Copper Canyon.

Last Thursday after spending a night in small hotel in Mazatlan, we left via bus for the Copper Canyon.  Traveling with us is Sea Otter's crew, Mike, Julie and Ben along with Antipodes crew, Randy, Nancy and Adam.

Here is Sam playing with Julie on our way to Los Mochis

Prior to catching the bus we decided we would eat at McDonald's for the first time while here.  Ugh. Not only crap food but what an ordeal.  No one spoke English, one person at the register with a crowd of people behind us and it is amazingly hard to order food in Mexico.  All kinds of new words were being thrown at poor Jen.  People were coming up and trying to help us.  Again the friendliness of the Mexican people is amazing.  The gal behind the counter had our order so screwed up, we only got enough food for three.  Oh well.  Our bad.  

The bus ride was OK.  We went to the wrong bus station and once we realized our error, it was too late to catch the First Class bus so we made do with Second Class. A bit better than Greyhound is how I would describe it.  The roads were all smooth and fast.  Security check point about half way had ALL the adult males get out and they went through random bags looking for drugs.  The checkpoint had machineguns and KITTENS!  All the kids got off the bus.  Once back aboard it took another 3 hours and we were in Los Mochis.  From there we had catch a bus to El Fuerte.  Thankfully, my wife's ever expanding Spanish speaking skills saved the day and we managed to find the next bus station.  15 minute walk later and we got on another bus that was older but still comfortable. This bus stopped frequently and after 2 hours or so we rolled into El Fuerte. 

Our host Chaz picked us up in the hotel's van.  Chaz runs a small place on the river that runs through El Fuerte. Beautiful family run hotel. Geckos on the ceiling and a great view of the river.  

Spent two days there and saw the town along with ancient Indian petroglyphs that are along the river.

A view from the fort located right next to our hotel

The "tour boats" that we took to see the petroglyphs.  Ours is the far one.  Plastic chairs.

Rolling down the river

Sam and Julie 

Hard to get a good shot of these

Hitler "borrowed" this one. 

The next morning we got up and headed for the train station. 

I hear the train acoming!

Being this is Mexico and all, you can hang out the doors between the cars and take in the sights.

The train has a bunch of switchbacks and tunnels. 87 tunnels actually. I really enjoyed the train.

We stayed in a little town called Posada Barranca with the Diaz family.  They run a small hotel that consists of a 6 small cottages all heated with fireplaces. It gets cold up here in the canyon area.  Lower 40s at night.  Sweaters were required and the beds had about 50 blankets on them.

We took our meals in the family house and the food was outstanding. Jen got to practice her Spanish constantly as NO ONE spoke English. She is getting really good.  Amazing woman my wife.  Everyone relied on her to translate.  

The Diaz place is crawling with animals. Baby pigs, horses, and about one thousand dogs.  Much to Sam's delight, they even had puppies. 

She was filthy the entire time we stayed here.  Showers were a trickle at best and she played in the dirt with the puppies a lot.  Such a country girl. 

Julie and Jen doing laundry the old fashion way.  I also helped. 

Scrub board built into the concrete

Nancy, Julie and Jen made friends with ladies making us breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Julie even got to learn how to make authentic tortillas. 

Samey helped do the dishes. 

Everyone but me went on a 2 hour horseback ride to the canyon lip. Sam shared a horse.  The white one. Ben had his own.  Good times. I didn't go. I don't care for horses and they don't like me.

I did go on an ATV though. That is my kind of horse power. Ben and I shared one while Max had Easton on his.  

Me and my buddy JC!  Take a look at his helmet in the following picture!

No problems here!  Mexico, how I love thee!

Getting schooled...in Spanish.  We had no idea what he was saying.  What could happen?  Driving a machine along cliffs....no problem.

Taking a breather

Ben took this one and the two following 

We also went zip lining. Mexico has some crazy zip lines. One of them was 1.5 km, that's right 1.5 kilometers long. Next week they open one that is 2 km long. 

There are 7 lines and you have to walk between them. Sometimes you have to cross a suspension bridge. Like right out of Indiana Jones. Scary!  I mean hands sweating, heart pounding scary.  Damn bridge is swaying and it is just nuts. Never ever could you have this in the USA. 

You slip, you fall. Hundreds of feet.  You do have safety line but....I don't know. Hard to convey the scariness of it. I loved it!

 The zip lines are great also.  You take off from the ledge and immediately the ground drops away a thousand feet. On the long line we hit 60 mph. So we're told.

Did I mention the Mexico has a bunch of dogs?  They do. Everywhere. Especially up here in the mountains. Some are family pets but many more are just....around. Not threatening and actually quite friendly. But just so many of them.

This dog I named Goblin. She followed us everywhere. We walk up to the hotel overlooking the canyon, Goblin followed us.  We have a drink and a snack, come out the door, Goblin is waiting for us.  Then while walking home, Goblin would run ahead and warn the other dogs to stay away from us. We were hers. We all loved her and would have taken her home but I think she would be happier running the show in her native Mexico. 

Here are pictures of Goblin

So friendly. So cute. 

The front porch of our cottage. Goblin and Sam. She pronounced her name Gobble-Lynn!  Lol!

The dirtiest damn dog in town and yet was the only dog allowed in the house.  Not our cottage though.  Poor Goblin never came in either.  

The hotel Mirador.  Fancy. We stopped in for a drink only. One night cost the same as 3 at the Diaz place. 

After about three days, we loaded up the vans and left for Creel.  We stopped at a couple of places before we got there. 

The rock formations were made by lava we are told. 

We left the Sand Dollar crew in Creel and headed on the train for Chihuahua. 6 hour train ride. Train was late getting into the station so we finally left at 430 in the pm instead 3. 

The train was spectacular. Sun setting with the train pulling us along through sun drenched vistas...had to be there. I'm no photographer but with the light from the sun and the scenery, you can't go wrong.

Can go right out the back door. No caboose. No lock.

Love this one.

We spent two days in Chihuahua and found it to be a lovely town. Great place. Heard a lot of scary stories about the city but we enjoyed it. 

Fountain outside of the church. 

Cathedral of Chihuahua

The Catholics sure can build some churches.

We also saw General Fransisco "Pancho" Villa's house and the car he was gunned down in way back in 1923. 

Love this poster. 

I am writing this blog on the bus right and will be able to post. Wicked fast internet in Mexico...on a bus.  On the boat...crap internet. Go figure. 

This is our bus that we got on tonight-

We caught the 1015pm bus and will be on this sucker till 1000am. The spare driver sleeps in a special compartment and they switch when we get into Durango, Mexico.  Two bathrooms and touch screens for every seat, all 24 of them.  You can lay your seat almost flat. Of course the roads are pretty bad traveling down through the center of Mexico.  Sam slept almost 9 hours though.  Go Team Appa!

I'm anxious to see Appa and how the work is coming along. JC checked on her and took some pictures. 

First layers of mat around the rudder tube. 

Rick also tightened the keel bolts.  CSR did this in June last year. Suppose to have 250ft/lbs on each bolt. Mine?  80!  What the hell!?  So they are all tightened and we should be good to go. Not impressed with CSR. 

Going to sleep now. More after I get back to Appa. 

The haul out. Part dos.

Boat projects. They say that cruising your boat is basically just fixing your boat in tropical places. That about sums it up. While I do get satisfaction from getting a job completed, you have to know that DOING the job is a complete pain in the ass.  Especially when we all live aboard.  I have to move a bunch of stuff to get to the tools and then I have to move that stuff to do the job.  While doing the job, I find other things that need to be done as I am exposing areas that might hide some other problem or problems.
I watch for things to go wrong on our boat.  Always.  And I miss stuff. Or put it off. We are using her hard and things can go wrong.  I just hate finding a stray bolt on deck.  Is this bolt the one thing that is holding the rigging up?  Could be.  Probably not but it shouldn't be on the damn deck that is for sure.  So it goes.
While heading up to Mazatlan, I noticed the part holding the boom to the mast was wiggling.  I also noticed that the winch we use to hoist the main sail was loose.  Way loose.  Posted about the winch getting fixed.  Took all day.  The wiggling boom part again took all damn day and actually is not fixed yet.  I am out of bolts and spent most of the day tracking down a bolt store here. They actually have stores that just sell bolts.  Called Tornelli.  You don't go rummage around. You step up to the counter and tell them what you want. If your Spanish is like mine, you draw a picture. 

The bolts that were in those holes were not tightening the boom to the mast. However they wouldn't come out either.  Corrosion. Stainless steel and aluminum corrode together and make it almost impossible to get them apart. Takes years but it does happen. 

This is the part that the boom bolts onto and then the whole deal goes on the mast. 

See the boxes behind the aluminum part?  Never ever put cardboard boxes in cabin of your boat.  Cockroaches live in the cardboard and then get in your boat.  They fly also.  And crawl up lines to get onboard. Constant fight against them. 

I also fixed the macerator.  Again.  God what an awful job. The macerator sucks the poop out of our holding tank and chews it up and then ejects it overboard when we are out side of the marinas. While leaving La Cruz, I powered up the macerator and it whined for a bit and then stopped. 15 gallons of poop are now going to be traveling with us all the mazaltan. Got to Mazaltan and took the pump apart and found a washer in the blades. A washer. As in this...

I'll spare you the actual washer as it is much too disgusting. 

That leaves me with this quote for my favorite movie Eurotrip...

So please...enlighten me.  Who's eating f****** washers?!

I imagine the washer fell in down the install or something. I doubt we ate a washer and passed it. Anyway rebuilt the macerator and works like a charm now.

So boom fixed, macerator fixed, winch fixed. 

We have been having some movement in the rudder ever since we hit a big wave off of California. Went to the boatyard here in Mazatlan and hauled out Appa. That is twice in Mexico. Maybe a record. The cost is half of Puerto Vallarta. 

Cool picture eh?

Female travel lift operator. Very professional and good.  

Here is the rudder out of the boat. The shiny bit is solid stainless steel.  We are going to extend that part by two feet and tie it into the seats in the helm station. Bottom line...making it stronger. Much stronger. 

The stainless steel rudder part comes up through here. Here is where I noticed the movement. Nothing dangerous.  Yet.  Needs to be done.  Evidently this is a common problem on our model of boat I recently found out.  The designer Ed Dubois, an Englishman, want to have the rudder stock go up and tie into the seats like I am going to have done.  Wauquiez said no, they wanted more storage space.  So here I am in Mexico getting it fixed. This is AFTER one of the premier boatyards in Seattle gave the whole rudder assembly a clean bill of health just prior to us leaving. 

In addition to that stock getting longer, I am having them fabricate an emergency tiller system that will actual work.  I'll spare you the babble on that.

Benjamin working with the sabersaw to get the nylon bearing out.  The bearing was out of round by a bunch. Hence the shaking.  Roberto is taping the waterline for new bottom paint. 

We are also going to reinforce the support webbing that holds the rudder tube in place. 

The dripless shaft system is getting overhauled also and I am having a new muffler fabricated as the old one is about done.

See that green peeking out of the corner of Pedro's truck?  We are getting new covers made for the cushions. Just new covers. Wait to you see what we picked out.

While all the boat work is going on, we are leaving on a trip.  This is all our crap that we unloaded off the boat.  We are going to spend 7 days in Copper Copper.  Here is a photo of the train 

I think I blogged about this. If not google Copper Canyon Mexico and train.  We are taking the train from the coast to way inland.  All the way to Chihauhau. Pancho Villa died there.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa in case you don't know who he is.

So lots going on. We are doing good and having fun.  Lots of work but before you know it, we will be back in Seattle going through the motions like everyone else.  

Jen's mom left after one week with us. Windy as hell the whole time. And kinda cool.  We actually are using covers now whilst sleeping. 

Seems like when parents come to visit the weather gets crappy. My parents came for a visit and it rained the whole time. 

Love this picture!  Saying goodbye to Grandma!  We love you!