Monday 6 Apr, CY day 23: Mostly relaxing, in-between several little jobs.
We have been here for over 3 weeks now. The longest we have been stationary while living on Cloudy Bay since we first took ownership of her in Gibraltar. Yet, despite being deprived of our usual adventurous activities, time is not going slowly for us… yet. In fact, a cruising yacht is likely one of the best places to be kept both isolated and busy in times like this. We have a never ending jobs list and very little chance of having nothing to do.
Today is a lock-down-day for our surname. So we don’t even need to think whether we venture ashore or not. We spend our usual relaxed time after breakfast reading the news and chatting on Whatsapp to friends. Just imagine this happening 40 years ago, when most communication was via snail mail and international phone calls were at extortionate cost. While we may all be locked in our homes, we are certainly not disconnected from each other.
I decide to have a day-off from sewing, despite the urge to get on and make the other 2 bimini shades (port side and rear). Got to spread the jobs out! So just a few small repair jobs for today. A quick gluing repair to the Selden mast inspection cover which fell off recently. Then changing one of the genoa rubber track stops that has disintegrated in the sunlight. And later in the afternoon a dive under the boat to re-new the Gori propeller tip anode. It’s probably the world’s most expensive anode by weight! And the damn things only last 4 months. All the other cheaper propeller shaft and hull anodes still look like new. Sod’s Law eh?
Final job is to cut out 2 diamond-shaped leather patches and pre-hole them ready for stitching up the mast. These pieces of leather go on the 2 protruding ends of the jumper-bars, 3/4 the way up the mast where they protect the genoa. The original ones wore out. So looks like a mast ascent is on the menu tomorrow, while the sea is calm. Kind of looking forward to the 86ft view over George Town.
Meanwhile, the rest of the day in-between these little jobs is video editing. After several hours we have finished editing the video from Jamaica to Cayman. The sailing scenes of this over-night passage are probably some of our best. We even felt sea-sick watching them! We just need to edit Bahamas to Jamaica clips and we are up to date. Well, for this season. Still got a load to do from last season too 🙁
Not much news from ashore. No new Covid-19 results today and still no one hospitalized. The big news was there is to be a “full investigation” why the police so aggressively chased yesterday’s naught boys on their motorbikes, causing 2 of them to crash. My guess is that the police may have been watching too many YouTube police helicopter chases from the USA!
After another wonderful sunset beamed again into our cockpit, we run the generator. We are currently running it every second day. If we only charge batteries I can use the full 175amps of the 2 chargers, which can recharge the Li-ion batteries from 40 to 100% in just 50 minutes. But we also have to make water and heat water which we do alternatively every 4th day. So in our current situation, we run the generator for about 1 1/2 hours every other day. Tonight is watermaker day, and we make 250 liters (65 gallons) while the generator is running.
Our evening is relaxed (as always). Another day where we wonder where the time went to. Maybe we should start chalking-up the days on the saloon walls, so when they eventually find us in 50 years time, they’ll know just how long we endured lock down! 🙂