After spending a few days back in San Diego tying up some loose ends, we are not back home in Mexico. Mike is raring to get further south, but me not so much. I like it here and am starting to make some friends. But they are all heading south eventually as well, so we can stay friends.
Yesterday Mike and I installed a wind generator. We have to finish up that job today. It wasn't easy - first we had to assemble the thing. Then Mike had to cut wires apart and solder them back together with this melting metal stuff made out of lead. The interesting thing about that was the smell - I thought it would be a horrible chemical smell but it actually smelled sort of good. But inhaling melting lead is a bad idea so I kept my distance. After he soldered the wires together he put this black tubing around the cut part and used this heat gun to shrink all the tubing so the wire connections are waterproof. Then we had to run the wires from the unit itself on the stern rail all the way to the batteries. I figured out that if we took the ceiling off the inside of our bedroom, we could run the wires in existing holes. It worked out well and I was proud of myself for figuring it out. I even got to put it back together again with the screws. I usually don't get to actully do anything other than hand Mike tools and get yelled at for locating them too slowly!
We also have to rework our solar panels to see if we can get more power out of them. They are old, but not so old they shouldn't be working. We think we can take all the electrical connections apart and work them over and things will work better. We (I) also want to go over the bilge again and make sure all is working properly so there will be no repeats of our last trip. And so on.
Tonight we are going to a posada - a traditional Mexican Christmas celebration. I am not sure what is involved, other than walking around with candles and singing. That is actually good enough for me.
Well, I have to go now. Have a great rest of the week!
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