Sunrise
Last office day (and no wind), and I had to get up early in order to finish up all the unfinished tasks in the remote office. I haven’t even started on the boat tasks!
Today I’ll really need the caffeine in the coffee, and I’ve run out of Hario filters, so I’ve switched to some Melitta filters made for another system. The first attempt was a dismal failure. It seemed to be working well, and then the level in the filter dropped a bit too quickly, and it wasn’t until I was decanting it that I realized the filter bottom had popped open. So I didn’t have coffee in the cup, just sludge. Attempt #2 was much more successful!
Morning
Work was very frustrating today. The shifty winds and my Starlink RV antenna placement mean that at certain swing angles, the mast or forestay is in the way. Then my signal drops for a lengthy period before returning. This makes conference calls as well as interactive typing a somewhat irksome experience. But to compensate for that, my colleagues sent me a picture from the office – with several inches of fresh snow visible in all of them.
Noon
So, my last office day and no wind is getting hot below decks. But I managed to complete my tasks and finish by 14:00, and then thought about what I needed to do to prepare for my friends’ arrival. There is a bit of northwest swell curling around the airport headland. With no wind, Zanshin is occasionally rolling around. But it also means the boat is sideways to the wakes from vessels moving at speed in and out of the bridge. One such wake, perpetrator unknown, rolled the boat so heavily that items fell in the galley!
Afternoon
At 14:45, I considered going into the Simpson Bay lagoon during one of the inbound bridge openings and checked the schedule. 15:00 is the next one, so I turned on the instruments, fired up the engine, pulled the dinghy in close, and lifted the dive platform. Going forward, I pulled down the anchor ball and raised the anchor. I made it to the short line of boats just in time and entered the lagoon.
The area in front of Palapa Marina was more crowded than I thought, and that is the only area deep enough for my keel. But in the end, I found a spot (close to the marina on the border of the anchorage area). It is very calm, but I know that I’ll get wake-slap from the dinghies and that I’ll hear the music from the Soggy Dollar bar at night. But it beats rolling around outside.
Evening
I went ashore for the 5 o’clock bridge opening. I’d met a nice lady from Boston the night before, who’d wanted to drive to Anse Marcel for dinner with some of her acquaintances. I suspected the drive would take 40 minutes at best, and most likely longer, while her smartphone said it would take only 20. I was hoping she’d return again and update me on the real drive time. She did arrive (after having been stuck in traffic!) and said it had taken her over an hour. It is always amazing how every single small island has traffic congestion problems that put major city problems to shame.
I returned to the boat and started working on replacing the guest faucet (which wasn’t producing hot or cold water), but cut my hands and couldn’t figure out how to quickly disconnect the quick-disconnect hoses. I blamed the beer and went to bed.