And a full lunar eclipse to boot

Engine room fun!

Cleaning the bilge with a cutoff
coke bottle as a scoop

Last night’s eclipse was spectacular, with its blood orange hue, flanked by onlooking stars, Castor and Pollux. And as January flies by, the glamorous life of the Guaymas dirt yard holds us here, passing another moon cycle on the hard. It’s as if we are mesmerized, perhaps captivated by the long walk to the bathroom, the barking dogs or just our nice neighbors (who are splashing one by one). Or maybe it’s like a spell we haven’t determined the best way to break. Any way you look at it, we are doing well and enjoying our time in the yard working on our many boat projects. Pura Vida is looking good.

Battleship gray - primer status

Alejandro David and Aldo - previous color scheme thankfully not ours

Sun and sanding dust protection, nice and toasty

After :TSP, primer and paint -  celebrating
seemingly small accomplishments

Before: laying over the engine to
access thru hulls - boat yoga for both

Mike, AKA Mr. Thru Hull removing
one - loving our bunny suit

Glassing over - one less thru hull to 'manage'

While we wish we could report amazing whale sightings or scenic extravaganzas, this boring post let's you know we're alive and kicking. Our hull painting project is fully underway by Aldo, Alejandro and Alejandro – sanding, priming, repriming as needed, prepping and ultimately, there will be painting and trim work completed. Mañana is the operative word as to when they’ll be done and then we can schedule our splash. As we learned long ago, mañana does not mean tomorrow, it just doesn’t mean today.

Dinosaurius show at Las Playitas

We’ve been enjoying time with various friends and doing our daily walks. We haven’t gone to the dinosaur show, but I suppose we could. Today’s sign says ‘HOY 2x1’ – twofer today. Might be too scary for us, though.

We are constantly on the quest to find boat parts here - or have them made. There’s always a story or two that ensues when one or both of us venture out. We are always thankful for having access to our car to facilitate those exploratory excursions.

Turning on more friends to our favorite seafood coctel restaurant

Mixing elbows - old and new, thanks Luis!

Custom made step, hand cut slots

Trimming out our new step

Luis' artwork - our new wind generator bracket

Off balance but on their way

Sewing new outboard cover

Shrimp boats on our morning walk to the naval base

Doesn't square meat look appetizing?

We are definitely helping the local economy. The local wood shop has custom cut our two new outboard engine holders, they hand cut the slots in our entry step and crafted another step for our V-berth cabin. Our favorite engineer, Luis, made our new mixing elbow and the mounting  bracket for our wind generator, which we will finally be installing after 8 years of boat ownership. The wind generator will serve as another source of power to complement the new batteries.

The grand variety of vehicles we follow down the road remind us to keep our distance and demonstrate where the pot holes and topes (speed humps) are. This little truck had a very heavy load with a full cab and three guys in back holding 2 barrels of water sloshing about the bed. Well, we hope it was water. In spite of their flat, they drove on. Marina police are another common siting in this large port town as well as police trucks with gun-toting peacekeepers.

And speaking of driving around, when I bought gas this week, I wasn’t quick enough to snap a pic of the uniformed young lady at the Red Flecha fuel station filling a 2 liter coke bottle with gas. She kept her long painted fingernails out of the fuel spray. Nice work!

I’ve documented many of our projects with photos, which, while boring to some, show our progress!

The reward after a long work day