December 29-31, 2004 -- The End of the Year

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!