The coffee maker puts up a fight

Wednesday 22 Apr, KY day 39: Rear bimini sunshade completed and the spare coffee maker gives us something to repair.

The wind has greatly reduced this morning. We should have 2 days like this before it picks up again. So before breakfast the over-boom shade goes back up, recreating its blissful coolness again. And with the new side shades, also in place on the bimini, we don’t even feel the radiant heat from sun on the hot canvas of the over-boom cover. In Europe double-glazing is brilliant for keeping the cold out. Well, on Cloudy, we now have double shading to keep the heat out!

Not so good is our innovative bridle mooring technique. Somehow during the night, Cloudy has managed to spin herself 360 degrees, and the stern line is now right under the boat, and pulling the wrong side. A bit like leaving your dog tied to something then coming back to find it’s lead is now wrapped around its legs! Sometimes I really wonder if Cloudy is as (technically) smart as Hallberg Rassy advertises! I let the taught stern-line go and it falls in the water and Cloudy spins back to the wind. Then I need to swim to retrieve it. Thankfully it didn’t get caught in the rudder, propeller or the coral.

After breakfast, and after watching the SailRite video on the subject, we sew the acrylic binding onto the lower edge of the rear bimini shade. We want this soft material on that edge to ensure our new vinyl cockpit stripe is not damaged by this new shade. Then we have the final fitting, this time in daylight. It’s definitely our neatest sewing project so far. It must look good because Oana comments: ”I really can’t wait for you to start making dresses for me”. And this time she is not joking!

For our morning coffee, Oana decides its time to use our backup supplies of Dolce Gusto coffee (good coffee is something we will not sacrifice while living onboard, so we have two different coffee machines and respective coffee pods, for backup). This means pulling out our old Dolce Gusto machine, which has only been sporadically used since we swapped to Nespresso 2 years ago. And of course, like anything that’s not used for a while, it’s broken. It leaks water all over the place. So a coffee maker service center is set up on the cockpit table. I can see the seal that must be leaking but can’t get to it without dismantling the machine.
And like most appliances these days, they are only designed to be thrown away when they break. It seems the manufacturers try to make dismantling impossible. For me that’s like a red rag at a bull. Out comes my drill and the “never to be undone” screws are soon drilled out and removed. And the dozens of plastic snaps, not designed to unsnap, are all forced apart. With great satisfaction I soon have a naked coffee machine in front of me, revealing all its intricate private parts.
Like a lot of rubber seals on the boat, this leaky one has suffered in the heat and is now past its prime. Of course, I don’t have a spare one, but do manage to improvise with some rubber o-rings from my spares collection. Once it’s clothes are snapped back on and new screws inserted to hold it together, it no longer leaks at the bottom. Oana is happy she can use it again but does point out, that at the next opportunity, I will be buying her a new one! Yes, of course, I say. Knowing full well that it will be a long time before we are in any country that sells 220vac appliances 🙂 In this part of the world, everything is 110vac only. Cloudy, being a European girl, is only wired for macho 220volts. None of that nambie-pambie American voltage, that can’t kill you!

The pottering continues in the afternoon. Another job I’ve always meant to do: to have clear marks on the runners, shrouds and over-boom shade lines so that we are not guessing each time we put it up. Till now the markers have been by permanent marker. But these marks quickly fade in the intense sun. The solution is whipping twine at each critical point. All told, 12 sets of whipping required. No wonder I didn’t do it before!

We have a lazy evening in the cockpit. Needing a mosquito smoking coil tonight. Lots of the nasty little biters around in this windless condition and moored so close to shore. I make a mental note to myself to devise a “bug vs WiFi algorithm” to find the optimal distance to anchor from the shore. Close in we have good WiFi but get eaten alive. And too far out we have no bugs but a crap WiFi signal. Oooph, the science us cruisers have to know!