Barra de Navidad is small beach town, which is quaint, charming, olde world, eclectic, and curious,,,    It reminded me of many out-of-the-way fishing villages I have passed through previously, and no doubt we’ll visit in INFINITY in time to come.   I liked it!

However, our stay in ‘Barra’ this time mainly centred around the Grand Hotel and it’s Marina.  It appears we arrived end-of-season.  130 rooms, and only 9 were occupied.  The Marina had similar vacancies, the pools were deserted, and we had the whole place to ourselves – it was fantastic!.  It took me about 4 nano-seconds to acclimatize, and after that we revelled in the laid back luxury the Grand had to offer.

 

The trip commences:  leaving Paradise village, Puerto vallarta

 

 

 

 

On our way to ‘Barra’

 

 

 

 

Arriving Barra de Navidad

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here comes “Giddy-Up”  N55, Anne & Jim Crossley.  We travelled down the coast together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some local sites

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the Marina

 

 

 

 

POOL TIME!  (actually everyday was ‘pool time’  ;  )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found another pool on floor 9!  We quickly settled in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

check out the view

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve left Barra, and stopped off at Tenacatita for a night.

 

 

 

 

Heading back to Puerto Vallarta

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technical issue, no.2

For those of you who have been following this blog, we have been managing quite well since we left Vancouver (again, thank you God!) and to-date, we’ve only had one major technical issue.  Well, this trip back up from Barra to PV, we experienced No. 2!

During a routine ER check I noticed the hydraulic lines were hotter than usual, I mean really hot!  I traced the lines, which led to the secondary oil cooling pump, and noticed it was not operational.  Not good, but not a show-stopper.  I was set to deal with it once we got back to PV.  Another function of this pump though, is to draw out any air caught in the Sea-Chest.  The weather was continually increasing as we got out to sea, and increased to 12′ seas and over 30 knots of wind, both from opposing directions, which created a very confused sea.  INFINITY pounded her way up the coast.  Later in the transit, during another routine ER check, Julie discovered that there was a lot of air in sea-chest!  (“Good-eye Julie!”  – created by the vessel movement in rough weather).   The sea-chest provides cooling-water to all our machinery, and without this cooling-water to our wet-exhaust, a fire was probable – as I learned from a previous Nordhavn 62 owner.

I immediately shut the engine revs down to 900 rpm, which equates to about 3 knots in those conditions.  The sea-chest water level immediately responded by rising to a comfortable level, but not to the top.  I struggled in vain to get rid of the remaining air in the sea-chest, and after several failed attempts, I resigned our crew to the fact that we had a long night ahead of us, making our way back to port doing 3 knots…

 

When we got back to port, I got online and started asking a lot of questions.  As usual, the answer came from the Nordhavn Owners Group  [a class act, thank you Milt Baker].  Steve D’Antonio recommended the solution to get the seized pump operational again, and INFINITY is back to “Fully Operational” status once again.     :  )