Dawn on Tuesday, January 21
We began the day with a minor crisis. Christi’s normal routine is to make a cup of coffee, grab some rags, and go out on deck. She wipes down the exterior of the boat while watching the sunrise and drinking her coffee. She normally finishes her coffee while she’s outside.
Today, for some unknown reason, Christi didn’t drink her coffee. When she went to open the starboard pilot house door to go inside after the sunrise, she had her phone and the rags in one hand and the full cup of coffee in the other. She needed a hand to open the door, so she gingerly transferred the coffee to the hand with the phone and rags — and lost her grip on the phone. The phone dropped onto the walkway and slid into the water!
Christi had an Apple phone that was allegedly waterproof up to 30 minutes at a depth of 18 feet, so we figured the phone would be okay if we retrieved it fast enough.
Eric was prepared for emergencies which required jumping into the water. He had the snorkel and dive gear in an easily accessible location within the lazarette so that we could quickly gear up and jump in. Christi put on her swimsuit and contacts while Eric got the gear out. He gave her a mask, snorkel and fins.
As she was about to jump into the water on the starboard side, a cruiser came by and said, “You know there are crocodiles in the water, here, right?” She prayed she would find the phone quickly and jumped in.
Much to her dismay, she saw that the ground was sharply sloping. She didn’t see the phone anywhere along the side of the boat, so it appeared that the phone had slid down the slope and was underneath the boat. She surfaced and told Eric that she’d need air so she could stay underwater long enough to go under the boat.
Eric rigged up the breathing hose and tank. There was only about two feet of space between the ground and the bottom of the boat on the starboard side, and Christi had a little bit of a panic attack about sliding into such a tight space. Christi took the respirator and forced herself to swallow her panic and to go down under the boat.
Fortunately, the phone wasn’t far from where it had slid into the water, so she was able to find it relatively quickly. It had only slid about two feet under the boat, so she didn’t have to put too much of her body into the tight space. She felt victorious when she surfaced with the phone in hand.
Eric took the phone, removed the cover off and rinsed it with fresh water. It appeared to be working! Eric left the phone lying on the table to dry out while we rinsed all the snorkel/dive gear and stowed it. After about 45-minutes, Christi went to check the phone. It was still on, but incredibly hot. We put an ice pack on it to try to cool it off, but it shut down a few minutes later.
Eric plugged it in, hoping that maybe it was just a dead battery. After a few minutes, he checked it again. Nothing. He started tapping the bottom of the phone, and water came out. So it wasn’t as waterproof as advertised. We put the phone in a plate of rice, hoping that would help it to completely dry out the inside. After a couple of hours it still seemed wet inside, so we put it next to the air conditioning vent, hoping that would dry it out. Even after it seemed to be dry inside, it wouldn’t turn on. The phone appeared to be unrevivable.
In retrospect, we realize that we should have immediately shut it off and put it upright in a cup of rice for a few hours, and not turned it on until we were sure all the water had drained out of it. Expensive lesson learned.
The rest of the day was quiet. Christi and Keith did school for the rest of the morning. Eric and Keith did another kids D & D session in afternoon. And we did chores around the boat.
We went to the marina restaurant for dinner. Christi ordered a traditional Panamanian dish called Lower Coast Shrimp, which turned out to be shrimp in a mild coconut curry sauce.
When we were in La Playita, there were a lot of street vendors selling raspado. We had no idea what raspado was, so when we saw it on the menu here, we decided to give it a try.
It was a pile of shaved ice accompanied by three small jars. One jar was sweetened condensed milk, one was malted milk powder, and one was a passionfruit sauce. We were supposed to flavor the ice with these toppings to our liking. We spooned some of each onto the ice. We found the dry powder and condensed milk to be strange toppings that didn’t really blend well with the ice… they just kind of clumped on top, and there was no way to stir it up for more even distribution. We figured there must be some trick to assembling the toppings in a way where they all meld together well. Maybe we were supposed to mix them together prior to putting them on the ice?