Position Report Dec. 22, 2011

Adventures abound...

Guenevere has just accomplished another of those great things that a Nor'Sea is capable of doing. She did the Baja bash going to weather at 55+ MPH!

With some great help of Ed & Ellen Zacko, we now have her sitting comfortably in Az.

The four of us crossed the boarder into Mexico on December 15 before noon. Ed, driving his diesel truck towing our new Pacific trailer. We cleared in to Mexico and got our Mexico tourist visa. As we were only staying in Mexico less than a week there was no cost for the visa.

The drive down to Guaymas was a bit slower than the same drive without towing, but we expected that. We dropped off the trailer in front of Guenevere in the storage yard and drove over to the Posada del Desierto hotel in San Carlos. WHAT A GREAT PLACE this is! It is far better than the normal sanitized hotel that all look alike. It's the type of place that we look for when traveling to get the real feeling and flare of the area we are visiting. And the price was right.

Photo provided by Ed & Ellen Zacko - http://www.enezacko.com/

The next day, the yard owner wanted to get Guenevere on the trailer as he was departing the following day to spend the holidays with family in another state. So we got started around 9 AM. On the first try to put Guen on the trailer, we found that the bunk board (the one the keel rides on) only allowed us to position the boat in one spot and still allow us to remove the hoisting strap.

We placed Guen on the trailer and than did a test of the tongue weight. For proper towing, you MUST have a tongue weight in relation to the trailer weight. It can not be to much, or to little.

With Guen sitting on the trailer as it would fit, the tongue weight was way to light! Ed or I could actually raise the front of the trailer off the ground. We then spent about 4 hours raising and lowering the boat and moving the trailer back and forth to get the proper balance. We had to cut part of the aft end of the bottom bunk board away to allow the lift to position the boat in the proper place and still be able to remove the strap.

We ended up with about 1,100 pounds. We were looking for something between 800 and 1300.

We, then, started removing items from Guen and stowing them in the truck. All in all, the first work day was about 7.5 hours (4 people). We, then, had a very good dinner, and relaxed for the evening and enjoyed the ambiance at Rosa’s Cantina.

The next day, we lowered the mast. I would love to say it went without a hitch! But nothing ever seems to go just as planned. We had a small snafu when one of the bridal legs that attaches to the boom came free due to me not fastening it with a shackle. NO major damage was incurred, but we all counted body parts and none were missing. The mast was down in place, and we secured it. We then unloaded the rest of the items that we did not want to stay in the boat for the drive back to the USA.

As we removed the rigging Jill was doing an inspection and found a number of broken strands in the forstay rigging. This was not due to any mishap. It was corroded!

Tape on the wire is just to mark it so we could see it clearly.

This was new rigging when we departed and Jill and I are VERY happy we found this now, and not as we were heading out in bad weather! We worked for about 9.5 hours, but were ready to go on Sunday morning. That evening we visited a fine steak house Jill and I discovered when we cruised in this area.

Photo provided by Ed & Ellen Zacko - http://www.enezacko.com/

On Sunday morning, we connected up early, fitted the equalizer hitch and headed out about 0800.

On the drive down, we found a LOT of construction in Hermosillo. We were very concerned about the drive back through there as we also saw many low hanging wires. I'm very happy this turned out to be a non-event. There was a detour around the construction that we did not notice on the way down. We stopped a few times to check the load and insure the tire pressure was good on the truck and trailer. We were stopped at the military check point about 100 miles before the border. They wanted to see inside Guen and it took about an hour before we could continue the trip.

We arrived at the truck route US Customs line at 2:50 PM. At about 5:45 PM we got through! Quite a wait. As we went through we were inspected, but it did not take all that long as they were concerned that it was about ready to snow! Is this Arizona?? After another fuel top up, we finally made it into our storage yard at about 10:00 PM.

All in all, it was a good adventure. The boat prep took less time than I thought it would, but experienced people helping cut the time down considerably. The tow went very well. There was no problems with over the road ability.

Now on to the long process of a refit and some new rigging to replace the faulty wire.

We are WISHING EVERY ONE HAPPY HOLIDAYS! 

Hope you all have a great new year!!

Greg & Jill