8th December

12 00 N
61 46 W

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

Day two of making holes on the top of the water tank. Again out came the tools, on went the protective eye wear and ear plugs and before I could even make it out into the cockpit Gerry commenced the cutting out of the second hole in the top of the water tank following the same process as yesterday - cutting, battery freezing, charging and swapping out as each one drained out at rapid intervals. Again I sat out in the cockpit all day, keeping well out of the way and trying to upload the blog from the previous day and some photos, I had little to no success as the internet seemed to flick in and out all day. We later learnt that the undersea telecom cable between St Vincent and Trinidad had been damaged in the area around the underwater volcano known as Kicking Jenny and all telecommunications were being affected but apparently they were being worked on and hopefully would be fixed sooner rather than later, so if you are only now seeing a few days-worth of blogs you know why!
I began a new book but then the battery on my kindle needed recharging so I was left with staring out at the harbor for the remainder of the day and it really wasn't very exciting for the most part. I did get to spot a turtle on three occasions but there was nothing else to really entertain me so I just lazed and enjoyed the doing nothing. By mid-afternoon, with just a break for lunch, Gerry had had enough of being crouched over the water tank and the noise and smell that accompanied the disc cutting so he packed up for the day, the final push to get the holes completed was going to be tomorrow. Nothing happened for the next couple of hours until once more it was time to sit in the cockpit and watch the sun go down. The turtle obliged us with another appearance, I don't think it was the same one as earlier as this one seemed much smaller, but who knows. We watched a bit of TV but the buffering was really quite bad - the underwater cable obviously not completely fixed as yet.
Yesterday I mentioned our steering wheel being in the overhead storage space so today's photo is of just that - it's not exciting, it's just a very large wheel that gets in the way in the cockpit when we are at anchor so this was the best solution we could come up with to give ourselves more walking around space. There is a red leather marker and a fluro tape on the wheel (near the light in the photo) This is at the top when the boat is pointing straight ahead and obviously it goes to the left if we are heading to port or to the right if we are heading to starboard.