Happy Valentine's Day
14 February 2010 | Cochin
judy
Valentine Sunday here, our last visiting day. What a place! First of all, Kochi is a port. Port's are not known for cleanliness & India's are no exception. Being up the river delta isn't helping. It is super muddy with about enough litter to scare even us. So far... we have not sucked in any plastic wrecking either motor, or fouled our anchor (like WindBird) or wrapped our props (like WindBird). What we had to do though was dive on the props to remove the barnacles in order to get out of the harbor to leave on Tues. Luckily for me, Dave did it. I'm hoping he can stay well after that big dose of crud! I did take him for a surprise Valentine late lunch & early dinner though ~ to help him fight off the effects (2 large beers might help...)
The entire boat is filthy. Since there isn't a marina here, no power or water for us. In fact, we can't make water in this bay either. Freebird REALLY needed a bath badly after our 9 day bashing, salt water everywhere & no water for a scrub. Added to that, is all the soot from the cooking fires & pollution here making Miss FB a DirtyBird instead. Dave lugged 10 jerry cans of water yesterday so we could do our 5 loads of laundry & rinse FB after her preliminary salf water scrub. We are limited to the SeaMan's shower. Get wet, scrub, rinse, get out. The water line almost doesn't come clean. We are really feeling the pinch. Washing the awnings & cockpit has helped some. Then, there is the racket. First of all, Kochi is a destination for the entire rest of Indian country, not to mention the other Middle Eastern & Asian countries & throw in a few Westerners to boot. That means ~ from Sun-up long past sundown, WE are the attraction here in the bay. EVERY kind of tour boat out here aims right at us, they come from all directions blaring music, whistling, yelling ,screaming & throwing a wake..... looking at the Aliens ~ US. Team that up with ~ Call to Prayer over the Loud Speaker's day & night, a Prayer Convention right across the bay from us. There must be a 1,000,000 people attending with speeches, music, singing & "prayer" most of the night & all day! We woke up to all of the above this morning at dawn. Did i mention that Indians too love their fireworks. There is some every night ~ somewhere. Tonight, it's across from us on Bolgotty Island. It has gone till 4AM before.
Besides that, Dave has not been happy with the new battery array so first thing this morning (before 7) he investigated the whole system shutting everything down. I took myself into the cockpit to work out & be out of the way. I put down the awning on the sunrise side of the boat & was going at it when a tour boat surprised me right on the other side with guys whistling, yelling, hollering. Down i went.
Tomorrow is the check-out hustle, provisioning & stowing day. We leave Tues AM on about another 10 day passage. This time we won't be giving our position report as we are now on pirate evasion tactics. We'll try and send daily blogs without the Lat/Long Position report. We will check our sailmail account every day & get weather. Drop us a line but please don't send forwards, downloads or photos & erase our original message if you are replying. Hope everyone has a special Valentine Day too. We can't wait to get to sea. LOL, judy & Dave