La Cruz, Mexico, Paradise Village, and Boat Projects in Exotic Places

 

After a fortuitously uneventful (safe) rounding of Cabo Corrientes, we anchored off La Cruz in Banderas Bay, a few days before our slip reservation started across the bay at Paradise Village Marina.  La Cruz is a classic Pacific Mexico anchorage, often filled with many boats, but with tons of room so they space out well.  The winds pick up regularly every afternoon, so you plan your dinghy rides to town around that.

    The town of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle is a cool little town with a small chandlery, taco shops, coffee shops and a few markets.  By now we know many of the boats in the cruising fleet, and a bunch of us met up for dinner one night.  The crew on Oh Joy II had just had to turn back, a few days in to their Pacific crossing, because their alternator died.  They'd arranged to get it fixed, and while we ate dinner, a car pulled up, a guy picked up their alternator, and drove off!  They'd pick it up after a few days (they hoped!).  What other choice did they have?

A table full of cruisers with margaritas, watch out!

La Cruz also has a great fish market and a weekly farmers market.

Fish market at La Cruz

After a few days in La Cruz, we crossed the bay to take our slip at Paradise Village Marina.  It felt pretty luxurious to be back - internet access, all the fresh water you wanted, palapa beaches and a grocery store right there.  But it wasn't all just Pinacoladaberg, there were BOAT PROJECTS to do!

Boat Project #1 - Upgrade our Solar Array

Brightnest had a 200 watt solar array (2, 100 watt panels).  We wanted to upgrade to as much as we could get installed atop our existing dinghy davit set up, as we didn't want to have a new solar arch installed.  We worked with Marine Vallarta to get one 545 watt panel installed in place of our old 2 100 watt panels.  Solar panels have come down in price over the years, and now are one of the best bangs for your buck to materially increase your standard of living on a cruising boat.   I believe I mentioned before some of the advantages of increased solar that had us excited, but I'll put them here again.

Some of the benefits of increasing our solar capacity

1.  Increased off-grid time.  We don't have the run the diesel engine to charge the battery.  Running the engine to charge the battery often made us want to move the boat, to at least get moving if we were running the diesel.

2.  Increased off-grid time.  We don't have to run the diesel to run our watermaker for a long time.  Battery bank and fresh water level are two of the main constraints to spending a lot of time off-grid.  With our watermaker, we can desalinate salt water to make fresh water, but it takes electricity to do it.  With increased solar, we have the electricity to run it, without having to run the diesel engine.

3.  Reduced fuel consumption and fewer hours on the diesel engine.  Since we don't need to run the engine as much to top off (charge) the battery bank, we don't burn as much fuel, which saves $ and is good for the planet.

4.  We can keep instruments on while at anchor.  I often want to leave many of our instruments on, such as the depth transponder, wind anemometer, and AIS, when at anchor, especially in new, dodgey, or changing conditions.  These all take electricity to run, so having enough solar power generation to keep up with the power draw allows you to keep these on more of the time

5.  New options become available, like the possibility of an extra freezer, air conditioning (!), who knows?

6.  Less stress/worry about inverting DC to AC to run appliances such as the microwave, computers, or power tools.

The power generating result of our upgrade?  We used to generate about 8 to 9 amps at full sun.  In the app's screen below, you can see the watts are at 421, meaning the panel is not at it's full capacity of 545 (due to sun intensity, shading, etc).  Even so, the battery current being absorbed is 31.5 amps.  That's more than 3 times the power we generated before!  Whoohoo!  Jen and I can't wait to test out how this changes our day-to-day living when we head back up in to the Sea of Cortez for weeks at anchor.

Boat Project #2 - Improve Refrigerator air circulation

Brightnest's top loading refrigerator has a divider in the middle, with only one cold plate in the section on the left side.  The right side never got cold - it was more of a cool box that wasn't effective for storing foods that really needed to be refrigerated.  I began to suspect that a hole or holes should be drilled in the divider to allow air flow from the left side (with the cold plate) to the right side (without the cold plate).   Don't ask me why holes weren't drilled in the first place.  I emailed Island Packet about it, and they explained that they didn't do the refrigerator install at the boatyard - they set it up for optionality for the owner to choose how they wanted it.  So maybe the original owners never got to it?

Teal and Linh on SV Basik saw me walking down the dock carrying a large electric saw that another cruiser had kindly loaned me, and hollered "Hey, what are you trying to do?".  I explained my refrigerator project in a 30 second brief.  They loaned me a huge hole saw, and after Jen cleared out the fridge, I went in for the mission.

We repacked the fridge and tested both sides with thermometers.  We'd gotten the old warm side down into the 40's, which was a great improvement!

Boat Project #3 - Replace broken wall fan in the V-berth

This is self explanatory - broken fan, in Mexico, summer coming...fans are important.

Boat Projects #4, 5...etc - diesel engine oil and filters change, etc, etc.  There's always work to do!

Accomplishing these projects made it all the better to be able to relax and have a great time hosting visitors - Jen's sister Tiffany and her fiancé Jeff!  They enjoyed their week of great meals, palapa time on the beach, and exploring. The family time lifted everyone's spirits.

Thusly prepared to embark back across the Sea of Cortez, we knew turquoise waters, secluded beaches, great snorkeling and fishing awaited us.

One of the beautiful Sea of Cortez views to come.

Saying "Adios" for now, to the lovely walkways along the towns of Mexico's Pacific coast.