I’m pretty certain I mentioned earlier on this blog that the definition of Cruising is fixing your boat in exotic places. We finally feel like we have qualified! We know our water pump is dead, and we have a replacement coming, but today we found another worrisome problem. We discovered our water tank is leaking. Our tanks are under the floor boards in our main cabin. To get to them we need to lift the floor, including the center table, up and out of the way. That of course means moving everything around, but then living on a boat means we do that every day anyhow. Once Bill got one of the inspection panels open on the water tank he could see that it had been patched before. We needed to get all the water out of the tank and clean the debris from the bottom. We tried to get the water out with a couple of the hand pumps we had on board but it was slow work. Bill had seen a man on his sailboat at the next marina and we walked over to see if maybe he had a larger pump. He did and was happy to lend it to us. We stayed and talked to him and his wife for a bit and ended up agreeing to have dinner together to celebrate his birthday. When we got back to the boat the pump we borrowed worked great – it made it a lot easier to clear out the tank. Bill went to the little general store by our marina and bought some special epoxy to patch the tank and shoved his hand in the tank to use it. By tomorrow we will know if the patch works and if the tank will hold water again. We know that is on our list to replace when we get back to Annapolis in May.

The couple we were having dinner with had told us that they feed the sharks around 5pm every night on the dock near the restaurant. The restaurant is called The Big Game Club and they are well equipped to catch huge fish. The picture is of the head of a large Wahoo they had caught, and one of six sharks that were trying to get the food. It was definitely fun to watch.

We are trying to be creative on ways to live without running water until our pump comes on Monday. Hopefully we can put water back in the tank tomorrow and use the foot pump on the galley sink to wash the dishes that are piling up. We also are going to fill up some jugs we have right from the watermaker. Hopefully everything will work out OK and nothing else will seriously break before we get back to the US!