So I isolated the starter battery today and went to fire up the engine. Nothing. That battery, despite reading 12.2v couldn’t even begin to turn the engine over. Normally this would be evident easily enough because the starter battery and the house batteries should be isolated from each other, joined by a voltage relay, but that relay stopped working a while back and we’ve just had the whole system piggy-backed since then. So obviously finding this out was a big help. I disconnected the starter battery from the whole system, connected the starter to the house bank, and we were back in business. Of course I’ve said that before. I still think when we get back to civilization I’m going to pull the alternator and have it checked out. Something just doesn’t seem right to me.
Oh, and the Xantrex battery bank monitor is always showing .4v lower than actual. This is a new development as well. What the hell?
Lowe’s second tooth is through on the bottom. We are hoping that this is the beginning of at least a few weeks of pain free happiness for Ali and I. Yes, and for Lowe too.
Ouest’s talking is finally beginning to make progress. It’s funny how kids learn words that you don’t even realize you use that much. “Me,” is the word that comes to mind. One day she just started saying it all the time, and in the right context. All right so that’s not such an impressive word, but she has also started saying “thank you,” completely on her own and without any prodding from us.
She has also become a voracious reader. We begin reading before she even gets out of bed. We read before her nap and before bed time. And now, better than all that other reading, she has begun grabbing a big pile of books, sitting down, and flipping through each one of them page by page. Oh how I long for the day when she can sit down with a book and read for hours on end. Know what I’m going to do with all that free time? Use the bathroom all by myself without anybody else in the room or lying on the floor talking to me through the louvers in the door.
We went in and hung out on the beach today, had lunner at the only restaurant, and then went out to dinghy home. One thing about cruising in Mexico is there are a lot of beach break dinghy landings. This is something, surprisingly, that Ali and I almost never had to deal with on our previous sail. I’m not sure why that is, but here on the mainland Mexico coast we get to contend with swells that have traveled thousands of miles and are determined to break right on top of us. Today there were almost no waves so I just walked us out through the six-inch breakers and prepared to hop in the dinghy and take off. But before I could a wave reared up and broke right on the front of the dinghy soaking all of us through and through. We’ve got to work on our form a bit.
There were only a handful of boats here last month but today I counted nineteen in the anchorage. Fortunately it’s a big bay with good holding and is well protected.
