SPOILER ALERT - If you just want the short version, engine is running and I'm headed south for  about 2 days and 12 hours from Cabo San Lucas. Everything below is optional for entertainment purposes. I guess since I just wrote it all there it wasn't a  spoiler alert, just a spoiler. Oh well. 

Usually I would write that "or bust" part as just a thing to say, but given the current situation it's a simple fact. 

So, the engine start issue still exists to some degree.  The parallel switch isn't 100% reliable.  This makes me think I have a sneaky electrical or battery issue (they are 5 years old I believe but the first set lasted longer) and there are really no resources to resolve it at Punta Abreojos.  I was looking to see if there was some place I could take a taxi/uber/bus to that might have parts to cobble something together.  No such luck. It appears from google earth the closest other town is on the east coast of the Baja Peninsula and is just as remote. If the boat ran on lobster I could pobably get ahold of some of those here...

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours working to correct what I assumed was a problem with the Engine Start Battery. I pulled the one that was there out completely, moved 1 of the six 'House' batteries into that spot, and re-wired the house bank to include 5 batteries instead of 6.  

I got all that movement done, leaving bloody handprints everywhere, and when I tried to start the engine to test it didn't do any better than the original. It seemed like it wanted to crank at least, but didn't have enough juice.  So I wired the old engine start battery back into the house bank putting it back to 6 and closed up. I gotta say, I was not a very happy cruising guy. 

I spent a little more time thinking about it and came up with severl possible courses of action, none of which I particularly liked. They were:

A: Go ashore and buy a 12V car battery and find some way to jury rig it into place to get me from here to Cabo where I suspect more resources will be available to resolve the issue. Certainly more professional help.  - This seems the simplest on the face of it, but I found myself hesitant to even put it in the plan. The village is about 2 miles from where I was anchored.  No problem for my main dinghy, but that one I really can't run through the waves onto the beach. And if I did, I'm not sure I could get it back off the beach. I then thought I could take my dinghy, bring my paddleboard and anchor the dinghy just off the shore outside the waves, then paddleboard to shore. Then walk to the Pemex gas station and back (now with a 60lb battery). Then take the battery, through the surf on the paddleboard to the dinghy and back to my boat.  I didn't see any scenario where all those components went without some variety of disaster. 

B: Wait until daylight and the solar panels are putting in amps, after running the genset to charge the house batteries as high as I could get them and then try starting one more time. If it starts head out and motor direct all the way to Cabo over 2 1/2 days. This is actually what my Christmas Present turned out to be.  With the full house bank, solar panels contributing, parallel switch engaged, the engine started. I had thought I also had a portable jump pack for my car that was still on board and located it and got it fully carged while the generator was running so I could add that to the system if it seemed like it was almost there.  That is now fully charged and easily accessible until I get this issue resolved. 

C: Same as B but head back toward Ensenada/home rather than Cabo. - My only reason for including this would be that if I could get up toward Ensenada I could call Sea Tow and get towed into San Diego or somewhere for repairs with little worry or hassle on my part. It would have the least unknowns associated with it and therefore, probably the lowest risk. But who wants to go bashing up the coast against the wind and waves? I didn't want to quit this easily. 

D: Call TowBoat US and see if they would come this far to get me and drag me back to San Diego. Probably outside my free miles included with my gold unlimited plan. - It made me feel better to think there was ultimately someone I could call. I have read of them picking up fishing boats and returning them to San Diego from almost as far south as Cabo.  I have no idea how much that would cost, but I'm betting I wouldn't like it. Or be able to eat for the rest of 2024 because my entire pension would be going to some tow boat for the rest of my life. Safe, expensive, chickenshit.  I'm glad I didn't get down to this one. But I sure was thinking about it. 

E: Sail away from the anchorage and sail to Cabo over the next 3-5 days and sail up to some area where I could anchor there safely and use my dinghy to go into the maria/port for parts/expertise. - Realistically this is what I was figuring was going to happen. I looked at the weather and today and tomorrow were better for departures than later in the week as far as waves went.  I'll take 1-2 meter rather then 3-4 meters.  That gets scary. I guess once you're out underway you don't get to be worried about it, you just have to deal with it. 

So the engine started and now all of a sudden, as per plan B, it's time to go and I really wasn't prepared.  But I also wasn't gonna turn the engine off.  I got the anchor up and started to head out of the bay I was in.  I just headed basically south since that's where I'm headed. Anything east of south will be good enough for a few hours. Then I went to turn on the instruments, get my navigation laptop running, do the last odds and ends while the auto pilot drove out of the bay....  bump..... bump...... throttle neutral, then brief reverse, and back to neutral. Fingers crossed.

Yep, lobster trap float hanging out behind the stern. Unfortunately, it didn't get any farther to stern as I drifted forward.  So, yet another "Why me?" moment (even though it was clearly my fault).  I dropped the anchor, luckily I was still only in 28 feet of water, to stop the boat and allow me to get in and evaluate the problem.  The evaluation revealed that I snagged just 1 loop of a bunch of line at the end of the lobster trap. It was not too tight and if it hadn't gotten on 1 of the prop blades it might have come free.  Unfortunately, the loop that was on the prop was from the center of the mass and I couldn't unwind it without cutting that piece of line.  So I did.  I got it unraveled from my boat and I tied on a floatation cushion so that hopefully the fisherman will find his trap even though the styrofoam floats escaped. In the "it could have been worse" column, it was 72 degrees (I measured this morning before leaving), it was still shallow enough to anchor, there were no witnesses... until now I suppose. Don't text and drive my friends. 

So, it's a lovely sunny day, I'm headed south at about 6.5 knots, I have all the electicity I could want thanks to the partial resolution of my engine start problem. The alternator is putting out more juice than it has in years. I didn't get to make the batch of christmas cookies I planned on, but I still have the supplies so maybe they'll be New Year's Cookies... 

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!!!