A trip to town, Laundry, cleaning our chain again.
25 August 2017 | Spanish Waters, Curacao
Bill/Partly cloudy
Yesterday, Wednesday was another busy day. I needed to go back to Willemstad and top up our internet again but this time, I was going to head out to the main office and by pass the store that's downtown. Better service and I still needed to find out why I can't connect to a website I used to be able to, at least on Digicel. On other ISPs, I have no problem getting through. We also have some friends that are having a package sent in and it's been lost an their time allotment here in Curacao is only for 90 days(just like ours) and that ends on September 5th. I'd planned on stopping in at Immigration and see what I could find out for them.
I took the 0900 bus(showed up at 0915) and headed in. Once in town, I hiked over to the Immigration office that's clear over across the river and up the channel. It's a good walk and I needed the exercise. Once there, I had a nice chat with one of the officers and explained the problem. She wanted the name of the boat, Iidress so she could look it up. Ten minutes later, no luck finding it so I gave her one of the names of the people on board. That did the trick and I found out I'd spelled the name wrong. According to them, the name is Lidress. Nope, I got it right but when they entered it into the computer, they couldn't understand anyone having a name that starts with the same letter. In Finland, where they are from, I guess it's common. I didn't bother to correct her. She explained that I actually needed to go to the main Immigration Office and that was back in town, across the street from Mc Donalds so back I went only to find that a freighter was exiting and the bridge was retracted. Off I took to catch the ferry that runs when the bridge is closed. Once I got to Immigration, I got in line(twenty people ahead of me) and waited eventually getting to another of their officers who assigned me a number(8 ahead of me)so I could talk to another agent. After a short wait, I was shown in when my number came up and had a nice chat with another agent. As far as they were concerned, there would be no exemptions for our friends even though their delay wasn't their fault since they didn't loose the package. Now it might show up and it might not, only time will tell but I came back with some forms for them to fill out and now they knew where they actually had to go.
As it was now 1140, I decided to have lunch at Subway before heading out on my next trip, Digicel. This time, I only had to take one extra bus getting there just after 1200. I got everything topped up and still no answer as to the website I've been trying to access. Off for the next bus for Napa to see about their batteries and a stop at ZAP, another store that sells batteries as well. I got off the bus at Napa only find then closed between 1200 and 1330 so with some time to kill, I quickly found ZAP but they only carry the Trojan T105 that while we really like them we can't spend our money so so outrageously priced batteries(twice what we paid four years ago). I was done with ZAP by 1300 and walked around the corner to Van Den Trell to pick up just a few thing(had the time since Napa was still closed). With a bag in hand from what I bought , I hiked over to Napa and they were finally open. Not much in six hold batteries but a different one than what the last Napa showed me. By now, I'd missed the 1330 bus so I grabbed another small bus back to the main bus station and got on the 1430 bus for heading home.
I've been trying to set up a pickup and delivery service for the cruisers here in Spanish Bay for laundry. They've been taking it on a bus, dropping it off and then going back the next day to get it. While it's a nice service, this one will pick up and deliver it right to the dinghy dock and the detergent they use has no perfumes in it. I'd talked to other cruisers about it and everyone love the idea. I talked about it on the morning net yesterday and two boats said they like to use it. I got on line with Skype and called the laundry and they would meet us right at the dock on Thursday morning. All set. I radioed back the boats that had interest but couldn't raise anyone till this mornings net where one of the boats decided that they didn't have enough clothes to use it so we were down to just two boats from three, us and one more. I did finally get a call from Serenity that they would like theirs done also. As I was going in to drop off ours, I picked up their on my way in. Should be back tomorrow.
Once the laundry was taken care of, I zipped back to Zephyr as I needed to scuba down and clean our anchor chain again as we need to leave the harbor and empty our black water tanks again. When I returned, Tracy had all the equipment ready to go. All I needed to do was put on my swim suit. I climbed into my diving gear, fell over the side of the boat and into the water. Tracy handed me a stiff brush and down I went. This time, a lot less growth and easier to clean. Didn't take long and now the chain is much cleaner and won't stink up the boat tomorrow when we pull it aboard. We're set to go out and pump out our black water tanks.