July 20, 2007 Friday
Hair ---it seems to grow on
the floors and in the crevices of the cushions inside the boat. No matter how thoroughly I clean, little bits
of broken hair show up in the strangest places.
How can so much hair accumulate inside a boat? I do not brush my hair inside the boat. I make it a point to go topsides to the stern
to brush my hair so that any loose hairs will fly away from the boat. And, as everyone who has seen the photos on
our website or has personally met us knows, Bill has little hair left on his
head to fall out. So where does all this
hair come from? You would think that we
both should be totally bald by the amount of stray hairs that continually need
to be cleaned up. Ah, ‘tis a mystery.
And those are my only
thoughts for the day. Going back to
reading about dead Indians (anthropological novels about Native Americans
dating 1500 BC to 1000 AD; interesting stuff).
July 21, 2007 Saturday
It has happened again. Another container of liquid has leaked. This time it was only a bottle of distilled
water, and it was double contained so there wasn’t too much of a mess to clean
up. The constant movement of a boat
makes everything, and I do mean everything, slide just a minute amount all the
time. This constant movement causes things to chafe
and leak in a matter of weeks or months. (You also need to stuff your medicine
pill-bottles with lots of cotton or any pills turn to powder in a short
time.) We take several precautions to prevent the
movement from chafing holes in containers, but obviously we have not found any
precaution that works 100% of the time.
We have multiple heavy duty
solid plastic containers down inside the cockpit lazzarette. These fit tightly together so they don’t move
with the motion of the boat, although I’m certain that when we are heeled over
and sailing hard in rough seas there must be some ever-so-slight movement of
these containers from the pressure exerted to their sides. Everything that goes inside the lazzarette
is placed inside one of these containers.
We have one container of snorkel gear, two of cleaning products, one of
sponges and brushes, one of bottles of oil, etc. We try to wedge the cleaning products tightly
inside the storage containers so that the individual bottles can’t slide
around. Some products are additionally
placed inside heavy plastic bags to further reduce the chance of chafing just
in case some movement occurs. Plastic
bag on plastic storage container means less friction and should reduce chance
of chafe. The gallon jug of distilled
water that leaked today was inside a heavy plastic bag placed inside one of the
storage containers. The bag held almost
all of the water that leaked so there wasn’t too much of a mess to clean
up. This mess was nothing like the 2
gallon jug of Tide liquid detergent in the floor storage locker last year; or
the gallon of mineral spirits in the cockpit lazzarette when we first bought
the boat. FYI, this same chafing will
also quickly wear through soft drink cans or beer cans stored anywhere on the
boat. It will even happen to canned food
but it does take longer to wear a hole through those heavier cans.
Which brings me to another
warning to other cruisers: beware
pop-top cans of food. These are becoming
more and more commonplace. At first
thought these seem quite convenient, but try to avoid them if possible. Reason:
they sometimes explode! While we
were in either Carriacou or Grenada LOT of food lockers on this boat, and
they are pretty full. I am pretty good at remembering what food is
on the boat, but it had reached a point that I could not remember if we had 16
cans of peas or 11 cans of peas, etc.
So how else would we know what to buy if we did not first know what we
had on hand. To inventory everything I
had to unload each locker and then write the items on my lists as I repacked
the lockers.
This process disclosed 2
previously unknown food problems onboard.
A pop-top can of peaches had exploded inside one of the upper cabinet food
lockers. The syrupy mess had already
started to mold. Strangely, there was no
smell from this nasty food spill; if there had been a noticeable smell then
maybe we would have discovered it sooner.
Wasn’t too bad cleaning up the locker and washing each can. This can of peaches had an expiration date of
April 2009, so it did not explode because it was old. Maybe the heat?
The second food problem was
discovered in a bag of flour. We have
fifteen bags of flour vacuum sealed and placed in a floor locker; all-purpose
flour, cake flour, bakers flour and bread flour. I pull one out as needed and usually keep one
bag of all-purpose flour open in an upper food cabinet because that is what I
cook with most often. We haven’t made
our own bread in many months. In an
upper cabinet food locker there was an opened bag of bread flour that I had
forgotten to re-seal after I last used it in the BVI in December. I did not take the time to pull out the
vacuum seal machine and inverter and seal it correctly; also did not know at
the time that we would not be using bread flour again for such a long time or I
would have sealed it correctly. Anyway,
I took the lazy way out and just stuck the bag of flour inside a large Ziploc
bag, the heavy freezer kind. A Ziplock
bag does not remove the air inside like the vacuum sealer does. This provided a perfect environment for
weevils to hatch, which they did. If it
had been vacuum sealed then the absence of air would have prevented the weevils
from hatching. Thank goodness I decided
to inventory when I did. There were only
a few hatched weevils and luckily they were still confined inside the Ziploc bag. Another few days and there would have been
weevils throughout the cabinets on that side of the boat. Lesson learned. I will definitely be more vigilant in how
flour is stored in the future.
Last night we went to see
Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Funny; the last movie we saw was last July in
Trinidad ; and that was a Superman movie. One
movie per year. What a change for
me. I used to enjoy going to the movies
at least twice per month, usually by myself since Bill worked long hours and
really wasn’t interested in movie-going anyway.
We had enjoyed the original Pirates movie, but #2 and #3 were each about
one hour too long for our tastes. There
were too much computer graphics instead of actual live acting in those
movies. At any rate, it was something to
do for the evening and got us off the boat for a few hours. We stopped for drinks with a few people after
the movie and enjoyed talking with them.
Today Bill is diving again
with Tony (WORLD CITIZEN). They decided
to start their dive right off the stern of our boat. Tony is an advanced, very experienced
diver. Bill is a novice. Bill needs and wants to gain more experience,
but he needs a diving partner. You
should never dive alone for safety reasons and I don’t like it and am not
interested in the slightest. Bill
doesn’t want to tag along with all the more experienced divers because he feels
like he would slow them down. Tony is
being a very good sport by diving with Bill and helping Bill gain
experience. And Bonaire
is such a diving paradise that it would be a shame for Bill to be here all
these weeks and miss out on this experience.
Last Wednesday evening we
attended a screening of a half-hour video of diving around Bonaire
that another cruiser has produced. Grant
on REALITY is an avid diver and has been in Bonaire
for months. He took video of many of his
dives and edited them all together into a nice 30-minute movie with music. Grant did a very good job and we enjoyed
watching this short movie. It started
off with him following a good-sized octopus for several minutes. There were numerous rock-fish and those are
interesting. One could be on a rock or
coral and I would never see it. They
camouflage themselves to the color of the rock they are hiding on, but it takes
2 weeks for one to fully acclimate its coloring when it moves from one rock to
another. There are so many diving tours
around Bonaire that these rock-fish feel they
must move often, attempting to get away from the divers (poor, tormented
fish). Grant had captured videos of
rock-fish that were green on one side and yellow on the other side. One was mostly sort of pink colored to match
his new rock home but still had some green remaining from his previous habitat. These darn fish blend in with the rocks so
well that you would likely never know you were looking at a fish. There were many unusual live creatures and
fish in this little movie. There are
some really weird things down there!
Bill did not take our
underwater camera with him on the dive today.
Probably should have so he could capture some of the beautiful things
there are to see down there, but he also probably should concentrate on safe
diving while he gains more experience.
He can take underwater photos later when he is more comfortable with the
entire experience. He is supposed to
knock on the boat hull when they return from this dive so I can hand down the
camera to him. They plan to stay
under/near the boat while they use up the last bits of air in their tanks. And I would like Bill to take a close-up photo
of our prop. At our haul-out last month
he coated the prop in lithium grease in hopes that it might help keep barnacles
from growing on the prop so quickly. (We
already know that painting the prop is useless---that does absolutely nothing
toward preventing barnacle growth on a prop, despite what some self-appointed
“experts” think.) We had read of someone
in the Med who claims that he coated his prop with lithium grease and it
remained barnacle-free for an entire year.
We figured, what the heck; why not try it. The boat has been back in the water for about
6 weeks, so I would like to see how the prop looks now.
July 22, 2007 Sunday
The lithium grease on the
prop has worked as well or better than any other anti-fouling you can put on a
prop. No marine growth yet. Our friend Tony did a haul-out a month or so
before we did. He was switching brands
of paint this time, so took his boat down to the barrier coat; and then applied
the latest type Seahawk paint which is supposed to be so effective in the Caribbean . There
are barnacles already growing on his freshly painted boat bottom! Tony borrowed our underwater camera to take
a few photos to send to the Seahawk rep.
This same rep was in Antigua at the
time of Tony’s haul-out and had seen Tony’s boat being prepared for the Seahawk
paint, so he already knows that the boat was prepped properly. The rep said that Seahawk will pay to have
the bottom re-painted. That is great
customer service, but the extremely premature failure of the Seahawk paint is
very troublesome. We painted our boat
with Micron 66 again. Last year the
paint was thinned too much and we had what I considered to be heavy marine
growth by the end of the year. This year
the paint was applied correctly so we are hoping that it will last well. Knock on wood, so far (it’s only been 6
weeks) there is no marine growth whatsoever on our boat bottom. Really hoping that this paint lasts well.
We heard from our eldest son,
Trey, on Friday and learned that our 6-yr-old grandson’s passport finally
arrived. This is exciting news for
us. Zachary has a ticket to fly to Bonaire with his Uncle Aaron & family on 30
July. His parents had applied for his
passport the first week of April; they even paid for expedited processing
service. The US State Department is so
swamped with passport applications that it took 3 ½ months to process a
passport for a 6-year-old US born kid.
Can’t imagine the delays others might be facing. At any rate, it is a relief to know that
Zachary will be able to visit along with BeBe.
Elisabeth, a/k/a BeBe, will celebrate her 6th birthday while
visiting us on the boat. We are very
much looking forward to their visit.
Everyone will probably be bored stiff since our lifestyle is so very
different from what they are accustomed to, but it will be good for them all to
kick back and totally relax for a couple of weeks. Recharge their batteries, so to speak.
The marina here in Bonaire
has been sold to someone in the UK Bonaire . The marina had been under the same ownership
for at least 11 years. The new owners
won’t be here in Bonaire until December. Some of the long-term employees fear for
their jobs. Hope the new owners don’t
change too many things. We are hopeful
that another WiFi will become available in a few days. If not, then we will have to investigate a
fee service WiFi. We plan to be in Bonaire for at least another month and we certainly do
not want to go without internet access on the boat for that length of time.
Bill and I went to see
another movie this afternoon. Now we
have seen both of the movies being screened in Bonaire
for the balance of month of July. Bill
had me drive the dinghy when we went to town and our return to the boat. That is a first. I don’t drive the dinghy. I handle the 53-foot boat very well but have
no experience handling the 10-foot dinghy.
In the past my frozen shoulders hurt too much to maneuver the
outboard. Now my shoulders are pain-free
(thanks in large part to movements required while living on a boat for a year),
so Bill decided that it was time for me to finally learn to drive the dinghy. I don’t have a problem steering the outboard
(although I prefer to go slow and Bill prefers to go fast), but I do have a
problem starting the outboard. Guess
eventually I will learn all the quirks of the choke and throttle and so
forth. I definitely will not be going
off in the dinghy by myself until I feel more comfortable dealing with that
outboard.
Speaking of which, Bill had
the outboard serviced Saturday afternoon.
Don’t remember what all was done to it, but this is the first time that
this outboard has been properly serviced.
They had to order a carburetor rebuild kit that should arrive in a
week. This is a 2003 outboard so it is
about time that it was serviced properly, don’t you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comment will be posted after we confirm that you are not a cyber stalker.