Scrub a dub-dub

I have little doubt that this trip will be a huge learning experience. There will be all sorts of times that I will look back on and say: If I had it all to do over again, this is what I would do differently...

Leaving La Paz yesterday I could tell right away that we were under powered. What was going on? Were we really underpowered or dragging a dead horse behind the boat? The 2000 rpm of engine speed that usually generates 6 knots of boat speed was giving us around 4 knots on our way out of La Paz. I had two choices: throttle up and double our fuel consumption or put up with the slower speed. We weren't in a big hurry, so I chose the latter, but it was a problem that needed solving.

I've heard about other boats making this kind of trip describing the marine growth they experience in tropical waters, but I'd hoped that a fresh coat of hull paint would give me a period of grace. When Kevin dove under the hull at the first Mexican anchorage during the Haha, I was pleased to see in his videos that the hull looked great. It was clear though that two months in La Paz had taken a toll on the condition of the hull

So it was that I found myself spending the better part of an afternoon with mask, snorkel, and kitchen spatula scraping muscles and barnacles off the hull and propeller. The tenacity of those mollusks is impressive. Later on the beach while chatting with Eric from Rover he told me he paid a guy $90 in La Paz to scrape his hull for him. Why didn't I know to do that? Yet another item in a long list of things I would do differently. Preparation is all about keeping that list as short as possible.

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