7th January

18 20 N
64 56 W

Weather; sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a

Today was a lets be busy day, Gerry was up and at it early so I stayed in bed out of the way whilst he gathered all the bits necessary to do an oil and filter change on the engine. You might think I was being lazy but I was really being sensible as things seem to get spread from one end of the boat to the other when such work is being undertaken and I would just be in the way. There is also the fact that you can't get out of the boat into the cockpit as the companionway steps have to be removed to get to the engine space, these steps tend to get stood in the forward head door way so I couldn't even go for a pee if I wanted to! The good thing is that the oil change didn't take him very long and was achieved with only a small amount of mess.
I struggled out of bed after he had finished the oil change only to find that he was also changing out the suction hose on the bilge pump, this proved to be a very messy job as the hose was covered in gunk (technical term!) Gerry yelled out for some assistance to bag up the old hose, it looked to be covered in oil and was making a mess everywhere we managed to get it into a bag and tied up with a whole lot of Sailor speak and Gerry then finished that job. Next, he set about attacking the fridge cooling system yet again, trying to keep the fridge and freezer temperatures within range has become his nemesis, I wish we could manage without either but that's never going to happen as things go off so very quickly on the boat when left out in the open and it's not so easy to just pop down to the shops for replacements! Once again, he flushed the hoses with an acid flush to see if it was scaled up and needed cleaning out, it didn't appear to do very much and he had to run the engine for a while to get the temperature back down. With these jobs out of the way I was finally able to get in the shower and get presentable for a trip into town.
We had one other job to do before taking off though and that was giving Priss the tablets that the vet had prescribed. For anyone who has never tried to give a cat a tablet the scenario goes something like this:
This is a 2 person job, don't be fooled into thinking that you can do it alone,
Catch the cat who has vanished as she knows something awful is about to happen - clue here: she will be in the most unlikely hidey hole in a space that even she can't turn around in,
Have a towel ready to wrap her up in even though her 4 legs will be poking out at different angles making it impossible to control all 4 at the same time,
Have tablets already prepared in pill shooter ( you WILL need this, get one from the vet),
Person one, holding cat firmly, must pry the jaws apart,
Person two, insert the pill shooter as far into mouth as possible and depress the plunger to shoot the tablet down the throat at warp speed, and remove pill shooter,
Person One, clamp mouth shut and stroke throat to encourage swallowing whilst praising said cat for being good and brave!
Person two, observe where the spat out tablet lands and retrieve it for the second attempt; be warned it will be gunky and covered in saliva making it even more difficult the second time,
Repeat the above for each of the tablets that she has to have!
Release the cat from her captivity before she manages to claw you to death in the attempt to escape.
Dress all wounds caused by biting or clawing on either person.
It was no fun for any of us but we are only trying to help the cat get better. We hope it's going to work but are somewhat fearful that her time on earth is just about at an end.
We had planned on taking a leap of faith and getting on one of the safari busses to find the main post office as we have a document that we need being sent from the USA and need to arrange some place to collect it - the post office was the obvious choice. We had also scouted out the laundry which seemed to be fairly close to the post office so we loaded up a small bag with the laundry to take along with us. We dinghied into the town dock, got rid of our rubbish in a municipal bin and waited at the bus stop until what looked like a local safari bus came along. We asked the driver if they went past the hospital which is opposite the post office, got the affirmative and climbed aboard. So how did we know it was the local safari bus? Well we were the whitest people on the bus, everyone else ranged in colour from tan to black. We knew it wasn't a great distance but weren't sure where we had to get off so I asked the lady sitting next to me if she would let me know, she was apparently getting off at the same place so that was easy! The trip cost us just a dollar each, well worth the effort of finding the cheap local transport! The post office was just a short walk from where we got off the bus, we headed inside and spoke with a very nice lady who gave us instructions about how to receive mail there and also directed us to the laundry which was less than half a block away. We made our way to the laundry and spent the best part of an hour watching the machines do their work, it was cheap to do the laundry there at $2.25 for the wash and 25cents per 7 minutes in a drier. We folded everything back into the bag and decided to walk to the big supermarket just down the road from where we had gotten off of the bus. As we walked we just happened to pass a McDonalds, well not so much passed as detoured inside - it was lunchtime after all! Yep it tasted the same as every other McDonalds in the world! After eating we continued our stroll to the Pueblo supermarket
where we wandered around the aisles checking out what they had, just about everything we would need and then some. Gerry, true to form, said we weren't buying anything today we would come back and do it another day - it seems to be his stock standard answer to any sort of shopping, I did sneak 2 items to the checkout though!
After our tour of the supermarket it was back to the bus stop and we only had a minute's wait before one appeared and we climbed aboard. The trip back was a bit hairy as the driver was obviously late for his lunch or was a part time race car driver. We tore through the traffic, lurching dangerously from side to side as we went around corners which isn't so great in an open safari vehicle! There is a bell system to get the driver to stop when you want to get off, unfortunately it didn't appear to be working as someone wanted to get off before our stop and had to bang loudly on the seat to get the driver to stop, we at least had warning of what needed to be done and although I pressed the bell before our stop Gerry still had to bang loudly on his seat to get the driver to stop. We made our way to the dinghy and headed back out to the boat where we unpacked the laundry and settled in for a couple of hours reading.
There was one huge cruise liner in the harbor with the usual amount of tourists on board so we avoided going back into town until after 5pm thinking that they would be leaving around that time - they didn't but the town had emptied out and the streets were fairly clear, we guess they were all back on board for the excellent food that we have heard they supply. Anyway we headed in to the Green House for happy hour and the lobster special dinner, both were very enjoyable and I even had a little lobster to bring back in case we could entice Priss to eat some, it just goes to show how ill she must be feeling as she didn't even attempt to eat any of it.
We tortured her with syringing water into her mouth as she wasn't drinking either, I'm sure that more of it went down us and over her than into her. We are at our wits end as to what to do with her next and will be calling the vet first thing in the morning for advice, meanwhile fingers crossed for a miraculous recovery.