Morning Hours
The day started at sunrise. I used some of my dwindling fresh coffee beans to make my first cup of the day with my Aeropress. The goal for today is to complete some minor repairs and maintenance on items found yesterday. I began trying to decide which of the tasks I wanted to start off with. Nothing too complicated or lengthy, as I wanted to start the day with something successful. So I ended up loading my pictures from the day before and updating this site. Then I had more coffee. I’m going to start with either the leaky guest head or the winch, but first I need that third cup of fresh brew…
Mystery boat part
While sailing yesterday this mystery piece of plastic blew back towards the cockpit. Lincoln believed it came from above – not a good thing to have happen on a sailboat! I believe it is the second spacer ring for my furling main, the two spacers are there to prevent chafe when furling the sail. This mystery piece looks identical to the one spacer still left. So I am fairly confident that further forensic analysis won’t be necessary.
Winch Maintenance
According to my plan, this was going to be quick, fast and easy. The winch needs only a screwdriver to take apart, if I recall correctly. The first image shows the bottom ring of the stripper element installed upside-down.
This task, unlike just about every other work aboard, really did only take about 5 minutes to complete. Success!
Island Tour
Lincoln, my dockside neighbor on Cyrilla, works on and improves his boat daily. He is meticulous in maintaining his catamaran, and the only incongruous aspect are the somewhat dilapidated steps to the boat. He’s quite tall, so he doesn’t need to use them. But dwarfs like me need them to get aboard and I’m always afraid of stepping on the wrong place and breaking through the upper layer of plywood.
He invited me to look at a local property that is for sale that might be of interest to me. That little trip turned into a tour of the island that was far superior to what I’d done with Malakai last year. It did help that his car:
- didn’t have an exhaust system leaking into the vehicle
- was missing blaring Reggae
- had A/C
- and had good company, plus a tour guide who didn’t make up stories. At least one who didn’t make up implausible ones 🙂
I did get to see new areas and regions of the island that I had hitherto not known existed.
The only sad part of the grand tour was in Cas en Bas and seeing Marjorie’s bar on the beach, doomed to imminent closure due to construction projects. That was a great bar and despite the difficult access is a prime location.
Dinner
I did go ashore for dinner and all the restaurants were full. So I had a single beer while waiting for space to free up. But then they turned on some music system and it became so loud I couldn’t hear myself think so I returned to the boat and made a small meal there.
