Puerto Real
YABS (Yet Another Beach Selfie), This Time at La Playita
We are tied up at the marina at Puerto Real, just a bit north of Boqueron on the West Coast of Puerto Rico. It’s an interesting little town that reminds us of the many places we’ve been in South America. Kind of a heater-skelter assembly of streets, buildings and infrastructure that you don’t see much of in the states. Today we walked to the local beach La Playita which was a very clean tourist haven. We passed the local pizza parlor which we will visit in the coming days.
While Shelly has been extremely busy with her multiple programming projects, I got busy with some boat maintenance. Our jib furling winch has been “sticky” for a while so I decided to overhaul it. I will explain this below because that’s how I roll:
A Marine Winch
A winch is what you use to haul lines on a sailboat. The lines have heavy loads on them so you need some sort of mechanical assistance to adjust them. You wrap the line around the winch (the cylindrical thing in the photo above), and crank them tight using a handle, which is not shown but fits in the hole at the top of the winch.
Start by assembling the stuff in the pic below: A service kit, winch grease, a small paintbrush, a toothbrush, degreaser and light machine oil.
Winch Maintenance Stuff
Next, take the winch apart so it looks like this:
Remember How It Goes Back Together
Clean off all the old grease, replace the pawles, springs and collets. Put it back together not forgetting to grease the gears and oil the pawles. Done!
So now this is the list of skills I’ve acquired from living and sailing on S/V Good Karma:
- Winch Technician
- Refrigeration Tech
- Radio Tech
- Diesel Mechanic
- Rigger
- Marine Electronics Tech
- Communications Specialist
- Safety Officer
- Plumber
- Anchor Boy
- Hair Stylist
- Slave Laborer
Posted in Sailing by Mark with 1 comment.
Are you in Puerto Real still. We arrived on the 14th at Marina Pescaderia. Had a great sail down from TCI.