15 Oct - More maintenance in exotic places - today we woke to cloudy skies after our first rainy night in many weeks!  We decided we had better start on our long to do list and so after a pleasant breakfast dived in changing out the key barrel to hopefully resolve our starter issues.  Once this was completed and tested we started on the generator issue.  We initially thought the drive belt for the water pump had just fallen off but when we checked, reinstalled it and tried the generator again we realized that it was actually a seized water pump that was the problem.  We took the water pump off and then spent the better part of the day trying to free it up.  We had a spare water pump but that didn't have the gear wheel on it which was stuck  to the axle on the seized pump so that didn't help!  Back to trying to unseize the old pump which we eventually did by soaking the whole pump in CLR.  The only problem then was that, when trying to refit the impeller we found we had splayed the main spindle so back to the drawing board! It now being near ly16:00 we decided to go for a walk.  We bumped into a couple of other yachties from the marina and they told us that there was a regular Wednesday evening tradition of meeting up at the Bar Andaluz (across the road from the marina at the cultural center) for 2 for 1 Margheritas. This proved to be a fitting place to have our first Margherita in Mexico as it is purported to be the place where Margheritas were invented! We went for a walk around 'gringo gulch' first (this it the street that the cruise ship guests are directed to) and then headed over to the bar where we met up with a good half dozen other yachties.  They introduced us to the whatsapp group that the marina has and it was great to get to meet more like minded people.

16 Oct - Waking to a wonderfully sunny day we decieded, instead of spending our entire day on maintenance, we would work in the morning on jobs and then spend the afternoon exploring more.  The jobs list hadn't changed and so we got on with trying additional ways to fix the generator all to no avail.  We also changed both fuel filters and ran the main engine for 20 minutes or so.  With no bogging down of the revs we may have at least addressed the fuel issue successfully today! In the afternoon we explored another part of town - we suspect where the local nightlife is, and visited the boatyard where we are getting hauled out in two week's time.  It was great to meet Guillermo and run through the work schedule with him.  After this we walked through "Gringo Culch" which is definitely a very sanitized area of Ensenada for the cruise liners, before heading back for a quiet evening.

17 Oct - We’ve started settling into a bit of a routine now - working on the boat in the morning and exploring in the afternoon.  A successful day today we knocked a good few jobs off the list and explored further in town, sampling some of their street food fish tacos - a great snack to keep you going during the day!y

18 Oct - Another day of pottering on the boat and going for walks - tough life :) - We've got all our priority 1 and 2 jobs done now (apart from still struggling with the generator!) and so onto the less critical items now.  This evening we went with some of the other cruisers to a bowling alley - great fun although we proved beyond doubt that neither Heidi or I have any skill at this 'sport' coming dead last against the rest of the teams!  Apparently practicing on Wii 10 years ago doesn't help much!