I would be remiss if I have been giving you all with the impression that this odyssey has been a walk in the park (or a beam reach sail, as it were). Boaters reading this know anyway, but without much going on today, I thought I'd take you on a walk down memory lane to an event of a few weeks ago.

Moonbeam's freezer, like most boat freezers, requires defrosting...much like the freezers of the 1950's....and it's pretty much done the same way. When the freezer doesn't seem to be working as efficiently as we would like, we check the freezing plate for frost build-up, and if that's the case, we empty the freezer, attach a hose to the faucet, and spray hot water on the plate until the ice melts.

Right after we left Barcelona, we decided the freezer needed some attention. Once that activity was completed, we checked the refrigerator plate to see if it needed defrosting, as well. It did not. In fact, unexpectedly, there was no frost on it. The thermometer showed a high temperature, but for some time, we felt that the temperature gauge was not giving us accurate readings. The food was keeping well and the drinks were cold enough. Nevertheless, there should be some frost. Ken sent me out to check the cooling discharge to make sure there was water running freely. There was none. Uh-oh. This is not good. The system uses water to cool the fridge and freezer, and it should go in through one through-hull circulate, and come out the other.

Ken opened the access to the innards of the system, removed the hose, and...it was totally clogged. How to best unclog it? As most people who have been on Moonbeam know, we have EVERYTHING on board. (Every time a crew member asks if we have something..invariably, we have it: Cuisinart, toaster oven, electric mixer. The only time we came up short was when our friend, Becky asked if we had an ice cream maker) Back to the problem at hand: a chopstick (yes, of course we have chopsticks) was the perfect tool to unclog the hose. What was clogging the hose? Enough escargots to feed a small French nation for a month. They obviously accumulated during the ten days Moonbeam was in the harbor in Barcelona, since I had seen the water flowing quite nicely when we first arrived. Truth to tell, if I were a snail in that harbor, I would have sought asylum somewhere, anywhere, even if it was in a refrigeration hose. Once cleaned out (good job, Captain Ken!) and put back, the water ran freely and all was well. However, the gauge still registered a high temperature. Hmmmmm. Detective Ken got back on the case. He checked the temperature knob in the fridge. It was on the highest setting. Because of its location in the fridge, it is easy to turn it as we store things...and, the natural direction would be turning it to a higher setting. So...here's a lesson: If a gauge doesn't show a good reading, check out everything before assuming it's just a bad reading. And, like with health issues, there is often more than one cause for a problem.

So...you're probably wondering why we have a pic of paella on this blog. First of all, we didn't have a new pic today. Secondly, all of this talk about the snails reminded me of a wonderful paella we had last month. And thirdly, since we are in Spain, I thought this would give you the flavor of the country. (OK...you can groan now.) No worries. We didn't put the snails in the paella. We returned them to the sea....in cleaner waters.