Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Despite having had a bit too little to eat and too much to drink the night before, I didn’t wake up with a throbbing head but a throbbing food. I had gotten a splinter in it when going ashore to clean/check the storm sails the day before and the splinter had snapped off when I tried to remove it, but I couldn’t locate the rest of it yesterday and hoped it would just grow out in peace. But this morning I couldn’t walk on that foot, as the splinter is right in the pad where all my weight is placed on it. I couldn’t find the splinter, but used a MacGyver method of turning my binoculars into a microscope to locate the entry point and then used a fine needle (from the whipping kit) and some tweezers to complete the operation. I’m limping a bit now, but the source of the pain is gone and it should clear up quickly. I had to remove everything from the big fridge earlier today, as I think that the steaks that I had purchased had leaked blood into the bowels of the fridge and it smelled decidedly nasty this morning. After draining the stinky fluid from the fridge I used some Joy detergent and Pine Sol to clean up the fridge and rinse all the bottles and replace them. Then I realized that the fridge drain goes into the sump of the bilge, so I had to and clean out the bilge area as well. Ahh, the trials and tribulations of being on a boat. Yesterday I help a fellow cruiser whose 4-stroke had cut out on him in the middle of the channel by towing him to his catamaran. Just now I heard a dinghy zoom by and then suddenly go quiet and when I went topsides to check it turned out that it was the same French gent with a passenger and his motor had died just 100 yards downwind of my boat, so I hopped into my trusty dinghy and gave him another tow. He’d stated that he’d cleaned up the carburetor but that perhaps he had bad fuel which caused his renewed problems. 17:30 – My foot is still throbbing, so I must have missed some of that dock splinter and hope that it will grow out or otherwise stop hurting soon, it makes it difficult to walk around on the boat when it is rolling around a bit in the wakes of passing boats and the bit of swell that is working its way through the protecting reefs. I did get some cleaning work done and set aside my personal belongings just in case Zanshin I does sell now or while I’m away, but today I really wasn’t feeling too energetic and managed to spend a lot of time doing stuff but getting nothing done or completed. My lethargy continued on to dinner and I opted to go ashore to Saba Rock for a meal instead of cooking aboard.
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