We’re suffering a bit of a delay here in Mazatlan, some of it is the boat yard and some of it us. We were anticipating being out of here by Thanksgiving but it looks like we’ll be lucky if we’re out of here by Christmas.

In kitty news, when we were in Miami we found out that Sam  has hyperthyroidism and needs to take medication for the rest of his kitty life. Unbeknownst to us, his initial dosage was pretty high and he became lethargic and uninterested in eating which gave us quite a scare! We took him to a local vet here in Mazatlan and we’ve adjusted his dosage and he seems to be doing better. Hopefully Sam will be sailing with us for years to come.

In the meantime, we’ve:

• Gone up the mast a few times to inspect the rigging,  wash and grease the mainsail track, repair some deteriorated leather on the rigging, and replace our spreader lights. Unfortunately the screws for the lights are frozen to the spreaders so we’re going to wait to fix that when we have the mast pulled next year.
• Rigged jib back onto the roller furler (we’re leaving staysail off for repairs when we reach La Cruz)
• Removed the sunshades from the porthole windows and screwed in the screens
• Inflated and tested the dinghy for leaks. 3 years in and it’s still good!
• Ran the outboard (it had been sitting idle for six months)
• Multiple dingy trips to the fuel dock to top off our tanks and filled our jerry cans with diesel and gasoline.
• Ran the engine at the dock to further test the prop shaft work we had done over the summer. So far, no leaks!

Active Marine came by last week to ground the prop (there was some electricity discharging from the boat and as a symptom, our zincs were wearing out way faster than they should) and in doing so discovered they made an error in rewiring that resulted in our starter battery being tapped the entire summer and is now completely drained and dead. That sucks.

We still need to:

• Buy and replace our starter battery
• Finish re-varnishing the cap rail where the varnish lifted at the scarf joints (Active Marine is doing this but we’ll probably finish up ourselves as it’s taking too long)
• Replace a broken mainsail car
• Wash and put away our hurricane lines (oversized docklines we use for storing the boat over the summer)
• Remove and store the AC
• Re-install our dodger windows
• Fill our tanks with drinking water
• Provision
• Wash the boat

This time last year: Cruising without refrigeration.