We have been here 9 days. Many people have helped us fix the boat.
Corrosion is killer. The fridge was fixed after Alfred was able to ascertain that nothing was wrong with it apart from corroded wires. We could not find the original ones, despite Herculean efforts, so we ran new ones. Also not fun. Then the entire 12 volt system was acting up (no lights, fans, or water pressure!) and the main switch to the 12 volt panel was the culprit: it was, you guessed it, corroded. The captain is still working on re-wiring the anchor windlass, brand new but corroded!
We are just waiting for the sails, which were promised for today, but the Quantum fellow forgot to order the jib clewboard when we gave him the sails last week and also does not have our two broken battens in stock. We will leave Saturday, with or without a jib, and may have to return to retrieve it upon future completion of the work.
Captain's birthday yesterday. We celebrated by going into town where we were able to get so soaked in a downpour that our shop in the super air-conditioned store for a massive provision was painful. All limbs went numb!
The barber had a long lineup and the captain didn't wait. The first mate found a set of clippers for sale and now she can add "Ship's Barber" to her "Linked-In" page. The captain is happy with the result: he thinks he looks younger.
We were able to eat well (they had decent steaks! not so common in the Caribbean). We were down to emergency food: the first mate made curried Textured Vegetable Protein the night before! It just tastes like the sauce, not so bad, really, but the captain decided it looked scarily similar to worms. The big provision was rounded out by the addition of the snack food we call "Sin," which is Chicago Mix popcorn: a mix of cheddar and caramel corn that tends get hoovered up quite quickly in our household. I thought there was a nine month reprieve from that temptation but not so much!
There is a Salty Dawg party tonight in downtown Road Town and the organizers have arranged a shuttle to pick up people from Nanny Cay and from Soper's Hole. Should be a good turnout for the BBQ. We can pretend this is the captain's Birthday party.
It still rains all the time. We finally got our new table mount back from the stainless steel manufacturer (it was rebar and this corrodes quite handily), so the first mate needs some dry time in the cockpit to get to some sewing repairs. The forecast is for 25-30 knot winds coming from the East, which will likely lead us to postpone the 100 nautical mile journey to St. Martin for a while. We hope to spend the Holidays there. We look forward to changing locations soon. We'll probably visit Jost Van Dyke, Peter and Norman Islands while we are waiting for the sail repairs.
More later, hopefully after we've moved somewhere away from all of the boat repairs!
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