The swell and winds conspired together and jointly made for a restless night’s sleep but I’m doing better in Grand Case now.
Morning
Around sunrise the wind dropped appreciably. Not optimal, but much better. And I’m fairly certain that I’ll be doing a lot better once I get ashore.
After coffee and taking care of the previous day’s post I dinghied ashore. My goal was to get a 40mm hole drilling bit and a 20mm M6 bolt to replace the one on my bimini which had loosened in the wind and dropped overboard the previous day.
It was a nice walk with a strong cooling breeze. I had a café au lait at a coffee shop before going to the Bricolage store. Unfortunately, they had neither a correctly sized bit nor a stainless bolt of the right diameter and length. At least I got a good walk, returning on the main street.
Noon
I got back to the dinghy dock at noon and opted to return to the boat instead of finding a place to eat lunch. I think I’ll try to replace the salinity probe on the watermaker now. That should be a quick and easy task.
Afternoon
I should have known – no task on a boat is either quick, or easy, or cheap. In order to access the old salinity probe I needed to remove much of the housing, then remove high-pressure line. Once that was done I could get a wrench onto the probe and remove it. A salinity probe just measures resistance between two metal rods and the old ones looked somewhat tarnished, so I sanded and cleaned them and replaced the whole assembly. After starting the system I once again got an error, so had to repeat the procedure to remove the old probe and replace it with the new one. Once that was installed I got the system fired up and it is now working correctly. That only took 2 hours.
Evening
Although the Grand Case anchorage is very big and has good holding everywhere, there is a certain herd instinct that grips certain boaters. Even though I was relatively close the Cupcake yacht during the strong winds, a catamaran decided to squeeze in between us. I think that the winds are going to remain constant, so I’m not too worried about contact. But why did the catamaran have to do that – there’s acres and acres of open space around us.
The steaks that I thawed out several days ago now need to be eaten. So I plopped a ribeye into the sous-vide to let it cook. I’ll roast some potatoes and make a mushroom sauce to accompany it.
Dinner
The steak was just OK – my first sous-vide disappointment to date. The potatoes and mushroom sauce were fine, but the ribeye was somewhat chewy. Nevertheless, it was huge and I got more than I needed from the tender bits.
A small disaster struck while cooking. I knocked over my Hario V60 coffee carafe and broke it. The filter assembly is plastic and survived, but it has no base so isn’t going to be easy to use separately. I don’t think I’ll find it on-island so will have to order it on Amazon.