After a day of hard work, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner at Cheers and then spend the evening at our favorite bar. So, we headed into town and tried three different ATM machines before finally giving up. We had sufficient funds for dinner, but that was all for the evening. We returned to the boat. We found out later that all ATM transactions had been blocked, so the only way to get money, for the moment, was to go into the bank.
We continued working to repair the problems that happened while we were on the hard. On March 3, we put the wind generator up to help with our 12 volt problems, since we still did not have sufficient charging. We still needed to get the secondary support, for when the boat moves, but this was a big plus.
We worked for the rest of the week on various projects, some of which went wonderfully, some of which failed miserably. We tried to rebuild one of our head pumps, but unfortunately, they could not get the windings and brushes right, so it didn't work. So, we sighed and set about ordering new head pumps.
On Sunday, March 9, we went to Gary and Josefina's for a wonderful lunch of Pabellon. Mary Dawn and Paul from Tao and their son who was visiting from the United States also joined us. It was a great afternoon making new friends and visiting with old friends.
On Monday, March 10, Pat and Jim on Lady M III arrived. They caught a 45 pound Yellow Fin Tuna on the way to Porlamar and offered us some. "Some" wound up being a side of fish! It was enough for the two of us to eat on for a week or more.
We fell into a work routine and kept our heads down, our hands busy, and our eyes on the list of work. We knew that Precocious Gale was due back soon, but we were still surprised when we received a call on March 16 announcing that they were back from Europe. We quickly made plans to meet for breakfast in the morning.
On March 17, we spent the morning at breakfast with the Precocious Gales and swapping tales of events. They just returned from a trip to London and Florence, with a stop in Miami to do some shopping. We bought bottom paint for them, as well as some other items that can't be found here, and they bought us some Habenero sauce and 2 galvanized chain hooks. None of these items are available on the island.
After our brief diversion, we went back to work again until March 21 when we had Gary and Josefina and Jimmy and Willie over for dinner. It was a smashing success! I made flan for the first time, and it turned out wonderful.
Then, on March 22, The Precocious Gales came back to the anchorage. We had them and the Lorelais and Merlin over for a tex-mex dinner of Beef and chicken tacos. Mind you, they are all from Texas. The best comment of the evening was when Sherrie said that she knew many tex-mex restaurants that would be brought to tears by how good the food was! It was another wonderful evening!
The rest of the month was again spent working on the boat. The list was quickly growing smaller.