We awoke to more heavy wind and rain. It was unbearably rocky. If we were in an anchorage, we’d for sure have the paravanes out. Since we didn’t get our chores done on the days the technicians came, we had allotted this morning as a chore day. We were overwhelmingly lethargic from the rocking in the marina, and we knew our standard chores would require considerable more effort today. That made us kind of grouchy. Strike One.
Normally, we don’t send our laundry out to be done. Christi likes to do it herself. But, our washer is too small to fit our blankets, and we had a blanket that needed to be washed. So, a few days ago we decided to send it out to a laundry service recommended by the marina. And while we were at it, we sent a couple sets of sheets, a blanket, and some cleaning rags, too. We figure it was three loads in a standard size house machine. Shouldn’t be too much money, right? Well, the laundry service delivered our stuff this morning. It was $78 USD. We almost had a heart attack. Strike 2.
Eric fought his lethargy and went to work. When Tai came to visit us in Italy, he had brought us replacement gaskets for the main engine exhaust. Eric was going to swap out his homemade gasket for a professionally made one. He got the gasket off with little trouble. Yay. Good sign. Then he went to put the new gasket on, only to find that Nordhavn sent us gaskets to fit the 43 turbo engines, with a 4 inch exhaust, not our naturally aspirated engine with a 3 inch exhaust.
Eric was annoyed, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. He started to put his homemade gasket back on, and somehow broke the gasket in the process. Oh no. This is a serious problem. It happens to be a holiday weekend, so no one is open to find out about having a gasket made for a couple more days. Sigh. And Eric doesn’t want to make another one himself unless he absolutely has to. Strike 3.
One of the more mundane things on the list was to fill the water tank. Simple. Plug the hose into the spigot on the dock, put the other end in the tank and walk away. Not here. The hose kept popping out of the spigot. We probably had to fix it a dozen times, and each time we were pelted with water from the spigot. And the fact that it is a royal pain to get on and off the dock compounded the frustration. Strike 4.
Eric went on to the next project, changing the shaft packing. He got about half of it out when the tool he was using broke. Sigh. And he can’t even try to look for another one for two more days. Strike 5. He put some of the shaft packing back in to absorb the water, then went to work on gluing the tool back together. Obviously, he can’t test it for a few hours.
We had scheduled a Segway tour for 1500 today, knowing a fun reward would motivate us to get our chores done quickly. We had been looking forward to it all morning. They called and cancelled because of the weather. We can’t call it a strike because going on a tour in the wind and rain is a bad idea, but it erased the bright spot we had been clinging to.
Shortly after, a particularly large wave came into the harbor and caused a big swell in the marina. The force of the swell caused a part to break off our neighbor’s dinghy. Eric went out and saved it before it floated away. We feel good about helping our neighbor, but we wish conditions were better so that he wouldn’t need help.
At around 1900, the rain stopped. Good, we can venture out for dinner. We were going to a Japanese restaurant we had seen several blocks away. But the rain started again while we were walking, so we ducked into the closest restaurant for shelter. The food was OK. We tried meatball soup, which is another traditional Spanish dish. We also had a dish that described itself as chicken and fish with vegetables. It turned out to be a stir fry, with pieces of chicken and shrimp sautéed with French fries, cashews and veggies in a savory sauce. We hustled back to the boat in between showers.