Now that the haematoma are slowly going down and away I thought I had one more doctor visit for a final checkup and for my tetanus booster shot but last night I woke up at 3am and had a bad pain in my second-biggest toe. It felt very similar to when I’d broken it, and there was also some swelling at a joint. I don’t recall having bumped into anything with that toe, so the source of the problem is a mystery to me (unless I’ve taken up sleepwalking recently) but it felt like bad joint sprain or break so I acted as if it were and bound the toe to its next smaller neighbour and tried to sleep, but the ache had now changed to a positive painful experience and I could count my pulse to the throbbing of the joint so I took off the bandaging and it felt quite a bit better and I fell back asleep. Today the swelling is there, just like a break, and I’m walking carefully and limping but really hope that it will go away quickly!
After the morning VHF network I sat at the navigation station with a cup of coffee in my hand and stared at the galley, hoping beyond hope that a batch of bread would make itself without my intervention or assistance, but nothing was moving in the galley so I decided to wait until 10AM and go to Max’s Place for a crêpe and a coffee while connecting to the internet. I worked on the PC checking on how to make the cable for the refrigerations system but, of course, some information was missing and I needed to connect to the internet, so around 11AM I dinghied ashore. After a lengthy session on the net and a tasty crêpe with an espresso I made it back between showers and decided to finally finish the anchor-ball system with a custom made soft shackle on a thin Dyneema line. Some of the steps in the process shown in the pictures below.
By now I was feeling really peckish and it was 15:30 so I made a batch of bread dough and the second prove is rising as I write this. This time I managed to make bread without making a mess – practice makes perfect; now I just hope that the taste will better this time around as well. The generator is already on and charging the batteries and making water, and in a couple of minutes I’ll preheat the oven and make a nice batch of fresh bread just in time for happy hour, I’ll combine real bread with liquid bread (a Presidente beer) for sundowners and then head ashore for some dinner after dark. I think I’m in the mood for pizza but the LoLos still retain their attraction. I will have to see if I can find a store that is open in order to get butter, since my supplies are going to be gone after this batch of bread; and my emergency supply of New Zealand butter that needs no refrigeration isn’t going to be used for this non emergency provisioning problem.
I’ve now filled up the dive tank from yesterday, taken a shower and the bread is almost finished baking. The watermaker is on its flush cycle and the batteries are only being charged with 40A so the generator is about to get shut off as well. It is 17:30 and that gives me about a half hour before the sun sets which is just about the correct amount of time for the bread to cool down. Perfect timing!
I made the bread with about 75% of the old white flour and opened up my second bag of flour, stone-ground wheat and this mix ended up making some awesome bread, by far the best I’ve made so far! It is hard to stop eating the fresh bread since I do wish to go ashore for dinner today!
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