Projects / Maintenance

Tuesday 5 May, CY day 52: Dinghy oar lost and then found, thanks fishy friends.

With the dinghy back in the water we head ashore to go shopping. After months on end cruising with no good supermarket, it was pure luxury to have this wonderful Kirk supermarket so close by us. But it’s amazing how quickly it goes from “wonderful” to “ooph, shopping again, do we have to?” That’s how we feel this morning. Thankfully, no queue again today so we are straight into the cool air conditioning and quickly do our shopping.

Back at Cloudy, I spot that the dinghy is missing an oar. Damn it! Normally they are secured inside the dinghy, but last night I’d secured them on the outside in the ready-to-row position. And now the starboard one has fallen off. But when and where did it come off? And how far and what direction would it have drifted? For the next 40 minutes I take the dinghy in a very large search pattern. But find nothing. There are 2 police boats about and I expect them to stop me any moment. But surprisingly, they don’t. I finally give up my search, rather annoyed.
Back on board I rush to get the drone set up, planning search from the air. But I find the batteries have all self-drained down to 60%, so have to put them on charge first. Then Oana says: are you sure it will actually float for very long? Go try the other oar and see if it sinks”. She is right, of course! There are holes in the aluminium oar, and once I get the air out, the 2nd oar does eventually sink. OK, so the lost oar is surely a gonna. It could have drifted and sunk anywhere. Although it’s just a simple plastic and aluminum oar, it’s likely unique to Highfield dinghies, so you can bet it won’t be cheap to replace.

Later on in the afternoon I go for one of my usual cool-off swims (or more precisely: rinse the sweat off swim). Again, I’m certain there are more fish down there, each day. A beautiful shoal of dark purple fish are ambling through the coral and I follow them for a while without realizing how far I’m swimming from the boat. Just as I’m about to give up my chase, I spot a white object waving back and forth in the coral. OMG, it’s the oar! The handle end is gently resting on the coral and the white paddle end is floating upwards, waving in the current. It has just enough air in one end to keep it vertical. It must be 10-12m down but I have flippers on so manage to retrieve it OK. The shoal of fish has now disappeared. They had led me to the oar, I wonder if they knew that?! I’m so happy, and turn to shout to Oana, only to find Cloudy is more than 100m away. No problem, I have a paddle, I can make it back 🙂

I arrange with the canvas guy to have our (unlawful) meeting at the port at 1pm. I get from him the needed velcro and basting tape (double sided seam tape). Their prices are almost double SailRite, but at least I don’t have to pay for courier from the US. I also give him the bimini side shades to have some eyelets (grommets) put in. I don’t have a grommet press on board, but it’s now on the to-buy list! And while I’m ashore, I go to the Thai restaurant for a take-away. Normally, the are no other customers there, but today there about 5 people are inside waiting for their order. All social distancing OK.

On deck we start the port side of the dinghy tube templating. I flip over the template from the starboard side but, of course, not all the fitting line up the same as the starboard side. So a lot of markings and adjustments to do.
The rest of the afternoon and evening is taken up with marking out and cutting out the last of the sunbrella for the dinghy. I’m actually quite happy to be rolling up and restoring what’s left of the sunbrella, which I won’t be needing again for a while. This being the last sewing project on our list.

News from the shore today: 3 new positive cases out of 500 tests. Not good, but it also reflects that they are doing a lot of testing now. They have now tested ALL the people of Little Cayman and all are negative. Good news for them: this means all the curfews and shelter-in-place restrictions are now lifted for Little Cayman. They hope to do the same for Cayman Brac too, once all the testing is complete there. Still, no one is allowed to go to those islands unless they quarantine for 14 days prior. But it’s a big positive step forward for Cayman.
They also say they don’t see normal travel to Cayman will resume anytime before September. And they keep urging non-Caymanians to think about leaving and going home, because their work here is unlikely to resume any time soon. Especially those in the tourist businesses. The governor is constantly negotiating and arranging mercy flights to central Americas to enable these people to go home.