Well, all work and no play again this week. We had planned a couple of play days but the window installation took a few days longer than expected. Like with most things island, window installation was the picture of non-efficiency. The owner of the company has the car and provides the transportation for the worker bee. He drops the worker bee off at the boat and then heads out to meet with customers, buy supplies, etc. Day one: no owner or worker bee arrive due to delay at previous job. Day two: The worker bee begins to fit the new windows but discovers they need to be trimmed down. He contacts the owner to bring him the sizing tool. The owner must go back to home base (30 minute drive) to get the tool. Then, owner drives tool over to worker bee. Worker bee dry fits windows and tapes into place for the night. Day three: owner drops off worker bee. Worker bee dry fits remaining windows and secures two windows into place. Day four: Worker bee cuts portlight holes into two of the windows and begins to secure final windows into place. Owner arrives to pick up worker bee at 3:30pm. Bill tells worker bee to keep working and tells owner he will drive worker bee back to home base once all windows are secured. Worker bee secures remaining windows and Bill drives worker bee back to home base (1 hour round trip). Day five: owner drops off worker bee. Worker bee sets two portlights into place and secures. States that he is done until the windows set and the framework is ready to be installed. Worker bee waits an hour for owner to return to pick him up. Now we wait for them to return someday to finish the framing. At least we know “it will take a couple of days” actually translates to “we’ll be there at least a week and personal taxi service appreciated”.
My second worker bee biography this week is on our local laundry lady. She has a business here at the marina and we take our dirty clothes over to her and she washes, dries and folds them which is a far cry from laundry torture days in the Dominican Republic last hurricane season. We discovered her the first week we were here at the marina. Over the weeks, I have begun to notice a pattern. In Grenada, all prices on items and menus are generally round numbers. For example, on a menu, you will only see items that cost 15EC, 20EC, 40EC, etc. You will sometimes see prices such as 18EC or 28EC but you will never see prices such as 18.25EC. I did not even know they had smaller than 1EC currency until recently when I went to pick up the laundry. Suspiciously, the cost of the laundry is always an “off” number. One week it might be 56.25EC or 86.75EC. Then, when we give the lady a round number of bills (ie 60EC or 100EC), she never quite has the correct amount of change. She’ll always be just short by 4.75EC or 13.25EC. Well, not this week! I sent Bill with every denomination of money that exists in Grenada just to call her bluff. When he arrived, the laundry cost was 86.25EC. Bill asked if she had a 10 and a 5EC change to which she responded ‘no’ which would be statistically impossible given that we were the final laundry pick up for the day. He then asked she had a 20EC bill and she said ‘yes’ so he magically pulled out the exact amount needed in order to get full change back. I can’t wait to see what the magic number is next week as her Einstein math brain works to calculate an unchangeable sum. I figure next week’s laundry costs will be Pi to the thousandth digit. This next week is a biggie as two of the fuel tanks arrive and the pool hopefully reopens! Grenada has once again shut down anything fun due to the Stupid but hopefully we can work in a trip to the north side of the island to reward Bill for success on the fuel tank installation. Fingers crossed that the tanks fit and that they install easily. I know you are all on the edge of your seat waiting for the next installment of the Saga of the Fuel Tanks….I am trying to come up with more exciting sagas but at this time, this is all you get! The seedier side of Boat Life…..
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Small steps toward progress! Our boat projects are coming along which is always good for the crew morale! This week, I discovered that I have a hidden talent. I can summon rain without any effort at all. I fiberglass, it rains. I paint, it rains. Luckily, due to the heat in Grenada, paint dries very quickly so the rain did not upset my paint job too much. So, after 4 layers of fiberglass on two winch stands, one new shelf for the sail line locks, epoxy repair on at least a dozen holes, two layers of base paint and two layers of top paint, the helm repair is finished. I told Bill that he was going to have a difficult time driving the boat without touching the new helm because it is so beautiful that if he puts one scratch on it there will be a mutiny. I also finished prepping the window area for the new window install so another chore checked off the list. Bill also had a major victory over the starboard fuel tank and ripped out the final pieces on Thursday. You can imagine what a messy job pulling out a forty year old fuel tank was. Every time he popped his head out of the engine room, he looked like the creature from the black lagoon with oil smudges all over him and usually a bit of blood running down his face from an injury of some sort. But victory was his! Tomorrow, the window guys come to install the new windows and the fuel tank fabricator comes to get measurements to finalize the first two starboard fuel tanks. Galt is going to be looking quite snazzy with his new windows and we are going to enjoy the extra breeze once the new windows are installed. Very exciting times!
We ventured out this week to the local fish market. Everyone talked about the beautiful fish and the amazing deals so since my current successful fish count has been one barracuda and one edible blue runner in the 14 months we have been sailing, we decided to give the locals a try. They had options of buying a whole fish uncleaned, a whole fish that had been gutted and cleaned or a bag of fish that had been chopped into pieces. And I do mean chopped. They cleaned the fish and then took a machete and chopped it into chunks and bagged it. We decided to go for the Mahi in the bag and once I got over the fish head being included in the bag, we were good to go. Now, every time I open our freezer, a decapitated Mahi is staring at me with a large dead eye. We’re either going to need to make some fish stew soon or call Stephen King to come get the bag. We also bought a bag of tuna with no head included. For only $20.00, we got both fish which will easily make about 8 meals for us. Quite the deal! After the fish market, we made our way to Fort George for a little exploring. The Grenadians don’t seem very interested in preserving this part of history because the local police had commandeered most of the area for a training facility. I am pretty sure that when it was built in 1706, the cell towers and basketball goal were not an original feature. Despite the lack of information provided at the fort, the views of St. George and the bay were beautiful so we voted it was worth the trip. That wraps up the adventures for the week! I need to warn you that in the week to come, all of the world leaders will be going dark and the stock markets will plummet because the Port Louis Marina pool will be closed all week for maintenance and without the wisdom of the pool delegation, the world will cease to run! So, until next week, gather your survival supplies and head to the basement for safety! ***More pictures on Pictures tab During our travels, we have found that many things that are “not allowed” are not discovered until after the fact. This week, we were continuing to work on our boat projects when we found out a very huge “not allowed”. Bill needed to know if the dock we were on had 220 voltage for an air compressor that we were going to rent. He went to the marina front office to ask a simple question. The marina worker inquired why he needed the 220 voltage. Bill responded by explaining to him that the air compressor for the fuel tank removal would make the process easier. The marina worker then simply stated, “You can’t work on fuel tanks in the marina. It’s not allowed.” Needless to say, since Bill has half of one fuel tank removed and the entire fuel system disassembled, his response was not what the marina worker wanted to hear…. “Well, we don’t have any way to move the boat so that’s not happening.” Keep in mind we have been tearing out the fuel tanks for several weeks now and no one has even noticed. “Your neighbors will complain” was the response. “No, our neighbors all know we are working on the tanks and none of them care” was Bill’s response. Bill then exited the office and we waited for someone official to show up to tell us we had to move the boat. Then, we would have to show them that our boat has no fuel tanks which would tend to hinder any kind of boat movement. We waited. No one came. We began working again. No one came. It has now been 5 days so we figure that we are in the clear and since large pieces of metal sheeting are being offloaded daily they must be choosing to ignore us. As for the neighbors, we took them out for wings and beer at a local beach bar so they are all happy to let us make noise for awhile!
While we were out to dinner, our neighbors asked if we had been using the local transportation since we arrived. I explained to them that we had rented the car because just the thought of cramming into a small, hot 15 passenger van with 20 people caused my claustrophobia to skyrocket. They stated that we were definitely missing out on the local entertainment by not taking the “bus”. They told us of a time when they were heading back from the grocery store. The bus pulled up to a stop where a woman was waiting with two live chickens, one under each arm. The bus driver told the woman that no live animals were allowed onto the bus. The woman proceeded to snap the chickens’ necks and she then boarded the bus with two dead chickens, one under each arm. Gotta love the island life! There was almost a mutiny at the marina this week among the boaters. You can close the airports, you can close the businesses, you can close down Carnival but you most definitely cannot close down the pool! Evidently the pool guys were struggling with chemical balance this week so they kept “shocking” the pool daily to get the water clear. We returned from running errands one day when our neighbor told us the pool was closed. Standing on the dock, staring at him in horror, I knew what it must feel like to be addicted to drugs. I began to shake uncontrollably, sweat pouring down my face. “What do mean closed?! As in closed closed….or just kind of closed. What does this mean?!” Hysterics began along the dock as word spread. Without the pool, there would be no working on projects because what would be the immediate reward? A boat that won’t sink? Puh-leeze….the pool is the only thing that makes this boating world run. Why don’t you just jump off the side of the boat into the water, you ask? If you are on anchor, that is a thing. If you are in a marina, you don’t get in the water. The water is not the cleanest in the world and you definitely don’t want to swim in it. Thus, the pool. The pool is the place where all boating problems are solved, world crisis are resolved, pandemics are laid to rest. Without the daily pool meetings, the world would simply stop. Just as true panic was beginning to set in, a neighbor yelled, “Pool is open again!” Whew…that was the longest 15 minutes of my life! All the boat work is beginning to wear on us so we will definitely be planning a few outings in the next week or two. All work and no play is breaking all the boating life rules! Until then, try to stay cool in August and plan an adventure of your own before another summer slips away! It has been a very productive and busy week in Grenada. While Bill continued to disassemble the engine room to access the fuel tanks, I continued working on repairing the helm station and removing window frames in preparation for the new windows. In order to get to the leaking fuel tanks, Bill had to remove all of the battery banks, the fuel filtration system, the solar and wind controller and a multitude of mystery wires. Then, he had to cut through the sound barrier wall to expose the tanks. Next, he will need to cut the tanks into small pieces so that he can get them out of the boat. The current tanks measure 3 feet by 3 feet by 5 feet. The builder built them into the boat so needless to say, getting them out is not fun. We will replace the old tanks with 4 smaller new tanks but they are still going to be a wrestling match to install. As for my window job, whoever installed the window frames wanted to be sure that they did not ever come off. I have chiseled, scraped, hammered, pulled and sacrificed some of my knuckles to the window gods. I believe they used tar to keep them in place. So, it has been slow going but as of today, one window down, four to go! I have also been repairing the helm station since we are replacing the old instruments with new. This repair involves fiberglass which is not one of my favorite things. I don’t mind the finishing part of the project but the laying of fiberglass is like trying to mold cotton candy wearing Velcro gloves. However, I was quite pleased with the initial efforts so now I will be moving onto sanding and painting.
We had a big step forward this week when the fuel tank fabricator called us to come to his shop for the initial inspection of the fuel tanks. He told us that he would pick us up at the dinghy dock so we assumed his shop was across the bay. We certainly did not expect his shop to be on a boat! It was quite the layout he had engineered and the good news was since our fuel tanks took up most of his workspace, we figured he’d be putting in double time to finish them. However, he did not work on them the day we went for the preview because it was his birthday so, of course, we had to buy him a couple of brunch beers to celebrate. I feel it is safe to say that he probably did not work on our tanks the day after his birthday either! We are adapting to the Grenadian ways more and more each week. We have really been having fun with their Covid “policies” that the local businesses must follow. First, they must take our temperature. Sometimes. Sometimes they just take one of our temperatures and the other person is a “gimme”. We swear that the thermometers are all set to one standard temperature. This week’s temperature was 33 degrees Celsius which is 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit. So basically, dead. No matter where we went, one of us was 33 degrees Celsius. The next step in the process is to write down your name, address, phone number and temperature on a list. We assume it must be for contact tracing should that need ever arise but since there are only 5 active cases on the island right now (all incoming travelers that were pegged at check in) we generally have some fun signing the page. So far, we have been Horton Who, Minnie Mouse, John Galt, Peter Rabbit and several other whimsies that strike us at sign in time. As for the address, we put ‘boat’ and the phone numbers are whatever lottery combination comes to mind. Not one security guard has ever noticed. It’s the little things that get you through the Stupid on a daily basis! On Wednesday, we caught wind of $1 wing night at a neighboring marina. Who doesn’t love a wing for a dollar? The news got even better….it was 1 EC dollar which is .35 cents in US currency. Score! We spent Friday night listening to the tunes of the Leaky Seacocks again and eating barbeque chicken. Life is good! Please support one of my friends in her fight to cure Lupus! You can make a donation and get more information at this link: http://chapters.lupus.org/site/TR/WTELN/LFANorthCarolinaChapter?px=1110069&pg=personal&fr_id=2091 Thank you! |
AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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