Year 10 Day 117 Provisioning
24 May 2017 | Simpson Bay Marina, Cole Bay, Sint Maarten
Dave/Mostly Sunny
This morning we rented a little car and did some errands. First, we dropped our 15 pound propane tank off at the fill station. We have 5 propane tanks which hold a total of 90 pounds of propane. This usually lasts us a year. This particular tank was the one that had been feeding our oven and stove and with all of the cooking Mary Margaret has been doing, we wanted to top it up. Since our propane tanks will be useless in Europe (we have read that they use Camping Gaz that are supplied in much smaller containers) we wanted to leave with as much propane as we can carry. We will need to switch to Camping Gaz once we arrive in Europe and run out of propane.
When we dropped the propane bottle off, we were told to come back on Friday since tomorrow is a holiday. In fact, we later learned that both the diesel tech and the riggers will not return to Leu Cat until Friday because of the holiday. Furthermore, it is iffy on the diesel tech because of how backed up he is. At least our engine part is here and, if we keep our fingers tightly crossed for good luck, we may have it installed on Friday. We will just have to wait and see.
After dropping the propane bottle off we headed over to Philipsburg where Le Grande Marche is located. $350 later, our little car was packed with goodies that will keep us happy until we cross the Atlantic and reach Spain.
After returning to Leu Cat and putting away the goodies, I then ran a few more errands with the car. Recently, we watched some YouTube videos on Med mooring techniques. We have been told this is the predominant way boats tie up in the marinas in the Med. We have only done Med mooring a few times in the 10 years of sailing so we wanted to watch and learn more on perfecting this technique. As with all docking, when the wind is not blowing, it looks to be easy-peasy. However, one video showed a boat Med Mooring in 20 knots of cross wind and it is very ugly. Fortunately, the captain was smart as he had lots and lots of fenders on both side of his boat. This helped him avoid some serious damage to both his boat and the other boat the wind kept blowing him in to. This video convinced us that we needed some more fenders. Thus, off I went to Island Water World.
We had 7 fenders on Leu Cat so I bought 3 more to allow us to have 5 per side. Hopefully, this will be enough to help protect Leu Cat from any significant damage if we have to Med moor in high winds.
While was I gone, Mary Margaret got another urge to cook. Thus, I was rewarded with a snack of her delicious Baba ghanoush. Scooped using her homemade seed crackers, I was in seventh heaven!