Boat is coming together

It’s always great to be back onboard while floating at the dock. The familiar motion of the boat swaying with a bit of surge coming in from the marina entrance is comforting (and really helps you fall asleep!!). We still have jobs to do but we’re tackling them at a much slowly pace!

So far Mark and I have put up all 3 sails and moved the dinghy from the bow to its place at the stern. That process was very interesting. We’re in a narrow slip with power boats on each side. There was no way to lower the dinghy into the water at the bow and easily move it back. So Mark came up with a plan – we lowered the dinghy as usual (off the bow) and as I pulled it back to the stern, Mark tilted the far side of the dinghy up towards our boat. It awkwardly slid between our boat and the slip post! I sure wish I could have videoed the whole thing but I had my hands full!!

Mark has also been tinkering with the freezer. After initially getting it running on the weekend, it hasn’t been working properly. It took a bit of trial and error, adding more coolant and then releasing some to get the perfect amount. Now both fridge and freezer are working well.

I know you all probably don’t want to hear this but the heat down here is a killer!! The sun is very strong and there’s high humidity so we can only spend an hour or so outside before we need to hide inside our incredibly well air-conditioned boat. It really zaps your energy so our jobs are taking a bit more time. It would be great to open the boat up and give it a good airing out but there’s no way I’m turning off the air-con at this point. We’ll soon be off the dock and getting lots of fresh (hot) air inside.

Our friend John has been working away on his boat – much longer days than we were doing when we were still on the hard. John leaves here around 8am and usually gets back after 5pm. That’s a long time to be working in this heat. His launch day is Thursday so jobs must get done!! We’ve been having some nice meals together and chit chatting about our boats and all kinds of things at night. It’s been fun having John aboard.

So today is Nov. 4th. We’ve rented another car (one day rental) for Friday. The day after John’s boat goes in the water, we’ll do another shopping trip into San Juan. This time we’ll go to Costco and stock up on larger quantities of items. Time to make a list and start thinking about provisioning for the next 6 weeks or so.