp Yamaha motor. The dinghy is probably a foot longer than we need, but it is nice to have the extra boat sometimes. The motor is perfect, the weight of the 15hp Yamaha is about 70lb, the same weight as some small 2-strokes. In addition, Yamaha is probably the most used outboard throughout the world; it appears on the back of pangas and workboats throughout the world (aka Mariner), so parts are readily available. The most problems we have seen are people who are using Nissan and Mercury engines, and parts are not readily available for these outboards in Mexico. 

A lot of larger cruising boats are using RIB's - inflatables with hard bottoms, some fiberglass and some aluminum. RIB's are great for carrying capacity and are generally drier in the water. The downside is they are quite heavy. We are considering trading up to a RIB.

Good Dinghy Accessories: 
   Wheels - absolutely necessary if your engine is over 2 hp, to pull your dinghy above the tide and surf line. Get the pneumatic ones - the hard ones sink in the sand. The push down/snap into place kind are easier to use than those which require removing and inserting pins.
   Anchor - for snorkel/dive trips and raft-ups.
   Chaps - additional UV protection for your tubes, okay to get made in Mexico Light - so you can see and be seen while returning to your boat after dark 
   Cable and lock - to lock up dinghy, gas tank and motor together for security 
   Motor Lift - If your outboard weighs more than you can easily lift, you will probably want to install a crane to hoist the engine on and off your dinghy. It sure simplifies life. There are several makes available; ours is a Garhauer and we have been very pleased with it as breaks down and can be stowed in a locker when we are underway. 


Water Toys
 We spend a lot of time in the water, swimming, cleaning the boat and ourselves, and keeping cool. We purchased two Stearns inflatable kayaks, which have been terrific fun, and great in anchorages where we may not wish to put the dinghy in the water. They are remarkably resilient, too. We also use our snorkeling gear extensively. Note: bring replacement fin straps with you; the UV gets to them, and they are hard to buy in Mexico. We also have SCUBA gear aboard, and one tank a piece. These are good for getting under the boat in an emergency, but we found we did more snorkeling than diving. We heard from others, that the visibility in the Sea of Cortez in the summers has only been about 10 feet, so snorkeling is better. We do not carry a dive compressor to refill our tanks, and perhaps would be more inclined to dive if we could more readily refill. We also carry "pool noodles", great for floating around on really hot days, and useful when cleaning the waterline - an oft-occurring task.

Anti-Chafe Gear
Chafe is one of the enemies of the cruising sailboat. We brought bags of boat leather to make anti-chafe gear to nip the problem in the bud. We have anti-chafe patches on our lazy jack fittings, spinnaker and whisker pole fittings, and on our mooring lines where they run through fairleads. We have also added patches to our boat canvas wherever it runs across poles, to prevent stretch and wear. Acrylic canvas like Sunbrella and Yachtcrylic is particularly susceptible to abrasion.

Engine Stuff
If you have any mechanical equipment that requires special filters etc, bring them with you. It is not impossible to get it in Mexico, it's just that the time it takes to get them in your hand is way beyond normal. Engine oil filters for common engines are available as they are in the US from similar places like CarQuest or Napa. Of course those places are not here but in just about every major town you can, given enough time, track them down. We have a Mitsubishi engine, as rare as hens' teeth in these parts. It's basically the same engine that Westerbeke uses now, I believe, but still even for gringo land it's rare. So I bought a case of oil filters with us, as they are cheap by the case from somewhere like Napa. What ever engine you have, get all the different filter manufacturer's numbers for all your filters. Somewhere in Mexico there is a filter just like yours gathering dust, if only you can get a cross-reference. Mexico is, like the US and Canada, industrialized and therefore most engine components are available. Again, you may have to wait weeks for the parts to cross Mexico.

To make my oil changes much easier, this year I installed a remote filter. The old filter was fitted to the engine horizontally, so whenever you changed oil, at least a filter load ended up in the bilge. I know, there are lots of recommendations on how to get a horizontal filter off without spilling any. I've tried them all; access to the filter is so bad, and they just don't work for us. So when back in the States last summer I went to Napa and bought the two pieces necessary for the remote kit, one to bolt to the engine (metric) and the other to fit the commonest filter I think in the world. It's the one that fits all GMC/Chevy trucks. Its available everywhere, even easily in Mexico and is very inexpensive. It also added a quart to our oil capacity so that's also a good thing. It's now mounted vertically on the engine room wall and on the last change not a drop was spilled. If you have a filter with poor access or horizontal mount I really recommend this change.

Batteries and Charging
If you like cold drinks (and who doesn't) you will probably have refrigeration. You could write a book about this subject. Many have, the best we found was by Nigel Calder and deals just with refrigeration systems. We modeled our system from his recommendations with one or two exceptions, which I will cover shortly. But what we are talking about here is the power to run the refrigeration. Of course I am dealing with electrically driven, not engine driven, compressors. In the tropics any refrigeration system will be put to the test, particularly generic systems like Adler Barbour. We have 6" of insulation in the freezer and 4" around the refrigerator section. We run just one compressor that was designed by a company that no longer exists. It uses standard Danfoss parts, as do most modular units. It runs the freezer, freezing two plates, and spills over into the fridge. (Big mistake, spillovers don't work that well even though our unit was designed for it.) Why are we still talking fridges in the Battery section, well the refrigeration is without doubt the biggest power hog on the boat. We use between 70 and 100 amps per day depending how hard we want to freeze things. To keep the freezer at 20 deg F in Zihuatanejo, where it was 95+ each day, took over 100 amps.

To replenish that, we have 4 solar panels, with a total output of 200 watts. Peak output assuming they faced the sun perfectly would 16 amps. However, they never face the sun at the perfect angle, are often in a shadow of something on the boat, so the best you can expect is about 50% efficiency. That gives us about 8 amps for about 8-9 hrs a day. In reality we have seen higher numbers at any time but in a 24 hr period we are always about 10 amps down on the day. So every few days we have to run the engine to charge the batteries to full. The above amps don't take into account all the other demands we have on the batteries. Lights, radios, stereo and fans all use valuable amps.
 
We have a 400-amp/hr system for the house batteries, totally independent from the engine battery. The house batteries are AGM's (Agglomerated glass matt). They are similar to Gel batteries except that they will take much higher charge rates and have more deep cycle capacity. They are relatively new for boating, having been around for years in the aviation industry. (They were designed for fighter planes as they can take a bullet thru them and still give volts and amps.) We have had them for 4 years, they seem to be holding up well to the rigors of cruising, they still take a healthy charge and discharge evenly. We charge them by solar panels, a wind generator and the engine alternator.

The charging for all sources goes thru a "battery combiner"; all power goes to the unit which is nothing more than a electronic switch which sends power to the house and engine batteries as the charge voltage changes. It allows both banks to remain fully charged at all times and separates them when the charge is not present. It's automatic and better than diodes as the voltage drop across it is negligible compared to the 0.5 volts loss thru a diode. The solar and wind generator are also controlled by a 25 amp capacity controller made by Flex Charge (a great, simple unit), which also feeds to the combiner.

The alternator is the biggest Balmar we can fit on the engine. It's 110 amp, rated at a very low rpm cut in, so we don't have to run the engine at high rpm's just to charge. It is externally controlled by a Balmar regulator that has 4 steps to it. It allows the engine to warm up for 1 ½ min's before putting load on the alternator, then ramps up to about 14.4 volts (resettable) and then cuts back to 13.8 for absorption and finally maintains if it is running all day. To protect the alternator from the heat generated when pulling big amps, we added a temperature sensor that bolts to the alt case. When the temp rises above safe limits, it lets the controller know and it changes the alternator field voltage and the amps are cut almost in half until it cools down again. This only takes a few minutes as the alt has dual internal fans. The only problem with the system is keeping perfect tension on the belt; we can only run a 3/8" belt as the engine water pump is sized for that. High output alternators take lots of horsepower and the small belts don't like it. So if you change to a larger alternator, buy absolutely the best belts you can get your hands on. Ours are Gates Blue Stripe, $9 each and we go thru one every 400 hrs running. Bring lots of any belts you need with you. You can get Gates belts here but they are twice the price of stateside. South from Mexico, who knows if you can get them. People using locally supplied belts complain of extremely short life spans.

Finally on charging is our wind generator. We have a small diameter unit manufactured in England by a company called Rutland. It has 36" diameter blades (6). It is very quiet; everyone who sees it comments on how quiet it is compared to, say, the Wasp three blade of the same diameter. It has a fairly high cut in wind speed, you get nothing to speak of below 8 knots of wind. There were days in Zihuatanejo when we had bright sunny days and 15-knot winds in the bay day and night, and on those days we were totally balanced with power. Would I buy one again? Well, this is the second one I have had on a boat. If I was only going to be in Mexico I would say don't bother and buy more solar panels, but in high northern and low southern climates it comes into use as the sun is not as reliable. An alternative to the small blade wind generators would be the large blade (typically 2) units, their disadvantage is that you have to hang them in your rigging when anchored and cannot use them when underway. They give more power for the same wind but the thought of that huge windmill flying in the rigging in 35kn winds scares me to death.

In summary, get the biggest and best batteries you can afford (and fit). Get a good quality high output alternator with spare parts including diode sets. (You can get alternators rebuilt anywhere if you have the parts.) Add a good alternator controller and all the solar panels you can reasonably fit on the boat without them getting in the way. Try to mount them so that you are not a slave to them. We see people all the time coming out of their cockpits in the blazing sun to make microscopic adjustments, while we mount ours and forget them!

Getting boat parts from the States is also possible but often expensive. Duty runs anywhere from 0-35%. Downwind Marine of San Diego seems to be the fastest route to get parts to the west coast of Mexico. Many cruisers leave a credit card number with them on file for just such occasions. 

Water Maker 
The biggest question here is if you need one or not. We have one water tank with 75 imp. gallon capacity. That's not a bad supply, but it's all in one tank, and if we get contaminated water it's all shot. Potable water is not as easily available in Mexico as it is in the states. Most fuel docks don't have it, and when they do you could not be sure about drinking it. Marinas do have water, but marinas are few and far between and very expensive, with few exceptions. So what do most people do? Many have a small water maker just for drinking water and go very sparingly between water sources, or buy 5 gallon water bottles and fill their tanks that way. Buying water is easy just about everywhere in Mexico, but you do have to schlep the 40 pound bottles to and from the boat. It's not expensive either compared to the US, a 5 gallon bottle (same as the drinking fountain bottles) costs about $1.20. All Mexican households get their drinking water this way, and it is as pure as anything you get stateside.

The other option is a water maker big enough to supply all your needs; for us that meant something that can produce about 70 gallons per week. Now that's not much based on a 
12 hr day, less than a gallon an hour. But to make water that way is not efficient. We use an engine driven system that is rated at 400 gallons/day. That's 16 gallons per hour. In the warm Mexican waters we have seen as much as 20 gallons per hour, so we only need to run the water maker a few times per week and this is always done in combination with battery charging. The good news here is that the engine gets a workout as the alternator and water maker together pull about 8 horsepower. Our water maker is an HRO system and we have been very happy with it. We also added an ultra-violet filter that filters all product water and kills just about anything that is remaining after the reverse osmosis process. The parts per million of particulates in our unit is very low, better than most other people we have talked to, and we are always assured that we have 20 gallons of fresh water in a new tank we installed, before the product water spills over into our main tank. What is critical to these units is keeping the pre-filters clean and not letting any water treated with chlorine touch the membranes. If the unit is not going to be used regularly (at least every 5 days) the unit must be" pickled", a process of running sodium metabisulphate through the system. This prevents bacteria from growing in the system. Also required occasionally is a cleaning cycle with an alkaline cleaner, this removes growth such as barnacles and oil from the system. It's not that complicated and if maintained, it gives you freedom to stay away from marinas and travel slowly through deserted anchorages.

If I had it to do over again, I would probably have fitted a "Spectra" water maker. These are reverse osmosis also but not engine driven. It is an electrical system that now has a unit that produces 16 gallons per hour using 16 amps at 12 volts - a lot of power, but very efficient as water makers go. What makes it a better choice for me would be the ease of installation. Engine driven units take lots of room in the engine room and require special pulleys to be made and mounted on the engine. Belt tension is another issue; too much and you can destroy bearings in the engine and the pump, too little and you eat up belts and create a lot of heat and black stuff in the engine room.

A water maker is an expensive option, but one to consider seriously. There are parts of the world where water is very scarce; I can remember paying $0.25/gallon for water in the Caribbean 20 years ago, and it's quality is always suspect. We have never suffered from "turista", partly because we drink lots of our own, pure water!

Provisioning and Socializing 
We found that we socialize a lot differently while cruising than we did while land based. We entertain in a much more relaxed way, foregoing the extensive multi-course dinners of yore for sundowners with friends in the cockpit. We are getting much better at using local products and produce, replacing our northern climate cuisine with hot weather alternatives. You can get almost any food product in Mexico that you can in the states or Canada, although not all products will be available in all areas, and sometimes the cost is prohibitively high. We eat a lot more fish and seafood in Mexico, in keeping with coastal living. We generally find we eat two meals a day - a late breakfast and then either dinner or a substantial amount of nibblies at cocktail hour. When returning from the states next time, I will stock up on canned tomatoes (not available in Mexico, for some reason), all-in-one pancake mix, good olives, feta cheese, good strong coffee beans, quick-cook grain and soup mixes. As we are often quickly throwing together a party, I will haunt the Mediterranean delis stateside for canned and quick-cook appetizers, like dolmades, humous mix, falafel mix, and tabbouli mix. 

I have found glass bottles better than plastic bottles. Glass seems stronger; the only things that leaked or split in my bilge were in plastic bottles (honey - yuck!). So far, no glass bottles have broken on the boat. Mexican aluminum cans are much more fragile than those stateside, so they can easily rupture, especially with the gentle massaging they get in the bilges while underway. We prefer bottled beer, although you do have to deal the returning the empties.

Local produce is delicious and inexpensive. It is seasonal, and harvested closer to ripeness than we are used to, so does not last as long. We bought smaller quantities and ate them quickly. Lots of good storage containers keep things fresh in your fridge. Cruisers trade boat cards often. It is a great way to introduce yourself, and to remember someone you met three anchorages ago but whose name escapes you. We paste them in a Guest Book, which our visitors also sign.