Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Today was another rather hot and muggy day and I spent most of the time below decks. The day started badly as I checked the power panel and saw that the charger wasn’t charging the batteries despite being attached to shore power. I checked everything and even connected the charger/inverter to my PC via a special cable and adapter. No error messages, but the darned thing wouldn’t charge the batteries and they weren’t fully charged and being depleted. I had completed writing a long letter to the manufacturer with description and pictures when I finally made the right choice and turned the system off at the main switch instead of at the remote panel. Luckily, it started working after the reboot and life was good again.
It takes a while to get used to the attitudes of the BVI “belongers” and I thought I’d become used to the rather lackadaisical attitudes and generally unfriendly initial impressions, but breakfast was especially bad. I meet Alison coming from breakfast and she commented on the particularly bad service and I had forgotten about the comment until I was at the receiving end of it. While the server assumed that tips are obligatory I thought otherwise – I hope that the other server will be working tomorrow, otherwise I’ll certainly skip breakfast.
I didn’t get much accomplished apart from getting my first computer virus. Somehow I managed to copy and delete my first day’s pictures and downloaded some freeware to undelete the files. Upon downloading and installing the software my anti virus program notified me via a flashing popup that this was a potential “archive bomb” and after using Google to find out what that meant I opted (stupidly) to install the software and spent over 2 hours trying to get back to the status that I had before that fateful mouse click. But I was brave and downloaded another program which recovered the pictures visible on the previous log pages.
I had repaired my leaking and broken dinghy on the last trip, but it seems that the glue wasn’t the right kind as it started falling apart after I inflated it this afternoon. I hope that the chandlery carries the special glue for Hypalon, otherwise the dinghy will most likely immediately start sinking once I put it into the water.
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