Since my hotel room is chilled down so far that there is condensation forming on the outside windows it is currently only habitable under thick bed covers. The room has a wall unit air conditioner and the remote control doesn’t work, and there is no external switch on the unit so I cannot change the temperature – except by pulling the fuse, but it the AC is on the same circuit as the room lights so I’m going to spend as little time as possible in the room until they get that fixed.
Since the winds had calmed down and there was some cloud cover cutting down the unmerciful brutal tropical sun today I attached the outside projects on the boat, including a quick clean of the teak decks with a very weak oxalic acid solution (enough to get the dirt out and very lightly lighten the deck color but not enough to leach out the wood) and then I had to put up the bimini. This is a big task when windy, but there wasn’t a breath of wind in the afternoon so the difficulty wasn’t in getting up the cloth but cleaning the tubing. This had accumulated a fairly substantial amount of rust during the 6 month storage period. Since the other exposed stainless had my less rust, I assume that the manufacturers used a bit substandard tubing. I have heard about “Spotless Stainless” and will try that once the stores open, since using my tried-and-true “Prism Polish” involves a lot of elbow grease.
After cleaning the tubing for a couple of hours I finally got the bimini up and by that time happy hour was fast approaching, so I did some more small tasks and then headed to Peg Legs for a couple of cold ones to celebrate being alive and healthy in the Caribbean despite being boatless.
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