December 1 - 17, 2004 As is our custom when we anchor the boat, December 1 was a quiet day. We didn't get off the boat while we made sure that the anchors were well set. On December 2, the machine shop that is working on our head pump called to say that our pump is ready. So, we went down to Dakota (a local shopping district outside of Oranjestad) to pick it up. Mind you, this pump weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 pounds! We lugged the pump back to the main street, and then caught a bus back to Oranjestad. During the afternoon, we installed the pump, and finally, we are back to two working heads on the boat! On December 3, since there were so many boats (5) in the anchorage (normally there aren't more than two, us and Yoel - who has been on the island for almost 10 years), we invited everyone over for cocktails. It was a lot of fun. We had two Swedish boats, a Dutch guy and his Venezuelan girlfriend, and Yoel. It was a great evening, and perfect timing, since the Swedish boats are leaving tomorrow for Cartegena! On December 4, I (Bryan) woke up with a sore throat. Actually, I had had a tickle in my throat for a few days, and it worsened, significantly overnight, so for the next few days I took it easy while getting over the sore throat. On December 8, we put up the Christmas lights. This year we decided to string them under the aft hand rail, and then down the gate stanchion. They look really great! After that, we changed Tinky's oil and oil filter, and removed Ling-Ling's sound shield in preparation for investigating the alternator problem that we are having. Our initial thoughts were that the earth ground solenoid had been mis-wired. So, that fix wouldn't be a difficult correction to make. On December 9, we spent many hours examining Ling-Ling. After checking everything we could, we reviewed the wiring diagram. It is our belief that the VCS board controls the alternator field excitation. We are having a problem with our VCS unit, and need to replace it. But up till now, the board has still been working. There is a fuse that could be the problem, but it is extremely difficult to reach. I will have to dismantle half of the capacitor system to check the fuse. So, until I have the time to do that, our temporary solution is to independently charge Ling-Ling's battery. On December 10, our fresh water pump pressure switch died! We switched over to the AC water pump, and started looking to see if we had a spare pressure switch. We didn't, so we then checked the marine store on Aruba. They have the pump, but don't carry any spare parts for it! So, we contacted our mail service and asked them to get us one and then send it with our mail. On December 13, we flushed the cooling system on Ling-Ling, changed her oil and oil filter. We need to purchase a new feeler gauge that is decent, otherwise I would have checked the valve clearance as well. We started working on our list of critical items, necessary items, and wish list items for our future trip to Hawaii. On December 14, Kat asked me to help her set some computer stuff up. So, in the morning, I headed off with her. Just as we were finishing, Mike called me to ask that I return to the boat immediately since we were having a wind reversal, fortunately it turned out to be a mild one. He put out our small stern anchor, which turned out to be all we needed to hold us. December 15 was a frustrating day for us! We went in to the Internet cafe to download some stuff, and to research the broken capacitors on a few chargers. We figured that if we could replace the burned component, we would be up three more chargers! Not only that, but with the additional charging power, none of the chargers will need to work as hard, and hopefully, they won't have the same problem again. After we finished at the Internet cafe, we headed to Radio Shack to look for the capacitors. We talked to the technician there who identified the capacitor, and said that our best hope was to find them at Telestar Electrical. So, we walked from one end of town to the other end of town. The guy at Telestar gave us a couple of capacitors that he thought would work. We brought them back to the boat, and soldered the new components into the boards of the chargers. We hooked them up, and , nothing happened. For what ever reason, the chargers aren't working. On December 16, we took all three chargers in to Telestar. Hopefully they will be able to fix at least one of them, though fixing all three would be ideal. After that, it was back to the Internet cafe. We keep a list of things that we want to get more information on. We managed to go through that list, completely. Now we have lots of things to review. We came home, and I made fudge while Mike worked on sorting out the information we downloaded. On December 17, we went back to the Internet cafe, again. This time, we wanted to upload our web site to a new hosting server. That worked, sort of. The connection from the internet cafe kept cutting out and causing our upload to fail. We sent an e-mail to Liz and she managed to get the site uploaded for us. We had given her a copy of our web site on CD, before she left the Island in case we had trouble getting it uploaded. We also did a few other things as well while we were there before heading off to the grocery store. After we got back to the boat, things got interesting. I Heard from Mom that my brother needed to get in touch with me. We talked for a few minutes, and then She called my brother who, in turn, called me to let me know that our stepmother had passed away. After talking with David, Mike and I headed in to town to get some phone cards so I could make phone calls. After dinner, I called Dad. We spent quite some time talking

On December 18, we, again, went up to the Internet cafe. While Mike did some research and downloading, I ordered flowers for Judy's memorial service. Mike downloaded a program to quickly correct the static link problem on our web site, so when we returned to the boat, we fixed the link problem on our web site, and then spend the afternoon vetting the new vessel application. On December 19, we spent the day quietly. I worked on logs, and played on the computer. December 20 was another quiet day. Mike has been a little under the weather so we didn't do much. On December 21, I could tell that Mike was feeling better. I could tell for a couple of reasons. His appetite is returning, and he is getting restless. So, we started on our food inventory. It wasn't bad. He would read things off to me, and I would enter them in the computer. On December 22, Mike wanted to get off the boat. The final sign that he is feeling better. So, after breakfast, we went into town. We stopped at the Internet cafe and re-uploaded our voyages section. It went smoothly! After that, we wandered around town looking for a few things before coming back to the boat. On December 23, we headed into town, since tomorrow is Christmas eve, and we weren't sure when the stores would close. We stopped by the Internet cafe to get the latest service pack for Vessel, and then we headed to Antraco, the Book/ Stationary/ computer/ kitchen store. We are looking for business card holders. They are what we use for wallets now. We didn't find any, but we did find a new white board for the fridge, and several tubes of 3M's 101! After that, we walked to Super Food. We bumped into Kat, and caught up with her for a few minutes before moving on to Ling & Sons in search of fresh milk. They didn't have any! However, they did have Hershey's Cocoa. So, after buying the cocoa (now I can make more fudge), we checked at the Mega-mall Grocery store for milk. They also did not have any. So, after purchasing the few additional items we needed, we headed back to the boat, and spent the afternoon reviewing the latest updates to Vessel, and Portage Bay's responses to our issues, questions and enhancement requests. On December 24, we started Tink to commence our morning charge. He unexpectedly shutdown. We started him back up and Mike noticed that the oil pressure was awefully low. We checked the oil and discovered that Tink was very low on oil. We removed Tink's sound shield and discovered that his oil pressure sensor started leaking. We will need to order a new one on Monday. We headed in to town to get one of our chargers. Telestar had promised that they would have one ready by Christmas. Unfortunately, they did not have the necessary supplies to repair the them. They have ordered the parts, but the new capacitors won't be in before the new year. So, we headed back to the boat and spent a quiet day. We still had almost a half gallon of milk that was getting old. So, I used it all to make 2 batches of fudge. December 25 - Merry Christmas! After breakfast, we made our holiday calls to family. Not a whole lot else went on. Friends called to see if we wanted to meet them at Jimmy's, so we went out for the evening. December 26 was the day the news reported about the earth quake and Tsunami that hit the countries of the Indian Ocean. Of course, we received an Christmas e-mail from friends who were in Thailand to help two of their friends on a boat move it from there to Greece. As soon as we heard about the Tsunami, we checked the e-mail from them. They were in Phuket! Our second thought was about our friend Jac (who now lives in Margarita). Her family also lives in Phuket. We sent an e-mail to our friends in Phuket to find out if they were OK, if there was anything we could do, and if their friends were OK. The rest of the day was spent quietly, watching TV, movies and, of course, news about the Tsunami affected areas.

We heard back from our friends in Thailand on December 27. They are safe, and their friends are also safe thanks to quick thinking and fast reactions. After breakfast, we went into town to get the necessary stuff to complete the repair to our aft toilet. We returned to the boat, and cut and glued the PVC pipe. While we waited for the glue to dry, we removed the wind screen from the fly bridge so we can sand, caulk and seal the teak trim ring. Once that was done, we split up to work. I headed down to work on the head (Somehow, I have become the shit-house mouse!) While Mike started cleaning and sanding the wood as well as doing laundry. After I pulled the head pump out, I brought it up and began to take it apart. This went fairly easily, and to my relief, the seized bearing was not stuck to the shaft! Then I reassembled the pump with a new bearing, lip seal and stator. About the time I finished, Mike quit sanding for the day. He needs coarser sand paper than we have. So we cleaned up from the repair I made and headed aft to install the new pipe and repaired head pump. We cut the old hose loose, and put the new pipe in place. That was when we discovered that the old pipe must have been slightly out of plain, where the new one we made was in plain. It fit, but just barely! Next, we brought the pump down, and touched up its paint, to help stop rusting. While the paint dried, we took down the last of the laundry. We put the head pump in, hooked it up, primed the system, and then pushed the flush button. The system flushed 3 times, and then it quit working again! Mike thinks the brushes need to be replaced, so tomorrow I will pull the pump out, again, and check the brushes. On December 28, after breakfast, we ran into town to get sandpaper, hose clamps and muratic acid. It was a successful shopping trip. After we returned to the boat, we set to work. Mike continued sanding, and I took a look at why Ling-Ling unexpectedly shut down. Both her raw water belt and the alternator belt were in good shape. I checked the bleed screw on the thermostat housing, and got more oil out. That concerned me, so I crawled out of the engine room and talked with Mike. His only suggestions were to check the water level in the overflow tank, and to check the radiator cap as well. The water was just a tiny bit lower in the overflow tank, and the radiator cap held nothing but clear water! When I saw that, a wave of relief rolled over me. I went back out to confer with Mike. Neither of us could come up with a completely satisfactory reason for why the generator shut down. We finally concluded that it was one of two things. It could be that the temp sender is going bad, or it could be the remaining oil in the cooling system somehow got on the sensor and tripped it. We decided to run her for the evening charge and see how she performs. Then, I was on to my next project. The aft head pump needed more work. So, I pulled the pump out and began disassembling it, again. Sure enough, we needed new brushes for it. Fortunately, we had picked up replacement brushes while we were at Cron Electric. Unfortunately, they were too long and had no mounting holes. So, I cut them down and drilled the necessary holes, and fit them back into the pump. I put it back together, tested it and then reinstalled it. I primed the pump, and holding my breath, I pushed the flush button. It worked! I flushed the toilet several times and then poured muratic acid in to treat the system for calcium build up. While the muratic acid did its work, I showered. I finished about the same time we needed to flush the toilet again. I flushed the toilet 4 or 5 times to completely evacuate the muratic acid. Then the unthinkable happened! I pushed the flush button one last time, and nothing happened! The pump has to come out again! It was bad enough when It was two in two days, now it will be three in three days! Hopefully it will be something easy and the head will work again, and stay fixed. The day ended on a positive note at least. We ran Ling-Ling with no problem!

December 29 was a good and bad day. We continued sanding. However, I noticed that our electric sander wasn't sanding well. Mike tried it and agreed. It was only 8 years old. After discussing what to do, we finally decided to price a new sander at Kooyman. If we found one at a reasonable price, we would purchase it. We went into town and took a bus to Dakota, then walked to Kooyman. We priced out sanders, and test ran the three we were interested in, finally settling on a Makita that has a sand dust collector. We started walking back to Oranjestad, and discovered that Kooyman is "walkable". It's a long walk, but certainly doable. On the way back, we were side tracked by Burger King, where we stopped for lunch before returning to the boat. Once we got back, we broke out the new sander. What a difference it made! The fly bridge cap rail actually may look good when we are done! Mike wasn't feeling well, so he went inside while I finished removing the caulk and sanding the top of the rail. He came back when I was done to apply a paste of sand dust and epoxy to the places in the wood that are cracked. December 30 was another work day. After breakfast and before I started working, I called Jac. We found out from her that her family lives 10 minutes from the beach in Phuket, they came through the Tsunami OK as well. We waited before calling her, to give her the opportunity to reach them. First I sanded down the patches that we did on the fly bridge cap rail. I was actually impressed by how it turned out. After cleaning up the dishes from lunch, I went back to work. I taped the fiberglass and then sanded the edges of the cap rail by hand. Of course that was the only way to sand them! It went quickly and when I was done, I removed the tape and retaped in preparation to caulk. Caulking was both more difficult and easier than I thought it would be. There were more places on the inside that I could not reach with the caulk gun. But I was able to get everywhere on the outside. Mike followed me around with paper towels while I smoothed the caulk. By the time I was done I had as much 101 on me as I did on the cap rail, so I headed for the showers. On December 31, we were all ready to put the first coat of varnish on the cap rail. However, it was rainy, so we modified our plans a bit. After removing the upper layer of caulking tape, we headed off to the grocery store. While we were shopping, Rasheda called to let us know that we have a package at the marina office. We finished our shopping, and headed back to the marina, where I picked up the package, Tink's new oil pressure sensor, and then we headed out to the boat. By the time we got back out to the boat, I was definitely not feeling well. Still there was work to be done, so, after putting away the cold stuff, we did the necessary touch up sanding, and applied a coat of varnish to the cap rail. We came back in, and entered all of the dry goods into Inventory. Part way through I started entering the prices and when we were done, I went back and entered prices for all of the stuff we bought, including the "un-inventoried" stuff and stuff in the refrigerator. Even though Mike still wasn't feeling well, he insisted on installing Tink's new oil pressure sensor, so we could run Tink for the evening charge. He took care of the installation while I relaxed. I wasn't sure we were going to be up to going out for the evening, so as a precaution I took a nap before getting up to fix dinner. Dinner was Chicken Fajitas with home made tortilla shells and home made salsa. Then, we showered and headed out to Jimmy's. I wasn't feeling great, but I wanted to get off the boat. I drank Vodka and Orange Juice all night, and I started feeling better. We saw many, many people we know and I was glad we went out. Vodka and O.J. is a miracle drink!