Today I’m back in the office, but a bit tired already. Last night I’d hoped for a peaceful post-Christmas evening yet at 21:00 the loud music started up ashore. Same distorted loud computer generated drums and bass. Same bad quality. Consequently, I shut the hatches, turn on the fan for some white noise and inserted my earplugs. All to little avail, but at least the music stopped at 01:00AM.
Sunrise
The day began shortly before sunrise with my first coffee and login at work. I’m finishing up work for the year and certainly looking forward to a couple of days with no work commitments.
I’d charged the batteries while making coffee and gave the engine a boost to 1800RPM. It held there for a minute, but then the RPMs started fluctuating wildly again. I guess my hammer mod didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I’m not debating going to the effort of trying one more “whack”, but am hindered by knowing how much work it is to get access. And in order to test the modification I need to put significant parts of the engine back on and let it warm up. That means I need to plan another full day to do this, and I’m not in the mood at the moment. One suggestion I’d gotten last time was to try Liqui Moly Diesel Purge. I’ll search for it ashore at an auto parts place.
Morning
Luckily many people at the office are out on vacation, so the tempo is slower than normal.
I just realized that one of the things slowing down my engine debugging is that I need to remove a lot of items to plug in the ODB connector. This is because it is too high to fit in the sealed case. I think I might see about cutting a section out of the lid so that it will fit on with the connector in place, that way I can lead the USB cable out of the engine compartment and simplify access.
Each time I go swimming off the boat I now don mask, fins and my big paint scraper and clean parts of the hull. The propeller, rudder and keel are deep and I can’t hold my breath very long while exerting myself. This makes for slow progress; but at least everything within surface reach of my arms is now relatively free of growth.
Noon
The office is now quiet, almost everyone has already gone home, at least according to our Microsoft Teams software. I’m experimenting with new software and not making much progress. Now I understand my colleague Ralf’s calls regarding this package – he’s got to vent his frustration somewhere and now that I’m in the same boat I’ve got nobody to talk to.
Afternoon
I headed ashore to the marina to get some Heineken and upon my return was quite disappointed to hear (and feel) the music start up ashore. It is too late to move to the other end of the bay but I think I’ll clean my prop tomorrow and relocate. This crappy and extremely loud soca is no fun. The shore is about 200 yards away, so I’m wondering what the volume is at the beach bar.
I have my music turned up and still feel and hear the sh*t from ashore. It’s going to be another earplug night. The neighboring catamaran just left for a quieter location, I shouldn’t have had that happy hour Heineken, otherwise I’d be following them.
Luckily the DJs either quit, lost their audience, or were run off the stage by 23:00. So the night was quiet and peaceful after that.