One always turns up when you need it
02 October 2014 | Curacao
Jane
I have two men in my engine room. Well, two men’s heads in my engine room and two male posteriors sticking out of the engine room. After about possibly, really, it must be, at least 3 months, our engine is still being fixed. One day when I have the strength I will write the saga.
I’m sure Curacao is a lovely place but we’re both heartily sick of it and want to go, we really really want to go. We’ve been round the island in a car and we’ve been around the island in a van and we’ve walked a lot of it too. The salt lakes and flamingos are astonishing. Flamingos are truly weird birds. For a start there’s the colour, orange, not pink, then there’s the beak hmm and the long skinny legs that bend the wrong way. More like a dinosaur than a bird or an old old lady still wearing her feather boa to totter off elegantly with her friends to the tea dance . It’s all very lovely but we’re ready for our trip to Colombia.
Fixing anything on the boat, and there’s always something to fix means everything is in turmoil. Every day I’ve had to strip the bed, remove the mattresses and Tony carries them into the forward cabin. The engine room is next to our heads. Both doors are off the heads to make access easier but this means no door so we have to use the other heads but these are now half blocked by the mattresses so I have to juggle my way round them and fight my way out again. It gets pretty tedious after a while. This morning I had my Spanish lesson with Ronnie and came back to find the bilges full of water, fresh water. Our water boat lady has been on holiday for 3 weeks and we’ve been really careful with the water, showering with a litre and washing up with sea water so I was a tad upset when I saw gallons of it in the bilge. Anyway I cleaned it up and at least they’re shiny clean and we know what happened so try and look on the bright side Jane. I was feeling well and truly p***ed off and ready for a cry when Joe, (Joe’s Boat Works) looks up at me, he’s on his hands and knees looking into the engine room, and asks me if he can have a fiddle. ‘’Can I have a fiddle’’ he repeats. Joe is known almost worldwide for his flirtatious manner. He was completely innocent and a little surprised when my face of woe burst out into quite hysterical laughter.
A good laugh always turns up when you really need one.
And if you’re wondering he was searching for the word funnel.