March 16
We had a quiet day today. Most of the afternoon was spent in front of the TV alternating between the NASCAR race and the Houston Rockets basketball game. I've found the button the remote that lets me flip back and forth between two channels quickly, so I can watch even more TV than I ever did before. I'll have to break the TV dependency all over again when we resume cruising in November.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 17
It was another quiet day. My excitement for the day was going out and doing the shopping for burger night. In typical Island fashion, there was a shopping crisis. We use cheap Styrofoam plates that cost less than $.50 EC each. But today, the only plates the case-lot store had were hard plastic that cost more than twice as much. I passed on them and will try other sources tomorrow.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 18
First thing this morning, while the wind was dead calm, I moved a small powerboat that lives here. I turned it around and put it against the next finger pier, all by hand. Since it was calm, and the boat is less than forty feet long, I was able to just push it and pivot it in the two slips. I did this because we need to move a sailboat to this dock and are going to put it where the power boat was.
A boat named Alouette came in for water. We met John & Sue and their kids back during hurricane season, and they have been up-island for the last few months. They will be around for a few weeks so we'll catch up on their travels.
I went shopping for the elusive plates today. I started at Foodland where I get the meat, but they only had paper plates. Next I went to Food Fare where I found and bought their last four forty-packs of Styrofoam plates for twenty bucks. That's way cheaper than I've ever paid before. But, of course, they may not have them again next time I need some.
While I was out I took a ride to Mount Hartman Bay to check out Martin's Marina. I've only seen it once before, and I wanted to refresh my memory on it's layout. I've thought about adding the words "the only marina in Grenada with finger piers" to my weekly VHF plug for the marina, and I want to be sure that was correct. It is. It was interesting too to see that Martin's only had ten boats in it, so everybody is slow this time of year.
In the evening, Bob got a hankering for pizza, so he went over to Prickly Bay and got two pizzas that we shared. They do make a good crispy thin crust pizza.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 19
Today is the day the Captain celebrates his fifty-fifth trip around the sun. When I made the morning VHF announcement for burger night I mentioned that it was the burger flipper's birthday. I don't know if that helped, but we had a large turnout. I also announced on the Coconut Telegraph SB net that it was my birthday, resulting in good wishes from all the cruisers we know who checked in. Shameless self-promotion, I know.
Even though it was my birthday, I still had to cook burgers, but I was enjoying myself. We sold about forty burgers, and everybody wanted them all at the same time of course. Some weeks, I have to encourage people to start eating and they dibble out for their burgers over the course of an hour. Some nights the whole group comes out together. Even though the grill can hold lots more, I usually only have eight or ten on at a time, because I cook them to order, and I can't remember more than that. I also need grill space to toast buns if requested. I was going fast enough on the burgers that Barb had trouble keeping up with the fries, but it all worked out. Smokey, the pan player, was here tonight and he sang Happy Birthday for me with the crowd singing along. After everybody had eaten, Barb whipped out a cake she had baked. She didn't put fifty-five candles on it, but put a whole lot which formed the number 55. I actually blew them out in one puff and there were none of those darned trick ones that relight.
After Smokey was done, Bob put on some good music, and a large group stayed quite late. About 23:00, I sat down for the first time all evening, and within a couple of minutes I realized that a rum squall was upon me. I told Barb she was going to need to close tonight, and I made a hasty departure for the boat while I still could. I immediately crashed and never stirred until the alarm woke me in the morning.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 20
I got off to a slow start this morning. I didn't feel bad in a hung over sense, but I was tired, even though I slept soundly. I did all the normal opening things, and then about 10:00, after Ashley got here, I went to the boat and took a two hour nap.
After my nap, Barb suggested we go out for lunch. As we were leaving the marina, the FedEx truck was driving in. I am expecting a new compressor for our large air conditioner, and he had the paperwork for it. Unfortunately, the shipper didn't include an invoice with the shipping papers like I requested, so I'll have to get that before I can pick up the package. A task for after the holiday weekend. All the talk amongst the boaters for the past week has been a large north swell on the ocean. Starting Wednesday, everybody was taking shelter somewhere where the swell wouldn't make the anchorage uncomfortable. So we decided to go to lunch at the Lexus Inn, which overlooks the western shore just south of the St. George's Harbor. This shore is normally very calm, being on the lee side of the island, but today the waves were putting on quite a show. I took a few pictures of the waves crashing on the rocky shore just below the restaurant. We heard that this morning, a cruise ship came in and decided that the conditions were too rolly for them to safely disembark passengers, so they left and went on to Bonaire. A couple who live on their boat in the marina were expecting friends to get off that ship and spend the day with them, but that didn't happen. From what we saw, I wouldn't want to be in an exposed anchorage, but being underway wouldn't have been bad, since the interval between the swells was twelve or fifteen seconds. We saw several boats sailing off the coast, and they were just slowly rising up and over the swell. The lunch was mediocre. This is our second trip here, and while the location is great, we have had poor service and mediocre food both times. I hear they make good pizzas, but they only do that in the evening. So, if we go back at all it won't be for lunch.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 21
Today is Good Friday. The whole country closes for Good Friday. Normally we run the bus to the grocery store on Friday, but since the store is closed, we will run the bus tomorrow. An Easter tradition in Grenada, and other parts of the Caribbean is kite flying. The kites are usually octagon shaped and they have a noisemaker in them so they make an annoying buzzing sound. I have never seen a kite being flown here before, and when I asked a few people, nobody had a good answer about why it is an Easter tradition. Some said because the winds are good this time of year. I don't buy that since the wind pretty much always blows here. I did some Internet research and found an article from 1998 that explains the kites nicely, but not the "why Easter" question. I found this article from Guyana where they apparently do the same thing, that might explain it. While I was searching for the kite info, I found this article that had a nice overall description of Grenada that you might be interested in reading.
While the bar was dead all day, we had a party up on the hill on our grounds. Somebody had come to Bob a couple of weeks ago and asked if they could play cricket on the flat area up the hill from the marina. There were probably forty or fifty people here, and they had a big ole party all afternoon. They set up a tent, a big grill, an a bunch of coolers. They brought all their own stuff, so it didn't help our sales any. They had as many as eight kites flying at once, all buzzing slightly different tones, and they played cricket for several hours. At dark they packed up and left. To my delight in the morning, we found that they had not left a bit of trash
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 22
We ran the shopping bus to the grocery store today. There were about fifteen people who went. Barb decided not to go on the bus today, and we'll go later after Ashley is here. When the bus returned, the folks reported that the store wasn't very well stocked. Normally their weekly container of fresh stuff like meat and dairy comes on Thursday and has been put on the shelves by Friday morning. I guess because of everything being closed Friday, either the container was late or they were just way behind on the stocking, because when we went in about 15:00, the shelves were full. We got everything we needed, but the store was packed. They will have limited hours both Sunday and Monday, so I guess everybody was stocking up today
Our regular pot luck dinner was lightly attended, with just nine cruisers. We had a nice meal though, and even did karaoke. One of the cruisers, Smitty from Sarah Noble, is a Trinidadian, but spent most of his adult life in the US. Five years ago he sailed his boat from Florida to Trinidad and has alternated six months in Florida and six months in Trinidad since. They now are moving north with the boat. Smitty is also a calypsonian and he brought a CD with him for karaoke that was a calypso song he wrote. We enjoyed his song as well as a few from Neil on PK3. Of course Bob and I did our normal several songs.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 23
It's Easter Sunday. As with most Sunday mornings, it's quieter in the morning because there is very little traffic across the bay in Woburn, not buses constantly tooting their horns, etc. This morning, I can hear music and people singing from across the way. Perhaps it's an Easter Sunday service at the small stadium. Several times this week I have seen parents out with little children dressed up in their Easter clothes. As with many other things in Grenada, it reminds me of how life was in the States a couple of generations ago. Since Sundays are usually slow, we had given Ashley the day off.
The NCAA basketball tournament starts this weekend. We had a couple of people come in to watch a little, but we aren't doing any special bar activity around it. The afternoon remained pretty quiet, as Sunday afternoons usually are. There is a weekly barbeque at Roger's Beach Bar on Hog Island every Sunday, and lots of cruisers go there. Several folks who had been here early in the afternoon left around 15:00 and went over there. We were sitting by ourselves watching TV about an hour later when several of those people came back. It turned out there had been a fight at Hog Island and they didn't feel comfortable staying there. The fight started when several drunk and/or high local guys in a speedboat kept doing high-speed doughnuts just off the beach where several kids we playing in the water. They then ran the boat up on the beach, between the kids and jumped off, kicking down the sandcastles the kids had built in the process. The two dads of the kids came over and asked the guys to be more careful around the kids, which started the fight. By all accounts, the dads were very restrained in the initial contact but one of the locals punched one of the dads in the face. Neither dad fought back, but instead physically shielded the kids from the guys. The local took several more swings, while screaming racial remarks about cruisers not belonging here. Neither the owner of the bar nor any of the other locals who were not involved intervened, and the bad guy and his buddies went off to another part of the beach all the time yelling about how they kicked the white guy's ass. We were shocked to here of this event, as it is totally out of character for what we have experienced in Grenada. We were also shocked that none of the witnesses came forward to help or identify the guy so some action could be taken against him. The other cruisers present did not physically intervene in the altercation which was probably just as well so it didn't turn into an all out brawl. It certainly is not what we have come to expect here.
At 16:30, while we were talking about this event, the power went off. We rarely have power failures here, unlike some other islands in the Caribbean. Bob had taken his boat out just before the power went off. I called him and asked if I should call the power company or if they would figure it out themselves. He said to just wait a while and see. After about thirty minutes, I called Ashley at home, which is only a mile or so away, and asked if their power was off too. She said it had been but that it was back on. I was hoping the problem would be resolved before dark so we wouldn't have to start up the generator, but that was not to be. Bob got back just at dusk, and he called the power company. They were not aware of a problem and would be out as soon as they could. Meanwhile, Bob and I flipped breakers and fired up the generator. Unfortunately, we have not resolved the problem that keeps the generator from powering the bar, so it was still dark. Barb lit a half dozen candles on the bar, and we lit a brass hurricane lamp that is normally just for decoration. A little after 19:00, a truck from the power company showed up and told us the problem was that a kite had come down across the wires somewhere down the road. This was exactly what Barb had speculated when it first went off. It took them another fifteen minutes before they had the power back on, and we shut down the generator and turned everything back on.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 24
Easter Monday is also a holiday in Grenada. The same group of folks who played cricket on the hill Friday were back to party again this afternoon. They set up their tent and grill and started flying kites. At one point I counted fourteen kites in the air, with several flying on a couple thousand feet of string. A couple of times lines got tangled and had to be sorted out, and I saw at least two of the kites stuck in trees up on the hill after they left.
A boat that has been here before, Suhaila, came back from being up in the Grenadines for a couple of weeks. They are going to be leaving the boat here for a few weeks while they travel back to the States. We had several folks from Trinidad in the bar in the afternoon and had a nice conversation with them. It was interesting to hear what Trinidadians think about the problems in their country, specifically crime. Later in the early evening, we had a nice time with Gordon & Sue from Suhaila, Ian & Natalie from Lady Natalie, and Neil from PK3. Lady Natalie is leaving tomorrow to be hauled out while Ian and Natalie go to play captain and chief stewardess on a brand new mega-yacht in Italy.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 25
This is the dry season in Grenada. The rainy season is July through November, and we have joked about how wet the dry season has been ever since November. Although we still seem to get showers routinely, it is becoming apparent that we aren't getting the amount of rain needed to keep things green. The grass is growing slower and is pretty brown, but even more noticeable is that the underbrush on the hill is dying off. As I drive around, I can see further into the woods and see things (like junk cars) that were totally overgrown before. What is really strange about it is that we think of Spring as the time of year when everything starts to green up and bloom again, but here the cycle is reversed due to rainfall, not temperature.
I went to town today to retrieve the new compressor for our large air conditioner. The shipper had not put an invoice in with the FedEx paperwork as I had requested, so I had them fax me one. I completed the C-14 form that I needed and took everything to the Prickly Bay Customs office where we originally checked in. The officer stamped my C-14 with no hassle and I headed for FedEx. When I got there, Nicholas, the very helpful counter clerk told me that I needed to go back to the main Customs office to get them to accept the invoice that I had faxed. The main Customs office is just across the Carenage from FedEx, but by car it's a long loop in traffic on the one-way streets of the area. I got to Customs and immediately brushed off the broker who approached me outside the office. To the inexperienced cruisers, the brokers will tell you that their services are required, but they aren't. I went to the main counter and was directed upstairs as I knew I would be. I went to the lady who processes FedEx stuff, showed her my invoice which she stamped, and was on my way in under a minute. Back to FedEx, where now I couldn't find a parking space. I had to make the entire lap of the Carenage again and this time I took a space well before the FedEx office and walked. Nicholas took my papers in back where they calculated the fees due and then called me in back to sign the huge ledger book where every package is tracked by hand. The lady remembered that my box was heavy, so she took me further in back to get it myself. It took us a few minutes to find it since a couple other large heavy boxes had been stacked in front of it. I had to move the other boxes, pull mine out, and then replaced the ones I moved. There should be a discount for self-service.
On the way back to the marina I stopped to buy some burger night supplies. I hit all three grocery stores and still didn't get everything. The stores seem to be out of sync with their stocks, probably because of the holiday.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 26
This morning after the radio nets, Barb watched the bar while I removed the air conditioner from the boat. Peter from Enza marine will be replacing the compressor, but that needs to be done at their shop. He is in the marina working on another boat, so I took the unit out, and gave it to him along with the new compressor.
I went out again for burger stuff, primarily the buns. We usually get the buns directly from the bakery, so I headed to Tempe to get them. On the way back, I stopped at the grocery to se if they had gotten any tomatoes since yesterday, and they had. The other thing I needed was wine. I had inquired yesterday at CK's, where I usually get wine by the case, and the liquor manager told me he would be ordering it this week and wouldn't have any until next week. I stopped at CK's to get a case of toilet paper, and just happened to notice the brand of wine we carry on the shelf where none had been yesterday. I went in back where they keep the cases and sure enough, there were some. So much for having to wait two weeks.
About 16:00, the skies opened up. This time of year, we usually only get brief showers, but this rain continued for half an hour. I was concerned the rain might interfere with burger night. About 17:00, when happy hour starts, we saw one dinghy racing across the bay. Tom & Renee from Semper Fi just barely beat another downpour as they came running to the bar. This shower lasted almost an hour, and at 18:00 when we usually start cooking, Tom & Renee were still the only ones here. The rain stopped at 18:00, and a few more dinghies started heading our way. We ended up with about a dozen people. This week we are doing movie night after dinner instead of the steel drum player, so we started the movie a little after 19:00. The movie was The Life of David Gale, starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslett. It was only a couple years old, but we hadn't heard of it or seen it. It turned out to be a dark movie about capitol punishment. It had some interesting twists and turns of the story line, and a surprise ending, but it was not exactly what I would have picked if I had seen it first.
After the movie, most folks left, but one of the guys from Trinidad who was in the other day stayed with his eleven year old son. Dad went out to the car and brought back a steel drum. Turns out the kid has played since he was four. He usually plays two pans, called double seconds, but when they travel they just bring his tenor pan. He played several songs for us and was quite good. After he stopped playing I picked up the sticks and poked around trying to figure out the scale. I have never touched a steel drum before and had no idea how the notes are arranged. I used to be able to play Do-Re-Me from the Sound of Music on the piano, so I was trying to pluck it out on the pan. The kid came over and started helping me find the notes. Then, he took the sticks back and figured out the song in a minute or less even though he had never played it before. It was fun to meet this kid.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 27
Peter brought the air conditioning unit back and dropped it off. It isn't charged yet, but I will install it while he goes to another job, and then he'll stop back by and charge it. I got the unit reinstalled and Peter was back before lunch. He charged the unit and it seemed to be working fine. I closed up the boat, looking forward to being able to stay cool without the humidity and not having to run to close hatches every time a shower comes through. About an hour later, Barb was on the boat making us sandwiches when the a/c made the same ugly noise it had originally and quit. I called Enza back and told them to send Peter back out when he had a chance. I decided to tackle a couple other boat fixes since I had tools out. One was an attempt to fix the switch on a cabin fan that I installed back in the USVI. A plastic tab that holds the switch on the fan broke and I am trying Super Glue as a resolution, even though I doubt it will work. Sure enough, after three attempts, I gave up. The other task was checking out my 110v system. I used to have a problem with the rigging being hot (in the electrical sense). I fixed that a few months ago, but I wasn't sure that there wasn't still a problem with voltage on the ground wire. I took apart all the outlets on the port side and looked for any bad connections. I re-did a connection of the green wire in the GFCI outlet, and everything seems ok now. I think. I hate electricity. Overall, I feel like I've worked on the boat all day and not accomplished anything.
The evening was shaping up to be an early one. I took Ashley home at 19:00, expecting to come back and close up. When I got back, Bob and a guest were in the bar. They weren't planning on staying long, so I started to do the register close out. While I was doing that, a couple more folks came in. They ended up staying and watching the finale of Celebrity Apprentice on TV. Once it was over everybody left and I finally closed at 23:00.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 28
Today is shopping bus day. There was a small group of only eight or so that went. About 09:30, we saw a boat entering the bay. When we first noticed it, it was very near the shallow spot. Before I could hail them on the radio to warn them, they ran aground. I watched for a couple of minutes to see if they could get off by themselves but they weren't moving. A dinghy came from across the bay and tried to help. After several more minutes they still weren't moving, so I went and launched our dinghy to see if I could help. As I took off out of the marina, the motor died. I restarted it but it died again. I shook the fuel can and realized I was out of gas. I shook the can and used the priming bulb to get a little gas in the carburetor and started the motor again. I was able to idle back to my slip just as the motor died again. Gary from At Last had seen my dilemma, and asked if I wanted him to take me out in his dinghy. I said sure, so he got his dinghy running and we headed out to the stuck boat. Just as we left the marina, they got unstuck, so we just turned around and went back to the marina. The boat came on in the bay, this time missing the shallow spot, and anchored off the marina. Turned out they were coming to catch the shopping bus, and just made it.
It also turned out that the folks on Jean Marie were SSCA commodores. It turns out that Tom used to be the president of the organization. We want to apply to be commodores, and you need two current commodores to sponsor you. We had one and now we have our second.
Peter from Enza showed up to take a look at the a/c unit again. After running it a while, he determined that the problem was the valve that makes it switch from a/c to heat mode. We haven't used the heat since we left the States, but the valve seems to be stuck somewhere between the two modes, making hot gas return to the compressor before it should and then overheating the compressor. All Peter can do about it is remove the valve and solder the tubes together so it is always in a/c mode. That will be fine for down here over the next couple of years. Too bad we didn't figure this out before I bought a new compressor. We removed the unit from the boat so Peter can take it back to the shop to make the repair. It probably won't be back until Monday.
We did have an early night tonight. Nobody had been here after about 17:00, so at 19:00 we closed.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 29
We made our weekly run to the grocery store today. Going on Saturday is fine as far as the store still being stocked well, but it is much more crowded with local shoppers. Bob spent the better part of the day resurrecting an aluminum frame for a canopy that he used to park under. The canopy blew over and got all bent up during Tropical Storm Felix last year. With some cutting, some drilling, a few bolts, and a couple of donated dinghy oar handles, he came up with a new frame. I helped him move it to where he wanted it and we stretched a new tarp over it.
Being Saturday, we had the usual cruiser's pot luck diner tonight. Smitty & Susanne from Sarah Noble were the only other people who showed up, so we just had a nice dinner with them.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 30
I was in the bar around 07:30 when a guy came on the VHF asking if there was a local cruiser's net and what channel it was on. Somebody answered him that there was no net on Sunday. The original guy had just arrived from Trinidad and want to announce something that happened to him. He and his girlfriend were twenty-six miles north of Trinidad (which would be about sixty-four miles south of here) near a large oil platform that is out there. Just before dusk, they noticed an open pirogue with three large outboards and several men approaching them at high speed. Being suspicious, the girlfriend manned the helm as the captain started below to load his flare gun. The captain was just coming back above as the boat came alongside and opened fire on them with rifles. There were six men in the boat and most or all of them were firing. The captain was able to fire a flare into the pirogue, possibly hitting the driver. They backed off a distance but continued to follow. The captain immediately raised the Trinidad Coast Guard on the VHF and related the incident to them. While he was on the radio, the pirogue turned back south and left them alone. He speculated they heard him on the radio and wanted to be gone before the Coast Guard could get there. Fortunately, there were no injuries to the people. The boat had several holes in the deck, but the hull is steel, which probably contributed to the fact that no bullets hit the people. The Coast Guard never did come out as far as they knew, but a Dutch warship approached them a couple of hours later and they told them the story also. I interrupted the conversation and asked if the guy had a SSB radio. He did not, but the other boat he was talking to did, so he went over to that boat at 08:00 and related the story on the Coconut Telegraph. The feeling is that the bad guys probably came from Venezuela, not Trinidad, but this is a first for this area and has everybody upset.
About mid-day, a seventy foot sailboat named Lady Hawke came in to fill up water tanks. This boat has been here before for this. It is a crewed charter boat that is based in Prickly Bay, but he doesn't like the dock at Prickly Bay marina, so he comes around here instead. As he was approaching the dock, a huge blast of wind caught his bow and pushed it towards the dock, knocking over the power pedestal. This power pedestal has been hit before and was patched together to salvage it last time. Lady Hawke holds 1000 gallons of water, so it takes a while to fill up. Enough time that the captain can start it filling, come up to the bar for a leisurely beer or two, pay the bill, and get back to the boat about the time it's full. The captain really likes this marina and plans to start coming here and spending a night on each end of charters he has so he can get the passengers off and on at a nice dock instead of via dinghy.
I spent most of the afternoon watching a NASCAR race, while Barb did some laundry. Of course doing laundry angered the rain gods, so while the clothes were hanging to dry a shower popped up. It had been a beautiful clear sky when she started. We saw the shower coming, so Barb went to the boat and took down all the still damp clothes and then re-hung them after the shower passed.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
March 31
Peter from Enza Marine brought back the repaired a/c unit about 09:00. He installed it and charged it and could immediately tell it was working much better. Too bad we didn't get the diagnosis right before replacing the compressor, but then again once we knew what was really wrong, it couldn't have been good for the old compressor, so perhaps it's just as well. Peter left and I was back up in the bar, when about an hour later Barb called me on the radio to tell me the a/c quit. To say I was frustrated would be a gross understatement. As I walked to the boat, I saw there was no water coming out of the front a/c thru-hull. When I got aboard I asked Barb if she had shut the unit off, and she said no, the compressor quit running but the fan was still on. When that happens, the water should still be flowing too. I opened the intake strainer to see if it was clogged and it was clean. I took the output hose off the water pump and turned the unit back on. To my dismay, the pump wasn't running. So this has nothing to do with the repair and is just coincidence. This pump is less than a year old. It has a one year warrantee, but I bought it as a spare two years ago, so that won't be any good. Besides, the shipping cost would be outrageous to get it back to California. I have not been happy with Cal Pumps product for several years, as I have had to replace several off them. I kept replacing them though instead of changing brands since changing brands would mean changing plumbing connections and the mounting bracket. Well, this time, I'll bite the bullet. I bought a March pump at Island Water World and took it home to install. I had to remove the custom made bracket and drill new holes for the pump to bolt to. I had this bracket made by Jason, the guy who built my davits back in Texas. It is made of quarter inch stainless steel plate and Jason accused me of overkill using that heavy a plate. The new pump is probably twice as heavy as the original, so I'm glad I have that thick bracket now. I was able to adapt the plumping with just two new fittings that I found on my first trip to the store, so overall it wasn't that hard a job. The new pump puts out lots more water than the original which will be better for the unit. We are air conditioned again.
While we were in town to get the new pump, we stopped at Immigration to extend Barb's visa. Since I flew in a couple of weeks ago, mine is good for ninety days. While at the window to pay the extension fee, Barb and I laughed at a sign on the wall. It said, and I quote, "Please ensure that names on all forms are correctly spelt before leaving." You just can't make this stuff up.
Bar-wise it was a very quiet day, so we closed early which was fine with me since I was sore from bending over and working in odd positions while playing with the a/c.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.