Day 78, Boat jobs & hookah.
03 June 2012 | Providencia, Columbia
Mark
Saturday, June 2. Deb was having a hard time waking up this morning so I said, No problem, take as long as you want. I have some boat jobs to do and we can go diving this afternoon instead of this morning. With that, I crawled into the port engine room to remove the ETD from the watermaker one more time. I've done this enough I should be getting good at it. I did tie the hatch open this time last time a gust of wind blew it down on my head. If it hadn't wonked me on the head, it might have shut all the way and latched me inside until I could get Deb to let me out! Anyway, I got the ETD out and then hooked up for the pressure relief recirculating. Then I went down in the port aft berth and cleared the mattress and got down to the intake pump. I could not get the hose off the pump, so I took the hose off the intake strainer and used that to attach the new intake hose that would go in the bucket of solution. I fed the discharge hose from the ETD and the pressure relief hose down into the bucket as well. With this setup, I ran cleaning solution through the whole system for an hour and then rinsed it for another 15 minutes. Then I changed it to overboard discharge and flushed the system. Finally I ran the metabisulfate pickling solution through the system and disconnected the ETD and sealed the membrane in the pickling solution. Now I just have to decide if I try to carry the ETD back to the US and ship it from there or just ship it from Panama. Don't have to worry about that until we get back. For our afternoon dive, we went with Lorenzo & Joyce out to the North side of Santa Catalina where I had remembered some nice coral that we did not dive because of an abundance of the tiny jellies that we did not realize at that time were not stinging. Today there were only a few of them. Initially the coral was covered with algae and disappointing, but as we went further along, it became much healthier and more interesting. The fish were nothing like yesterday's (I have NEVER seen anything like that!), but were good. At one point I had two angels who were so interested in me that I backed up onto the sand and just sat there and let them swim around me for several minutes. I could swear they were looking me in the eye! The we found a fish trap that had an angel and a queen parrot fish in it. Deb & Joyce were determined to free them and attacked the trap with abandon eventually prying up on edge enough that the fish could swim out if they were smart enough to try. I felt ambivalent about the whole thing. After all, this was somebody's property they were destroying, but fish traps are illegal so.... In any event, by the time we swam back by the trap on our return, the angel had gotten out but the parrot fish was still inside. Maybe eventually she will smarten up too. We turned back when Joyce & Lorenzo's tanks were half gone. That seems to work well. At these shallow depths, they are getting a bit over an hour out of each tank and that is a long enough dive anyway. On the way back, Deb & I swung over to the red nun #4 and looked at the reef that it guards. It looks pretty promising and I think there is a drop to a channel on one side, maybe a wall, maybe not. We'll see tomorrow. Tonight is the crowning of Miss Providencia. Can you believe that the candidates are 14 & 15 years old? And look like their clothes came from Sluts 'R' Us? Oh well, Columbian culture. We didn't go.