Moe and Bev join the boat

Tucanon
Dick and Irene Craig
Mon 22 Feb 2010 22:14
We move on from Ecuador tomorrow, Thursday 18th at noon.
Our appointment at the fuel pontoon is for around 9.30 am and once fueled,
we will move out of the marina and anchor.
This is not a very pleasant marina not only because of the oil on the water
and the ropes and the boat but also because of the swell which constantly
causes the boat to jerk back and forth. Another rubber compensator broke
last night.
Today has been a bad day. The pump on my washing machine seems to have
stopped working. The machine hasn't been emptying properly since before we
left Shelter bay, Panama.
I don't think that there is any chance of repairing the machine this side of
Australia so everyone will have to do their own washing now until the
machine can be fixed. Back to doing the sheets and towels in a bucket!
My kitchen scales also malfunctioned today but at least I was able to
replace them when I went to the supermarket to collect the frozen meat,
ordered last week.
What frozen meat?
The chicken breast, mince, and pork chops had been packaged and were
partially frozen but the steak was still in the display cabinet. Goodness
knows how the poor freezer is going to cope with this lot. Two chances, I´m
afraid.
Even the roast chicken planned for this evening, once defrosted turned out
to be 4.5lbs of chicken pieces.
We went on a day trip to a rain forest on Sunday with a group of around 17
other WARC participants. We were advised to bring walking shoes.
When we reached the first stream, I tentatively tried to step onto stones
which would help to keep me out of the water. It didn't work too well and my
trousers became wet at the bottom. Dick was surprised that I hadn't rolled
them up.
Four and a half hours later after walking through countless streams and mud
churned up by the hooves of horses, it was funny to even think that we were
so sensitive about getting our feet wet initially.
We did see a monkey up a tree when we left the trail briefly and lots of
different butterflies. The Indian village was interesting. The houses had
gardens with flowers which were the only ones we had seen here. Mainly the
garden is a yard or even non existent.
Moe and Bev moved onto the boat on Tuesday morning and spent most of
Wednesday trying to stash away their luggage.
We took a taxi to the central market and bought some fish for the freezer as
well as lots of fruit and salad items for the trip to Galapagos. We arranged
for the taxi driver to wait while we did our shopping as it gave us the
opportunity to dump the bags in the car as they became too heavy and too
numerous. The whole trip took about an hour and a half.
That evening we all went to the Farewell party hosted by the marina and we
received an award for being the fastest catamaran on the leg between St
Lucia and San Blas, based on corrected time.
Wednesday morning, Oisin left the boat before 8am to go to the dentist. He
has had problems for several days. He returned about 9pm with somewhat less
money than he had started with but his tooth felt much better having spent
three hours in the dentist chair undergoing root canal treatment.
Not all the boats were present at noon, the official start time for this
leg. There was not much wind and although Dick was determined not to switch
on the engines, after three hours he relented.
As we made passage, Moe and Oisin cleaned the lines and compensators which
had been covered in oil while we were in the marina.
The wind came up about 11pm and we were able to sail with the main and genoa
until around noon on the 19th when we used the engine briefly, changed the
genoa for the cruising chute and continued sailing again for a couple of
hours. About 1600 hours we swapped the cruising chute for the genoa and
managed to sail for another couple of hours before we lost the wind and
motor-sailed until 5am on the 20th. We then managed another three hours of
sailing before resorting once again to motor-sailing until 1400 hours when
we had just about enough wind to sail at between four and five knots.
The sea state on Friday was awful and four out of five of us felt sea-sick.
We weren't alone, the rolling motion contributed to a number of other
participants feeling quite unwell. However, as if compensating us for our
trouble, we saw lots of whales, around 30feet long as well as a number of
dolphins.
During the night, the lazy jack holding the sailbag broke while Moe was on
watch. He made it safe and in the morning, Dick hoisted Moe up the mast and
the lazy jack was re-attached.







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