Wednesday 9 December 2020

A beautiful, if nippy, day in south Florida. Ran generator this morning for recharging batteries with heater on to allow Princess to unhibernate from beneath doona without freezing her niblets. After enjoying a wonderfully cosmopolitan dinner last night with European couple from SV Amalia (representing five different countries counting the Irish pub) they came over for coffee this morning. With brand new negative virus test, time limited by Bahamas, they're planning departure this afternoon to clear into Spanish Cay beginning a three to six month visit. For no discernible good reason Brits get six months and Portuguese get only three. As is often true with cruising mates, may see them again somewhere, sometime, either in Bahamas or US next spring or where and when we least expect - typifying one of the enjoyable aspects of not allowing barnacles to grow on your bottom and making friends with others who don't either.

Monday

Many repair and maintenance items are on a list to be accomplished. These issues would likely be attended to eventually, but before then more critical problems always seem to crop up. For example, changing oil in the outboard motor lower unit is past due, but then the engine refused to run. That had to be fixed, right? Autopilot requires recalibrating, but then steering cable broke and we're awaiting parts. Hatch gaskets need replacing, but... OK, that's just laziness. You get the point though, right? One retires so one won't have to work as hard as one once did. This is not quite proceeding as one might have envisioned.

Speaking of steering parts, they should have arrived Friday and we expect shortly to be scheduled for replacement. Since between high and low tides water roars past at fifty knots (slight hyperbole) hope to get a little advance notice so that with compromised steering we can flounder onto dock during slack. Meantime outboard engine is purring like a kitten and lower unit is properly lubed up to its little eyeballs. Fear not however, in case anyone is apprehensive of a newfound industriousness, most hatches remain unregasketed, stainless is mostly unpolished and some stains on chalky deck gelcoat persist. It's rather dismaying how amenable one gets to crap that would previously have mortified and befouled with shame.

Jack & Jan