Finding the wood, the cement supplies, and the people to work on Tortuga had given us a way forward. The boat was still a construction site, but at least the rebuilding had begun to feel possible.
Then there was the engine.
The diesel that had been in Tortuga for roughly forty years was rusted and seized. It was an Italian engine, and getting parts in Mexico was difficult. The parts I needed were no longer being made. Whatever life it had given the boat before I came along, I could no longer see a practical way to bring it back.
That meant another expensive problem at a time when I already had plenty of them.
By then, I had spent months in what felt like the trenches. Six months, seven months, perhaps closer to nine. Build something, discover something, solve a problem, and find the next one waiting. The interior was moving forward, but a new wall or a beautiful piece of wood could not solve this particular problem.
Tortuga needed a replacement engine and a transmission to go with it. I had to find them.
The search went north
I started with the space we had. I measured the engine compartment and researched what would physically fit. Finding a diesel was one job. Finding a diesel with a matching transmission that could work for Tortuga was another.
It was the same lesson the rest of the rebuild kept teaching me: the right material or piece of equipment was only useful if it worked with everything around it. I could not afford to solve one problem by buying myself another.
Eventually, the search led to San Diego, California. There was an engine installed in another boat, a race boat that could serve as a donor.
So I traveled from San Blas, Nayarit, to San Diego to see it for myself.
When I bought Tortuga, I had imagined the places we might sail. I had not imagined how much traveling I would do just to find the things she needed before we could get there. But this was where the search had led, and I wanted to see whether it offered a real way forward.
More than an engine
The replacement we found was a Perkins marine diesel. But the donor boat turned out to have more to offer than I had expected.
Along with the engine and transmission, we were able to get the mast and deck hardware from the same boat. Tortuga needed a mast, and this one was about seventy feet long, with the spreaders we needed.
That changed the size of the discovery.
The numbers I was comparing at the time were enormous. A new mast of that size, with its spreaders, could represent something on the order of eighty to ninety thousand dollars. A replacement diesel engine and transmission could easily be another ten to twelve thousand. Those were the kinds of costs hanging over the project as I looked for a way to keep moving.
Now one donor boat was helping answer both problems.
To me, it felt like a miracle. After months when every answer seemed to uncover another obstacle, here was a discovery that moved several parts of the restoration forward at once. I had gone looking for an engine and found much more of what Tortuga needed.
One boat was helping save another.
Even a miracle came with paperwork
Finding the equipment in San Diego was a victory. Getting it to San Blas was a different job altogether.
An engine, a transmission, a seventy-foot mast, and deck hardware were not things I could simply throw in the back of my truck and drive south. I had to arrange cross-border hauling and learn how to move large marine equipment from the United States into Mexico. The mast was split into sections and carefully wrapped for transport. The photographs of those long, bundled pieces being loaded and handled tell their own story: finding a mast was only the beginning of getting it home.
That meant international shipping, bills of lading, and the documentation required for the border process. It was another discipline I had never expected to need when I bought a sailboat.
The work kept reaching beyond the boat herself. First I needed to learn where to find materials. Then I needed the people who knew how to use them. Now I needed to understand how to get equipment across a border and down to the place where the restoration was happening.
There was no point wishing that part away. The equipment was in San Diego. Tortuga was in San Blas. I had to connect the two.
We got it into Mexico. Then the next job began.
A used engine and another rebuild
The replacement engine was used. Before Tortuga could depend on it, it needed to be refurbished.
So I had to find a diesel mechanic in Mexico who was willing and able to take on the work. Pistons, rings, heads, compression testing, and the rest of the rebuild all had to be addressed. Finding the donor had solved the sourcing problem; it had not finished the engine work.
That was familiar territory by then. Even the victories came with another job attached.
At times I kept returning to the same question. Was I getting closer to abandoning the project and accepting the financial loss, or was I getting closer to finishing it? Some days, with another bill or another delay in front of me, the answer was not easy to see.
But I still wanted to sail with my family. I still wanted us to see those beautiful places together. Part of me was too stubborn to quit, but there was more to it than stubbornness. I kept wanting to find the next solution.
Someone in my corner
And I had my wife in my corner.
When the problems piled up, she kept reminding me, ‘You got this. If anybody can pull this together, you can.’
That mattered. When I was buried in the details of another repair or trying to figure out how to pay for the next part, she helped me remember why I had started. The dream had a family in it. It was never just about finishing a boat.
I used to imagine there would be a day when I could look around and say the chaos was over. I do not think I have experienced that day yet. The boat is not finished, and getting her back into the water would be another phase rather than the end of the work.
But the donor boat gave us a victory I could recognize. The engine, transmission, mast, and hardware were no longer only problems on a list. We had found a way to bring those pieces into the project.
There was still rebuilding to do. For a while, though, I could look beyond the next setback and see what this discovery meant for Tortuga.
One boat had helped give her another chance. I intended to make the most of it.