Play and Work
15 August 2010 | Marsh Harbor, Abacos, Bahamas
Captain Chris
Linda snapped this picture of Chris and sister Lindy in the cockpit.
We received our first visitor ten days ago! Lindy's plane made it to Marsh Harbour without incident and fifteen minutes later she was walking up to Curly Tails restaurant, where we were waiting for her. After a celebratory drink, I loaded the luggage into the dinghy and ferried it to the boat, then met Linda and Lindy at Snappas for dinner.
We headed to Mermaid Reef, just off Marsh Harbor, on Friday. This proteted area proved to be very nice, lots of fish, a big lobster, and some nice coral. After lunch, we sailed, then motorsailed, in light winds over to Great Guana Cay. Our next few days were spent snorkeling, strolling the island, and chatting onboard. All too soon, it was time to head back to Marsh Harbor for Lindy to get in the last day souvenir shopping tour. She headed back to the airport with luggage lighter than arriving, as a fair measure of her luggage was loot and mail for us!
Once we saw her off, the maintenance period started. I replaced the dead fuel gage with a new one Lindy brought, as well as sealing a leaky water tank sight glass. I found a great deal online on new LED backlight boards for our circuit breaker panels, so with them conveniently delivered I installed three of those in our DC panels. Now we can see which switch is which without a flashlight!
The generator set was due for an oil and filter change, so I did that along with replacing the transformer coil on the instrumentation. This coil tells us how much current the generator is supplying. The original was an incorrect version, so it displayed ten times the amount of current we were using. This caused it to peg to the top of the scale as soon as any load, like the coffee pot, was started. It took several months to find a US dealer of the brand, determine the correct version, and then have one shipped (perhaps built!) from England to them to Lindy to me. It was installed within an hour, and works perfectly now.
We defrosted the refrigerator and freezer chill plates, which took several hours, even with a heat gun. We really need to do this more often than every six months. While the ice was coming off, I must have kinked or otherwise damaged the thin tubing leading from the remote thermometer to the sensing bulb in the freezer, because it went to -20 and never recovered. These mechanical gages are operated by vapor in the (now old and brittle) tube, and must be replaced as an entire unit. Of course, they now cost six times as much as an electronic gage, so I don't think we'll be replacing it with a similar unit. Oh well, two gages repaired, one broken, I'm still ahead!
While I was doing this, Linda did laundry, and found places to stow the rest of the loot Lindy brought, like lotion, peanuts, and chocolate, all of which are exorbitantly priced in the Bahamas. We also decided to save a few dollars at the supermarket, so I hauled a 20 pound bag of rice back from the supermarket and Linda portioned that out into a number of containers that could be stowed in various places around the boat.
We hear Maxwell's supermarket, supposedly the largest, is back open after a fire years ago. We'll probably check that out soon, then head off to the outer islands in a few days.