Friday, December 14, 2012

La Cruz


We had a fun, productive visit within Banderas Bay last week.  We only had time to visit La Cruz, a sleepy fishing village with a live music scene, as their marina was our destination. But we plan to make Banderas Bay our "home base" for early 2013, and will have more time visiting Yelapa, Puerto and Nuevo Vallarta, Bucerias, Sayulita, and Punta de Mita.   We passed by Punta de Mita on the north, and headed straight for La Cruz.  We planned to stay 2-3 days to mostly take care of Shindig maintenance, with some local cuisine, provisioning and laundry to be done.  As we arrived, we admired the gleaming boats in the marina as well as thatched hut roof of the Sky Bar on top of La Cruz Yacht club.  Rob was approached within 5 minutes by different boat resources, asking how they could help.  The marina staff, especially Blanco, was super accommodating, helping with hair appointments, directions, and even programming our Mexican phone to English menus.  Below is Rob's update on some of the maintenance work.  Nancy was happy to have clean laundry, find some good taco stands, and chat with locals who have made La Cruz their winter home.  La Cruz is known for its live music scene, and she was invited to play honky-tonk piano with a pick up band on Monday.  She has not accepted, yet.   

Marina La Cruz - great place to stand up paddleboard

Pretty view of marina boats.  Shindig is 2nd boat on left, with the bow in.


Nancy(very happy) with bag of clean, folded laundry
(Mostly Towels!)
 
The engine oil change went smoothy.  Shindig had motored 157 hours since we left San Francisco Bay on 9/15/2012.
2216 hours

The fuel filter change didn't go as smoothy.  The swap of the primary and secondary filter went fine but I didn't adequately prime the secondary filter and got air into the injector lines.  I now know how to bleed the entire system from one end to the other.  I call it, "polishing your engine with diesel fuel".  It is a mess.  The clean up was a pain but everything went back together fine and "Perky" is purring.

Transmission oil changed.  Check.

Our refrigeration system has been working overtime on this trip.  We have a fridge and freezer that is kept cool with an 1/2 HP DC motor belted to compressor.  In El Cid, Mazatlan, I found a freon leak and added 1 kilo of refrigerant.    In La Cruz we ran out again.  Fortunately I was able to locate more refrigerant 10 kilometers away in Bucerias.  The system is recharged and I have ordered a diagnostic tool (sniffer) to help find the leak.  Stay tuned......  There could be a cold beer emergency.

I pulled the brushes out of the refrigeration motor to size up some spares and also cleaned out all the brush dust with a little shop vac I have onboard.



Refrigeration Brush (one of two)



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