January started out well enough. First thing in the morning, well around 10:00 am or so, Andy and Sharon on It's Good, along with visiting friends did a small (one dinghy) New Years parade. They dressed up in patriotic thong bathing suits and had 2004 written across their butt cheeks. They then went to all of the boats to show their appreciation for the new year. After enjoying the parade, We cleaned up from the party, and had returned the last of the plates, cups, and other items left on our boat from the party by the end of the day on January 2.
On January 3, David and Virginia from Desire invited us over, and we wound up spending the day with them. It was a lot of fun.
On January 5, we, again, spent the morning on Desire. Then, we headed into town to have lunch at the Lost Penguin. They will be closed after today for a week because there will be a food shortage on the island! The last cold supply boat (vegetables, milk and other fresh stuff) delivered its stuff on December 20. The next boat isn't due until January 10. So, most of the independent restaurants close for a week. The rest of us just do without fresh stuff.
On January 6, our new Ipod arrived. We spent the day playing with it, and loading CDs to it. It is a well programmed, well thought out system. This will enable us to listen to music underway!
On January 7, we varnished early in the morning, then continued copying our CDs on to the computer and evaluating songs for "underway listening ability." We met Precocious Gale and Tween at the Green Dock to go for a pizza party to celebrate Ashley's birthday. Ton and Renata and Susan also joined us. This was the last evening that the pizza place was open until after the next supply boat!
On January 8, we went to the Internet place and uploaded 11 months worth of logs. For one brief shining moment, we were almost caught up on logs. (Now, of course it is April and I am just writing January's log. Oh well)
On January 10, we made ice cream for Susan and Lisa to say thank you for running us around to get various things. It worked out well, since in the afternoon the anchorage got rolly again. We got off the boat and delivered our thank you before heading to the Internet cafe.
Between January 12 and 31, we had a series of disasters on the boat. First, our hard drive died that contained our entire CD collection, and all of our logs, including the freshly written ones for December. We managed to get the computer booted one last time and, fortunately we were able to save our digital photographs and email system. For everything else, the back up was 2 months old. We know better. We kicked ourselves. We cussed. There was great gnashing of teeth. Then, our 12 volt battery bank died. Our DC water pump had died in the Aves, and we were inverting our AC water pump. Now we had no water on the boat unless the generator was on. We needed a new DC water pump, and fast! Then our air conditioning and freezer system raw water cooling pump seized. Then the starboard head quit working again. This is life on a boat. Just when everything is working fine, that light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be an oncoming train! We bought a new DC water pump, amazingly enough the chandlery at Harbor Village Marina had several in stock, and reasonably priced at that! We had spare bearings for the raw water pump for the freezer (which was full of food). Several boats were standing by to store our frozen food for us in case we couldn't get it fixed quickly. And, I fixed the starboard head, which broke within two days. It's time to get new brushes for it.
Voyages