28th November continued



RIP. KAREN GUSTAFSON, WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE KNOWN YOU, OUR THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOUR FAMILY AT THIS SAD TIME.



Where was I when I left off? Oh, that's right we had checked in to Palm Cay Marina, topped our fuel tanks up and tied up on the T head, been cleared in by customs and Gerry had pulled the muffler out and found the split in it where water was leaking out. As predicted the next step was to open as many cupboards and lockers as possible to locate all the tools and equipment necessary to facilitate fixing the darn thing. Luckily, we had a pretty good idea where all the stuff would be located so it wasn't too much of a drama. With the muffler and one very nosey cat out in the cockpit Gerry roughly sanded around the split, wiped it with acetone to degrease and clean it then applied some fast setting epoxy putty pushing it into the split as much as possible without increasing the size of the split. Once the putty had gone off he cut a couple of ribbons of fiberglass tape to a size big enough to cover the area and wrap around the seam these were then set in place with slow curing epoxy resin and left in the cockpit to cure. Somewhere during this process Priss managed to get her nose close enough to be covered in black gunk which she didn't like having removed.
Whilst Gerry was doing the muffler I sat very quietly in the salon, typing the last blog and being his "goffer". With the muffler at the stage of nothing else to do until it was cured it was time to have a wine, followed by dinner, a shower, watch a movie and eventually bed.
A few words about the Marina are in order here. It is a very nice one, with a fair-sized charter fleet of catamarans and not so many transient sailors from what we could tell. The waterway is crystal clear, the fuel dock, along with the dock master's office are the very first places that you come across as you make your way into the marina. The dock master and helpers were at the dock ready to help us tie up alongside and made the process seamless. A word of warning though, there is a shallow spot in the middle of the fairway near the fuel dock which needs to be steered around if like us, you have a greater than 6foot draft, we successfully avoided grounding the boat so all was well. Dockage here is at $3 per foot, water @ 30cents per gallon and power on top of that. There are nice clean toilets right next to the dockmaster's office along with a small cafŽe/shop that serves Starbucks coffee, ice cream and essential provisions such as chips, soap and tourist souvenirs. At the back of this block there is a shower block where you can have Hollywood showers (would recommend wearing of flip flops), a laundry with 3 washing machines and 2 driers (washer $1.50, drier $1), there is a restaurant which we haven't tried as yet, a swimming pool @ $10 per day, a spa and a gym - neither of which we will be setting foot in! There is a dock car which you can book for free in blocks of 2 hours and about a mile up the road is a supermarket for replenishing stores, we haven't taken advantage of the car as we haven't needed any more chocolate as yet!
The only downside to being in this marina is that there is no view of the sea so I have been unable to take my sunset photos, no doubt the green flash has happened whilst I have been unable to view it!



29TH November

Weather: cool, overcast, but pleasant. Wind gusts in the marina of up to 20knots. Waves N/A

Our day started with having the obligatory Hollywood shower, using the marina's water rather than ours - good hot shower, but as I said in the previous post we would recommend the wearing of flip flops. We made our way to the cafeŽ and enjoyed coffee and muffins as the only customers for about half an hour then the peace was disturbed by a loud family, it was time to go back to our boat and get on with fixing stuff, after all, I guess we are in an exotic place?!
Back on the boat Gerry inspected the muffler "fix", finding that the fiberglass and epoxy resin had cured but he wasn't happy with how it looked as the ribbon of fiberglass wrap hadn't flexed enough to form a tight seal. Then to prove a point he put water inside the muffler and sure enough there was a small, but evident, leak through the fix. There were a few sailor speak type words which were followed by some out loud thinking about what to do now. Out came the Dremel and Gerry began to shave away the fiberglass. It was at this point that I decided to take our laundry plus the computer ashore and make myself scarce for a while - a good choice!
Whilst I made sure that our clothes were clean and did a bit of blogging, Gerry, with Priss as his assistant, set about refining the repair job to the muffler, this time cutting smaller pieces of fiberglass and layering them over the split without wrapping them around the edge. Once the epoxy resin had been reapplied all he could do was watch and wait for it to cure, hopefully this time it would create a good seal. Then he was on to the next job that needed attention, the rewiring of the main bilge pump followed by the putting in of a 3-way switch and a dedicated power supply for the fridge cooling water pump. We needed the dedicated power supply to the fridge pump to enable us to circulate acid through the compressor to remove scale build up which Gerry thought was causing the overheating problem.
I returned to the boat with our freshly laundered clothes just on lunchtime and prepared a feast fit for a king (or a couple of hunger sailors). Once we were finished with lunch it was time to get back onto the fridge cooling issue. A bucket was converted to allow an acid solution to be pumped around the fridge cooling system. The bucket was connected to the pump which in turn was connected to the compressor and the hose from the compressor was returned to the bucket, giving us a closed circuit to pump the acid through. The acid was then circulated through the system for about an hour after which the solution turned cloudy with dissolved scale. The system was returned to normal running condition and the water was re connected to the original line. Job done for now, hopefully it won't be an issue that we have to deal with again. It was now late in the afternoon and time to pack away the tools for the rest of the day. Gerry checked on the muffler, it had already hardened up but he wanted to leave it until morning to make sure that it was completely cured before attempting to return it to the engine.
We had thought we would try the restaurant but by the time we had cleared away the tools and had a sundowner wine we just couldn't be bothered so we had a prawn and avocado salad on board - just as delicious as any meal we have eaten out!
We had only just finished dinner when the power went out, uh oh, what could we possibly have done to cause that? A quick check of our boat systems, all good, then a look at the rest of the marina - everywhere was in darkness, it was a general power outage. On went the inverter so that we could at least watch a movie (thank you to our computer nerd mate, couldn't have done it without you!). By the time the movie was over normal power hadn't resumed so it was a case of turning the inverter off and going to bed. It was a good job that it was a cool night or we would have been quite uncomfortable as all our hatches were closed as it looked like it might rain during the night (it didn't). At some stage during the night the power was restored and the air conditioning came back on - cue pulling blankets over us!