Alex, cool and calm with a chance of showers.
Dear Friends. I have a venting of frustrations that need to be shared. Please Help. Signed, Frustrated in Paradise.
Dear Frustrated in Paradise. How dare you complain when living in Paradise. Signed, Your friends.
****
The bad mood of frustration has settled in, just as deep rooted in our bodies and minds, as it is in hard facted evidence of the never ending exodus of B.O.A.T bucks.
You are familiar with B.O.A.T bucks, aren't you? When talking to fellow cruising friends, about boat repairs or purchases, you might say something like, "Oh, it's only a B.O.A.T. buck or two" and they nod in silent agreement as they bow their heads sympathetic to the dollars spent for living the dream in paradise.
B.O.A.T Buck = "Bring Out Another Thousand"
We knew that after four years of almost no maintenance and hassle free cruising and Living the Dream, that we'd be throwing some serious BOAT bucks into Banyan. We'd planned for it and budgeted for it. Made a list for it.
** And it's always with grateful appreciation that we realize we ARE living our Dream, Adventuring in this wonderful paradise of a world we live in and that we have saved BOAT dollars to spend **
So, with list in hand we've tackled Boat Jobs. And as much as we've taken one small step forward, it feels like we've been landed two giant leaps backward.
** I'm a firm believer in Thoughts become Things and if the path is easy, it's meant to be, and if it's blocked with obstacles, it's not mean to be. So sometimes I wonder at just what path we're meant to be on when even the Universe is conspiring against us, as it has been, for these past few months. **
The WaterMaker. Ah, our trusted and faithful Spectra WaterMaker. We're testing and analyzing and the results are more than confusing. It's a working puzzle wrapped in voltages that's outputting reduced gallons of water that we need to measure per minute.
"Do you have something that we can measure 2.5 gallons per minute in?" asks Dave?
"Hmm, I have a small measuring cup that we could use" I reply. "How many cups in a gallon?"
"Would that be American or Imperial Gallons?" we both wonder and with Google at the Response, I calculate cups to gallons and then wonder as I look at my measuring cup if it's meant to measure a liquid or dry measure.
And for this we went to School, to learn all about Practical World Applications, right? I think my high school science teacher would roll over in his grave, if he saw our array of stackable silicone cups, full up with freshly made water, as the boat gently sways to and fro, rendering an accurate reading almost impossible.
The bushings in the DC motor were gone so we replaced the DC motor. We ordered a new membrane while en route from Staniel Cay to Georgetown and once in Georgetown, learned that it's MUCH easier to deal with brokerage and customs when in Staniel Cay.
And then a two week (TWO WEEK?!) cold front moved it which made sailing back to Staniel Cay impossible.
** During which time we were so pleased to have my sister and brother in law visiting us, and while we might have complained at the coldness of the cold front, they simply laughed at us in great amusement as they showed us photos of their Great White North with five feet of shovelled snowdrifts, which made our paradise look like... Paradise **
Finally we get the Weather, sail back to Staniel Cay with our guests onboard and pick up the parts. Easy Peasy, with WaterMaker Air delivering our WaterMaker Parts. Kind of ironic, don't you think?
In Emerald Cay Marina, hiding from a West Wind, and after the departure of our guests, we rapidly got to work making the minor modifications to our watermarker by removing the Z-brane component of it.
"Look at this" Dave said, holding up the new end cap. They sent us an end cap, with two holes in it. It's the wrong part."
We're driving around Great Exuma in a rental car on a road that just ended and wondering where we were when our phone crackles to life, and with only one signal bar of strength we answer. It's JT says Dave in great surprise. Now JT is our Spectra WaterGURUguy who is on a three week vacation, in some back woods of Florida fishing, and totally inaccessible to our growing frustrations! But he's found some hilltop with cell signal and called to tell us not to panic. We have the right end cap, he confirmed, we're just missing two plastic plugs. Not a problem, he says before we lose the connection, just go to any hardware store....
Roger that. Hardware store? In the Bahamas?
** and in all this incredible frustration, we are immensely grateful that all this transpired on the day we not only had our phone with us, but the volume was on so we heard it ring, AND we had a rental car, so we could get to the hardware store **
** and doubly grateful to be enjoying a great feast of cracked conch lunch at Santana's, where we perused photos of Johnny Depp enjoying the same lunch, at the same place, while filming Pirates of the Caribbean. **
And giggle factor? The reason we had a car? To load up on provisions. Except that, the side trip to the hardware store, delayed our visit to the grocery store, which when we got there, had a big red CLOSED sign on it. Door were shut, there was no shopping because the power was out.
** we are extremely grateful that we had cash in our pockets to be able to go next door to the liquor store where we could purchase some wine and rum to drown our sorrows in **
Back on Banyan, simile plugs installed on the end cap, and new membrane installed in the watermaker we excitedly push the start button. And sigh... gallon output same as before. So now we're back to the heart of the watermaker, the Clark pump. The pump we took out last year, and gave to JT to check, which he did, and said it worked just fine. Dave is ready to take the pump apart and see if it's just a case of a leaky O-ring. Except that, the little bag of expensive O-rings? That's always been in the bag of watermaker spares, that we've carried around with us for four long years? Is nowhere to be found. It's really hard to lose something in 40 feet of space, but trust me when I say we couldn't find it. Somehow, somewhere, we took thrm out, gave the, to JT when we told him to check the pump in the first place, and then forgot to put them back on the boat.
{{ SIGH }}
SSB gremlins. With his fear of heights, sending Dave up the mast is never easy, and sometimes it takes a double shot of rum in very calm conditions to talk him into it. He spent a couple of hours strung up there, way up high, reterminating the ends of the cable and cajoling the wires. End result: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
** who needs to listen to Chris Parker anyways? **
Then there's our Yamaha 8 hp outboard that has driven us up and down the Carribean chain of islands these last few years.
"If it's 6 years old in dinghy years, what does that make it in normal engine years?" I wonder??
Just one week after its warranty was up it started acting up. We had it fixed. And fixed again, and last year it started to slow down, showing signs of confusion.
But as with all things, throwing some money at it got her tuned up, and at the start of this season, she started on the first pull, purred like a kitten, and even planed with both of us in it. For awhile. And then not. And then it became a case of me staying on the boat and sending Dave out with a list of errands.
No more shopping A Deux.
We sighed at the thought of a slightly reduced zoom zoom for us, and figured we could accept Slow is Pro. And then last week, while exploring
Musgrave Creek in Cat Island, she lost all power while in gear.
"We can't explore if we don't have a working dinghy!" which meant we were taking the first set of winds away form our current adventure in Cat Island, and see where they would take us: Georgetown to a repair shop, or Nassau to a new outboard shop.
Somehow the winds took us in between. To Black Point, where we could do some laundry while thinking some more about our options.
** Where we're extremely grateful that we are in a flat calm anchorage, getting our laundry done, and making water at half our usual production of our watermaker, all in paradise. And there's the Carrot Cake you can buy at the Laundromat. And the Fresh Coconut Bread. And we're now planning an adventure to Nassau, somewhere we've not yet been. **
And so here we are battling these invasive gremlins that are currently onboard, unable at the moment to evict them. We keep fixing and jerry rigging and estimating and guesstimating but they keep attacking like some insatiable frenzy of zombiefied gremlins, lunging at our proverbial bucket of Dollars.
Except that this happened the other day.
Even our bucket has a hole in it !!
** We're grateful that we had Duct Tape onboard. Although I used the last bit of it to tape up the hole ** {{ I sigh and kind of giggle as I add both items to the list of things to buy }}