Freezer defrosting and other jobs, The Pier for dinner
04 February 2021 | 12 03.520'N:68 51.216'W, Spaanse Harbour, Curacao
NC
3rd February
12 03.520 N
68 51.216 W
Weather; sunny, wind n/a, waves n/a
This morning was a whole lot calmer as far as the wind and wave chop went but it was also not quite so sunny, but probably a whole heap better than where some of you are reading this so I'm not complaining at all!
Gerry had his "let's get busy hat" on this morning and vanished out into the cockpit after having breakfast and a shower. His first job was changing the oil on the high pressure water maker pump, it had done 300 running hours and been changed every 50 hours, this took very little time and he was on to the second job of the day. The generator engine oil was topped up after 37 hours of running - not essential but as he was doing stuff with oil it was a good time to do it. On to job 3, this was one of those jobs that he had been saving for a rainy day - the removal of all the excess wiring left in place when we replaced the old fridge and freezer compressor. This wiring was mostly located in the cockpit lazerette and required him to do the boat yoga stuff to access and remove it. At one point I, along with the rest of the harbor I'm sure, heard a very loud Sailor speak word repeated several times. I stupidly asked what was wrong to be told that he had mistakenly cut a wrong wire, I'm not sure why I asked really there was nothing I could do about it. A short while later he laughingly said it was OK as this wire didn't go to anything anyway - time will tell! It took him a while to reach all of the unneeded wire (about 12 feet of it in total) and remove it, at least now it will be easier to identify what the remaining wires are for as there are no extra bits left in situ. At least at present everything seems to be working as it should, fingers crossed! One final job for the day and that was to look at the hose at the stern where the cockpit drains are, if you recall we thought this might be where the water in the bilge, whilst we were under way, might be coming from. The stern lazarettes needed to be accessed to see the hoses and once they were visible Gerry stripped the old tape off of the convoluted hoses and replaced it with a self-sealing rubber tape which hopefully will do the trick and stop any leaking through the perishing hose as replacing the hose itself will be a difficult job and one we really don't need to be doing. By now it was lunchtime so we sat and enjoyed a peaceful lunch together, it didn't last long though as the minute he had finished eating Gerry started talking about defrosting the freezer (again? It was less than a month since we last did it). I would love to hear how often anyone else on a boat defrosts their freezer as I think we are doing it far too often, I understand that he doesn't want to have it break down but I'm pretty certain that taking everything out then defrosting the darn thing and then returning the frozen stuff to it doesn't do anything for the frozen food - I'm just waiting for one of us to get sick from eating stuff which has been in and out of the freezer even if it hasn't defrosted whilst it is out in the insulated bags. The only good thing about defrosting the freezer is that it gave me a chance to rearrange the food stuff so that we are eating the older stuff first. It's not a long job as Gerry has found that using a fan in the freezer and vacuuming out the ice etc. with the wet and dry vacuum gets the job done quickly and we were soon putting the frozen goods back into the freezer once more.
By midafternoon there was nothing left in the way of jobs for Gerry to do so he sat watching videos etc. whilst I typed the start of this blog. We got shaken out of our relaxed state by a loud bang at the side of our boat in the late afternoon, the sort of bang of something hitting the side, Gerry went topside to investigate and found a windsurfer in the water having run into the side of our boat. He asked if she was OK and got told that she was just learning to windsurf, had lost control and that her instructor was on his way to help her, it didn't seem to have done any damage to the boat so all good. Shortly after the instructor appeared and they headed back off in another direction, as the instructor had quite a group of pupils all going in different directions we could perhaps understand how she had lost control without any help nearby, not that its good for the boats at anchor to be concerned about being hit at speed by a wind surfer out of control!. We had decided to try The Pier restaurant for dinner this evening, that's the place we were going to try yesterday but it was closed. Leaving at 5pm we dinghied across to the dock, getting covered in spray as the wind was still whipping up the water. Once ashore we made our way to The Pier where we were, again, the first customers of the evening. We had a lovely meal, spotted a couple of the national birds - the yellow breasted Oriole, darting about in the bushes outside of the restaurant, I tried to get a photo of them but they were just too far away and too photo shy on this occasion - maybe next time! We had heard that The Pier does a cheap cruisers dinner on a Thursday and we made enquiries, found out that yes, it was on tomorrow and we needed to be there before 6pm to ensure a meal and it was a good idea to put our names down in advance to ensure a place as it was quite popular. We put our names down and will be going along tomorrow as there is a good chance of meeting other cruisers there who may be going our way or have some interesting insights as to what to do and see whilst we are here. As the night began to close in we headed back to our boat for the night, the waves had dropped away to nothing on the return which made it a lot more pleasant, we were in for an easy night without too much movement.