We stayed on board this morning as a rainy front that began last evening continued through the night and into the morning. The wind is gusting consistently through our boat and others that are anchored in the Admiralty Bay harbor, like a relentless freight train screeching through a
busy intersection. As is typical for squalls in the tropics, it arrives in sheets with some advance notice, because if you pay attention you can see it coming across the nearby hillsides from the east. When it arrives it sends us scurrying to close the larger hatches down below, and then it blows out again as quickly as it arrived. The water outside our portholes is windswept into frothy whitecaps flowing underneath and around us, each wave seemingly hurrying to get ahead of the rest, reminiscent of ballgame patrons who stream out of the stadium in a race toward their cars in the parking lot.As we huddle below from the tempest outside, it's a good morning to eat on board. We are cooking and eating on board as much as possible anyway to save the cost of eating out. I don't mind as much eating on board the boat, because for some reason food on board always seems to taste so much better than it does at home. This morning was no exception when Tim was the chef and made plantain pancakes (plantains are much like bananas). Since we were ashore at lunchtime, we grabbed a couple of inexpensive tuna salad sandwiches and fries to share at the Gingerbread, the restaurant where we recharge our laptops and use the Internet for free. We tend to eat dinner early (around 6 or so just after we run the engine for an hour to recharge the fridge). So after going up top to open the port lazerette and switch on the propane at the tank (one of our safety precautions is to turn it off there when not in use), we boiled some pasta and made a homemade marinara sauce with artichoke hearts, mushrooms and a bit of leftover lobster from the previous day. Yum.
We did do something other than eat all day though. :>) Boat projects continued during the day – this time regarding our freshwater system. We’ve detected a likely leak in our fresh water tanks, noticed primarily by the water tank sputtering which indicates it’s almost empty, but happening way too early in the trip since we are very conservative in our use of water. When you live on a boat amidst saltwater everywhere, you learn quickly to use the freshwater sparingly, especially since getting more means time in line at docks or waiting for floating water barges - both of which cost money of course; and sometimes you do without if the harbor where you reside does not offer fresh water service, unless you have "jerry cans" (I'm not sure of the spelling, but that's what they call the large plastic containers that can contain water or fuel tat can be filled and hand-carried aboard).We don't want to buy water and simply have it leak out slowly, and the suspected leak is mysteriously occurring at the same time as our recent observation of a wet patch of carpet in our front cabin – one of our freshwater tanks is located there under our berth, and we noticed the carpet was wet after our heeling from our trip over from SV. That observation, combined with excessive water in our bilge that is not salty, leads us to believe a leak in the freshwater system is likely.
Later we’ll pull up the cabin berth and planks below to see if we can spot where it’s leaking, but first we are focusing on clearing the bilge filters which have clogged with debris from grunge that the water picks up as it flows through the bilge at the bottom of the boat. The lack of saltwater smell in the bilge is further indication that we have a freshwater leak, so we’ve turned off the water pressure at the master switch in the navigation area to hopefully prevent any additional leakage except when we must use water.
Tim working on hot water tank under salon table (working on boat equipment often means contorting yourself into various pretzel shapes.
Short entry for today because time is scarce, but stay tuned for another posting tomorrow.
Cheers! cy
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