Another couple of days have passed that we have spent hurrying up and waiting. We have been filling our days with mundane things like topping up our grocery stores and doing laundry loads. Gerry has been searching for jobs to do to fill his time, including assisting a couple of dock neighbors. On Tuesday morning (19th), he, along with neighbor Dan, helped Kirk, another neighbor, to put his Yankee sail back in place after removing it for storage some time ago. The three of them had picked a good time to do it as there was no wind and very few people in the peanut galley watching proceedings. It took a whole heap of spraying, feeding the sail into the track, hauling up a foot or so and then dropping the sail back down again and repeating. It seemed to get stuck a few times but they persevered and finally the sail was at the top of the forestay ready for furling away. A few turns of the halyard on the winch and the Yankee was successfully furled away. It took longer than it should have due to the sticking but the three amigos patted themselves on the back for job well done. Gerry then went over to Gypsy Palace to give Dale a hand with some of his ongoing preparations, not the least of which is trying to sort out how to get his weather program to talk to the rest of his electronic stuff. Meanwhile I wasted the afternoon updating the blog and trying to load some photos into the gallery, don't waste too much time checking it out as I've found the internet connection so intermittent that I gave up as it was taking up far too much time. I'll try again when my patience returns.
Wednesday morning (20th) saw Gerry up bright and early, despite the cold start to the day, as he had promised to assist Dan with turning his boat around in the slip, unloading his old anchor chain onto the dock, loading the new anchor chain onto the boat and then turning the boat back around to its original position of stern to. Gerry also beat the rush for the washing machines and put a wash load on before 8 am. When I finally surfaced I did my bit and went to fold the laundry and drag it back to the boat but was met by Gerry with the car and dragged off to do a run by Wal Mart as Gerry had finally spat the dummy with our coffee machine which had sprung a leak which wasn't fixable. As anyone who knows Gerry and I will be aware we couldn't possibly manage without a coffee machine. Of course a trip to Wal Mart is just an open invitation to fill up the shopping cart with all those things that we just couldn't manage without and we came home with a whole heap of bags of stuff, mostly groceries so we won't starve. We immediately commissioned the new coffee machine, an updated version of the one that we had just thrown out, it works so we won't be too bad tempered in the mornings.
Gerry asked Dale to assist with hauling him up the mast in the afternoon as he wanted to check the wind indicator was working properly because it seemed slower than some of the boat around us. Dale obliged and handled the winching bit, though Gerry made it easy on him by climbing the mast steps. It's a long climb as the mast head is 72 foot above the waterline. I supervised and took photos, as Gerry checked it out, sprayed it and made sure it was turning. Dan joined in the supervision and pointed out the bits of cleaning that Gerry missed on the spreaders as he was cleaning them on the return to the deck. We had invited both Dale and Dan over for dinner, Gerry was cooking his world famous Spaghetti bolognaise. Unfortunately about half an hour before they were due to arrive Dale called to bail out as the cold he had been brewing all day was getting the better of him and he was going to bed early. It wasn't a problem, we would just have to eat and drink a bit more to make up for his absence. We spent a pleasant evening chatting with Dan and eating too much.
That brings us to today the 21st. Dale called and said that he had laundry to do and did we want to make an outing of it and go across to Hutchison Island where there is a laundry next door to Daves Diner, a place we have frequented for breakfast a few times. We didn't have too much that needed washing as we had done most of it yesterday, however we managed to find enough sheets and towels to warrant a load. The three of us drove the short distance and set the washing machines into action then went next door and had breakfast whilst the machines did their work. The worst bit was once we had finished breakfast we had to wait until the laundry was dry before we could return to the dock, such a hardship!
The rest of our day was spent sorting out places to re fuel in Miami as we have a 6foot 6inch draft we need to be sure that the mean low tide at any fuel dock is deep enough for us not to get stuck. Then it was another check on the weather for the next few days as it looks like we have an opportunity to get underway on Sunday morning, its looking promising so we did a bit more fresh food stocking up and checked out where the local customs and border control office is as I, at least, have to check out of the country before we take off.
Gerry and Dan had a comparison of relative wind readouts and decided that ours was working well enough not to keep worrying about if it was working or not.
The ship's cat napper (AKA as Priss) is doing a sterling job of sleeping for most of the hours of each day, interspersed with short forays out into the cockpit but she hasn't left the safety of said cockpit as yet. Each new noise and sight is treated with the suspicion it deserves and Priss tends to retreat below deck pretty quickly when startled. We have had a bit of a win with her food, she has decided that the fish pate is acceptable and gobbled the entire tin yesterday, possibly because she was finally hungry enough to eat whatever we put down, but a win is a win.
We have just finished dinner, Dale joined us tonight but ate and ran as his cold has developed into a horrid hacking cough and he needs to rest up so that he is OK for Lorie's return tomorrow. There is a rubbish movie on TV tonight so we are going to have an early night ourselves.