Tuesday October 1, 2019
Working day at the dock for us today, but first, the milk that we brought with us went off so we had to head into the little town grocery store. It was either a Quickie-Mart on steroids or a grocery store that hadn't grown up yet. It did sell tobacco, wine and spirits though which was a bit of a surprise. We also stopped off at the Pier View Restaurant for breakfast. Nothing fancy. Like a poached egg for me but Barb went with an omelette that came with a kind of sausage that we had never heard of - a linguica which turns out to be a sort of Portuguese sausage that is very popular in these parts and I can understand why. The sample that Barb permitted me to try was delicious. We are going to buy some if we can find them in the grocery store to augment our pasta sauce recipes.

Like the character Fagin sand in the movie "Oliver", "I'm reviewing, the situation.....". Only in my case it was about the propane delivery to the boat's propane devices. I gave it a great deal of thought and realized that the solenoid shutoff valve is normally closed and opens when it is provided with 12VDC. The detector is simply a device that sits in between the 12V source and he solenoid and is controlled by a sensor which is down in the bilge. The sensor detects the presence of propane and when you try to open the solenoid valve it says, "Nuh uh! No you ain't either!" And will not allow the 12V to be connected to the solenoid. To make sure that the problem was with the detector I bypassed it and sent the 12V directly to the solenoid. Everything worked perfectly which indicates to me that there was nothing wrong with the solenoid. So, we have ordered a new detector and sensor to replace the one that we have. It will arrive tomorrow AM.

Also, I began to investigate why the shower sump (that's the pump the evacuates the water from beneath your feet after you have had a shower) wasn't working. All you do is flick a switch and the water goes over the side. I managed to get the switch off and bring the wires down so I could look at it and guess what? We found yet another manifestation of the attack of the mud dauber wasps from Indiantown. I posted a photo on today offering. That's what was behind the vanity bulkhead. A mud dauber concrete nest that neatly bridged between the two contacts. We should be able just get a new switch and away we go. Hot showers aboard again.

Also, today we got to meet the CBP Officer Furtado who has been helping us through our arrival and in clearance. He arrived at Nelleke accompanied by a fellow officer whose name I can't recall (inserted by Barb - it was Stevenson) My apologies to him. They were both what any country would hope all of their customs agents were like - helpful, polite, friendly... we had a long chat and heard about their challenges and got them to answer a lot of questions that we have about cruising the US coast and following the CBP tiles while we do it. I hope we always have this positive experience with customs with any country we visit.

We also went on the prowl for sail repair material and found a business in Marian called Harding Sails who were kind enough to sell us 50' of Dacron sail tape and 2' of webbing which will allow Barb to work her magic and fix our favourite jib. I will be her extra hands to help with this tomorrow.

Meanwhile, last night we found Manitoba Hal on the internet and downloaded a couple of his albums and have been listening to him in our cabin while we're relaxing. A nice taste of Shelburne!

By mid afternoon, after much to-ing and fro-ing it didn't appear that we had accomplished much of anything. However, I feel that the really challenging stuff is figuring out what went wrong and coming up with a solution to fix it and that is exactly what I think we were able to accomplish with what we did today with the propane delivery system, the one major item that makes life a little more like home. I also adjusted the self steering control pulls, got our watches on local time, hooked up the second monitor so it wouldn't fall down as well as finally cleared customs and got our cruising permit.

We are cooking our own diner aboard tonight now that we have an operational stove and tomorrow AM I won't have to go outside to boil the kettle.

Our plan for tomorrow is for Barb to help me up the mast to pull down the roller furling hoist car if the wind has died down, and then we will go back to the boat store to get the propane sensor we ordered and also some new taps and washers for the sinks. Then I will quickly install the sensor and help Barb with the sail repairs. It will be a busy day.