This was a tough day. I received an email from instrument maker, Raymarine, with the results of their testing of the masthead wind transducer. I returned it after we had trouble with wind speed last season, and they kept it for a while then returned it. There were no test results in the box, so I thought that they had repaired it, but the email that I received today said that the technician had been unable to reproduce the problem. Damn! If I had known that, I would have pursued some other solutions, but I thought that I'd replace it at the masthead and all would work. Nope. To say that Conni was angry is an understatement. She's so low-maintenance, has so few demands about things that I felt terrible to disappoint her about this. I mean, she lives in this primitive bungalow and never complains and all she wanted was the damned wind instrument to operate. Man! I guess that I should have pursued more information from Raymarine about what they had done, or not done, but made the assumption that they had fixed it. Damn, they charged like they had fixed it.

We've asked the Carenage owner to contact some Raymarine folk here on the island, and I hope that he can help.

We found the propane leak!

I did it. Last Friday, while zealously torquing the fitting that connects the system to the tank fitting, the wrench slipped, evidently, and punctured the fitting! I've never heard of such, but I'm a newbie to propane systems. Still, I'm surprised that the brass punctured so easily. We have some options that we're pursuing, but we're now face to face with being in a metric country with SAE fittings. We were trying again to stop the leak and were trying to locate the source, and Conni said, "It's the fitting! There's a hole in it!" With the gas off, I removed the fitting, and sure enough, there was a puncture hole with the square shape of a 7/16 open end wrench end. Yeah, cool.

This morning, we drove the 200m to the local SOPOM lumber store and, with our terrible French, bought two pressure-treated 2x4-12s. I mention the dimension since that's how they were labeled in the yard, and sold. They allowed us to cut them to reduce length and we were able to drive back to the Carenage without having the lumber dragging on the road. Conni departed to buy provisions for our departure, and I stayed and worked on the racks for holding our gas, diesel fuel, and water Jerry jugs. The old wood, as I mentioned, was rotted by sun and salt water. The mild steel U-bolts that I had bought in Mexico before the 2013 crossing were rusted so badly that I could break them by hand, easily by hand. After a long search, I was able to find some stainless U-bolts of proper sized and that's what I used. With the SS U-bolts and pressure treated lumber, perhaps we'll have some longer use out of them.

Dealing with the punctured fitting would be a non-event if we could stroll into town and buy another. Here, knowing that getting anything from the US is a 2-week proposition, at best, we're struggling for options and workarounds. Cruising: Doing boat repair in exotic locations.

We plan to splash the boat on Friday.