SailSavannah | July 2009

	July 1-31, 2009 Playa del Coco, Costa Rica 10 33.60N 85 41.59W I am not getting lazy here. Really. This has just been a month in limbo for us. After our troubles with the generator fuel pump, our computer decided to quit working as well. It had been having difficulty with its charging system for a while. Then the power plug shorted out, causing our 12v car adapter to die. Well, technically it blew the internal fuse inside the car charger. But then I thought that I had fixed the problem, so I by-passed the fuse and, zzzt! I fried the charger. The short was still somewhere inside the power plug housing and would blow the power each time we plugged it in. We decided to pull off all our important data on to the flash drive while we still had juice in the battery. That is the end of our Dell laptop. It lasted over 8 years, which is pretty good under any circumstances. The marine environment is notorious for eating laptops, most of them last only 2-3 years before developing serious problems. That left us without a “real” computer, having to pull out the old IBM laptop that we had kept just incase. It still works, but we couldn’t load many of the programs that we use to create the web. Thus the long delay in updating this site. That being said, we spent the first half of July planning a return trip to the states for Jodie. We weren’t having any luck getting in touch with the local Northern Lights supplier to get the generator fuel pump and that coupled with the high cost of replacing our computer (computers cost two to three times what they do in the states, for less computer, even though they all come from Japan or Taiwan) made us decide a trip home was our best bet. Also, we had a list of needed and nice to have boat parts that we have been compiling over the last year that would be nice to pickup. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to get items, any item, once you leave the states. So, using the old IBM, we had items shipped to my sisters home in Northern California where Jodie would stay during her visit. Logan and I stayed with Savannah, moving from Playa del Coco to Playa Hermosa (just around the corner) for aesthetic reasons. Hermosa is less crowded from a boaters perspective and the beach is a little nicer with more white sand. Before Jodie left, we practiced having me anchor solo. Still it was odd moving the boat by myself. Heck, just being by myself was odd. I still had Logan to talk with and he was quite needy without Jodie being there. A couple other cruisers came in during the week. Mandy who we spent time with in Fonseca and Sidewinder from Bahia del Sol. They gave me some much needed company and I escorted them around the area, even going with them as they checked into the country. For some reason, they had to go to Customs out by the airport. I think the agent forgot something when he came to the Port Captains office, either a form or his stamp. So we all got on the bus and they got off at Customs while I continued on to Liberia. There was some cheap cat litter that I was supposed to get if I got up to Liberia while Jodie was gone. Of course, I went to the wrong store and got the wrong litter. I am pretty much worthless without Jodie around. Dave and Suzi from Sidewinder brought over some pictures from us crossing the bar when we left Bahia del Sol in El Salvador: Jodie got back without incident. Meaning the customs guy didn’t charge her for bringing in all our booty from the states. It was great to have her back. I repaired the generator and after clearing the air out of the fuel lines, she fired right up. But there still seems to be a problem. She doesn’t have the same amount of torque that she used to have before the pump failure. We used to get 40 amps from the generator and now she still begins to bog down from the load at 30 amps. I’m going to have to re-check the air filter and get some feeler gauges to adjust the valves. Both the primary and secondary fuel filters are brand new, replaced before I knew the problem with the pump. Whatever the problem is, it has to be air or fuel related. Fun. The bright side is, we can now make water. We just can’t do anything else while we are doing it, like charge the batteries. We’ve been in the Playa del Coco area for over a month now and it is time to go. We’ll be heading to Tamarindo to do some surfing. Then further south to round the point and spend some time around the Puntarenas region.

July 1-31, 2009
Playa del Coco, Costa Rica

10 33.60N 85 41.59W

I am not getting lazy here. Really. This has just been a month in limbo for us. After our troubles with the generator fuel pump, our computer decided to quit working as well. It had been having difficulty with its charging system for a while. Then the power plug shorted out, causing our 12v car adapter to die. Well, technically it blew the internal fuse inside the car charger. But then I thought that I had fixed the problem, so I by-passed the fuse and, zzzt! I fried the charger. The short was still somewhere inside the power plug housing and would blow the power each time we plugged it in. We decided to pull off all our important data on to the flash drive while we still had juice in the battery. That is the end of our Dell laptop. It lasted over 8 years, which is pretty good under any circumstances. The marine environment is notorious for eating laptops, most of them last only 2-3 years before developing serious problems.

That left us without a “real” computer, having to pull out the old IBM laptop that we had kept just incase. It still works, but we couldn’t load many of the programs that we use to create the web. Thus the long delay in updating this site.

That being said, we spent the first half of July planning a return trip to the states for Jodie. We weren’t having any luck getting in touch with the local Northern Lights supplier to get the generator fuel pump and that coupled with the high cost of replacing our computer (computers cost two to three times what they do in the states, for less computer, even though they all come from Japan or Taiwan) made us decide a trip home was our best bet. Also, we had a list of needed and nice to have boat parts that we have been compiling over the last year that would be nice to pickup. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to get items, any item, once you leave the states. So, using the old IBM, we had items shipped to my sisters home in Northern California where Jodie would stay during her visit.

Logan and I stayed with Savannah, moving from Playa del Coco to Playa Hermosa (just around the corner) for aesthetic reasons. Hermosa is less crowded from a boaters perspective and the beach is a little nicer with more white sand. Before Jodie left, we practiced having me anchor solo. Still it was odd moving the boat by myself. Heck, just being by myself was odd. I still had Logan to talk with and he was quite needy without Jodie being there.

A couple other cruisers came in during the week. Mandy who we spent time with in Fonseca and Sidewinder from Bahia del Sol. They gave me some much needed company and I escorted them around the area, even going with them as they checked into the country. For some reason, they had to go to Customs out by the airport. I think the agent forgot something when he came to the Port Captains office, either a form or his stamp. So we all got on the bus and they got off at Customs while I continued on to Liberia. There was some cheap cat litter that I was supposed to get if I got up to Liberia while Jodie was gone. Of course, I went to the wrong store and got the wrong litter. I am pretty much worthless without Jodie around.

Dave and Suzi from Sidewinder brought over some pictures from us crossing the bar when we left Bahia del Sol in El Salvador:

Jodie got back without incident. Meaning the customs guy didn’t charge her for bringing in all our booty from the states. It was great to have her back.

I repaired the generator and after clearing the air out of the fuel lines, she fired right up. But there still seems to be a problem. She doesn’t have the same amount of torque that she used to have before the pump failure. We used to get 40 amps from the generator and now she still begins to bog down from the load at 30 amps. I’m going to have to re-check the air filter and get some feeler gauges to adjust the valves. Both the primary and secondary fuel filters are brand new, replaced before I knew the problem with the pump. Whatever the problem is, it has to be air or fuel related. Fun. The bright side is, we can now make water. We just can’t do anything else while we are doing it, like charge the batteries.

We’ve been in the Playa del Coco area for over a month now and it is time to go. We’ll be heading to Tamarindo to do some surfing. Then further south to round the point and spend some time around the Puntarenas region.