Grumpy old men and the sea

 For some reason as some men get older they think they have earned the right to be grumpy.  Earned the right to insult people and jettison normal polite behaviors.  Here at Cruiseport Marina there are some guys who have been without female (and possibly human) companionship for so long they have lost their social mores.  Now most people on the docks are friendly but a couple old grumpy guys here are downright obnoxious and one in particular actually stinks!

Last night two of those foulies got together here in the internet room at the marina and they started talking louder and louder and cursing more and more until Connie and I could not concentrate on our business and we started to get pretty pissed off at having to listen to a negative, foul, evil, repugnant conversation.  Finally it ended with Connie putting them in their place and Scott shoving them both out the door and shutting it behind them.

and while I'm at it....   gripe... gripe...

The San Diego to Ensenada yacht race came in last night with the first boats arriving at about 01:00 in the morning.  Just one dock over one of the winning boats came in and at about 2:00 in the morning they started drinking.  By 03:00 they were loud.  By 04:00 they were extremely loud.  Our peaceful little marina had been taken over by brutes!

But on a more positive note, we tackled the genoa repair job today.  Dragged the big old bag out to land and set up the sewing machine in the little palapa ((a Spanish word of Mayan origin, meaning "pulpous leaf") is an open-sided dwelling with a thatched roof made of dried palm leaves) next to the marina office.  That sail is huge!  Well, Connie set upon the job with enthusiasm and by day's end we were halfway done repairing the UV degraded Sunbrella strip on the leech and foot of the sail.
 

I'm putting in the GIANT battery charger tomorrow , the Xantrex TrueCharge2 60 Amp.  And soon we'll get a little Honda portable generator that can power up that big boy when we are on the hook (anchored) without shore power on a cloudy day.  Our friends Patrick Dayshaw and Kirsten Rohrbach on Silhouette in the South Pacific recommended having a way to charge the batteries if the sun failed to do the job while at anchor so we are taking their advice and adding another power source.  Here at the dock the solar panels are just keeping up with the electrical load but it has been rather sunny every day.

We took aboard a couch surfer named Baptiste Mandon for a few days and he helped us out on the boat sanding and scraping the old varnish off of the teak.  Wow, what a good worker he is!  And now the teak looks great and Baptiste has found a ride south on Chris Pinko's big Porpose ketch going to Cabo and LaPaz.  I tell you, these docks are full of big beautiful boats with crewing opportunities.

Here is Baptiste with Chris on Corinna, a 51 ft Bill Garden design ketch built in 1970.

Good sailing all!