Praia de Dentista
Miss Bossy
Fabi & Scott
Sun 28 Mar 2010 22:38
Today we again woke to water where we could see the bottom, beer that was
ice cold, and sandy beaches gleaming in the sunshine, what a terrible
existence we have forced upon ourselves.
After the obligatory swim, Fabi fed the masses with a breakfast of Misto
Quente (Ham and Cheese toasties), and we headed for the playground of
Brazil's rich and famous, Praia de Dentista. Fab has wanted to see this
since she saw an article in the Brazilian boating magazine, Nautica.
After much argument from Fabi that we were in the wrong place because it
didn't look like the photo in the magazine she kept waving in my face and
comparing to the beach in front of us, it wasn't my argument that both GPS's
said we were here that swayed her, but the realisation that a wide angled
lens makes everything look bigger that led to tentative acceptance that we
were at the desired location.
All doubts were put to bed by 1000hrs, when the first of around thirty power
boats and innumerable jet skis started to arrive. Now being responsible if
semi-competent sailors, we naturally anchored outside the string of 1.5m
bright yellow maker buoys that were marked with all sorts of warnings that
the area next to the beach was reserved for swimming and boats were
prohibited. Again, it seems that anchoring is more akin in the Brazilian
culture to the way they park, as every boat that arrived anchored inside the
marked exclusion right on top of the beach. Not that this mattered as the
water was warm, the sand was the whitest we had seen for quite some time,
and there was a great restaurant who delivers to the boat at one end of the
bay.
At some point in the idyllic afternoon, we started wondering about our
sanity, when we realised we had been cooped up in Marina da Gloria for well
over month, although to be fair, the last month has been the wettest March
that anyone here can remember, so that's our excuse and we're sticking to
it.
Unfortunately, gremlins have be-plagued us again, so we are returning to the
Marina Clube tonight, not only to drop off Bruno and family, but to refill
our water tanks. We have been suffering from a small leak in our fresh water
system, that we have been trying to find for weeks, to date it's been a
minor annoyance, resulting in the loss of only 10 - 15 litres per day into
the starboard bilge. However, the stress of additional guests, including two
small kids was too much for the resident gremlin to resist, so not only did
150 litres escape into the bilge overnight, draining our tank, but our
primer pump for the water maker was the natural target, happily tripping all
our breakers whenever we had the temerity to try and replenish our tanks. So
far both seem to be resisting efforts for DIY repair, we can't get the
system to leak when we are looking for the problem, and the accessible parts
of the pump seem to check out fine on the test kit, so I guess we'll be
calling the water maker manufacturer tomorrow and looking for a repair
guy..... who was it who said that cruising is just doing boat repairs in
different places?
For now, we have offloaded our guests, are all tied up, full tanks and Fabi
has the airco running full blast. (Not sure why I got talked into a
10,000BTU unit just for our bedroom) So time for a quick beer to ready my
system for the move from 36 degrees upstairs to 18 degrees below decks.
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