The plan was to get an early start this morning, so what did Ouest do, slept until eight-thirty. Oh well. We finally upped anchor and left Tenacatita. We pointed the bow north again and motored out in calm seas and four knots of wind to Chamela. It was an uneventful morning. Just the way we like it. Lowe napped and Ouest played quietly.

Of course the calm onboard couldn’t last forever. I mean, we were motoring a whole thirty miles, something had to go wrong. We were all up front when we heard a loud knock. I scooped up Ouest, ran to the back, took a quick look over the side and confirmed we had both water flow and prop wash. So the knock wasn’t the shaft coupler for a change. Good. Down inside a quick glance at the instruments showed normal readings for cooling water temperature and oil pressure. Good. Nothing obviously wrong so far. Grab the engine compartment door and lift. Poof, nothing but a cloud of smoke.

“Um, Ali, we’ve got a problem.”

I throttled the engine down and started waving away the smoke. It was a full minute before I could see anything. And fortunately what I found wasn’t as scary as the smoke would have led me to believe. The belt for the refrigeration compressor had somehow come off, throwing black rubber all over the compartment and smoking like a Taco Bell employee on break.

Nothing else appeared to be wrong, the belt was already off (at that point I figured it had broken), and the engine was fine, so on we went.

Now the problem of course is… Guess. Right. We don’t have an extra belt. No, I’ve got no idea why we only have one. Both Ali and I can remember in specific detail buying this belt, because we had to go back to the store twice to get the right one. One. Who buys one belt? We do. Now we’ve got until about two o’clock tomorrow before the fridge gets too warm and everything inside starts going bad.

This afternoon we went ashore and showed the belt to the first guy we came across. He indicated that there was a place right up in town that would have it. We started walking to town but it was too hot and too far so we gave up, circled back, and sat down for beer and fish tacos instead. Tomorrow is another day.

I should mention that when I say fish tacos I don’t really mean fish tacos in the traditional sense. Along the mainland coast you don’t find fish tacos on a lot of menus. Instead I mean a filet of grilled fish served with rice, vegetables, hot sauce, and a big pile of tortillas. Fish tacos.

Sea sickness. We’ve been giving Ouest between a quarter and a half of a dramamine pill in her juice before we head out on any passage lately and we haven’t had any sickness. As for Lowe, he seems to have been born for the sea. He doesn’t care a bit and never seems sick in the least. I’ve been taking a pill before most passages as well. Mainly because I seem to spend so much time with my head down in the engine compartment. Nothing will make you sick faster than climbing into a hot engine compartment on a rolling boat. Ali has been fine with nothing.

Ouest has never seen a trampoline before and boy was she nervous. She didn’t seem to trust that it would hold her and insisted on crawling.