Motors, Mud, Meat - doing with and without

It’s been an eventful week (sort of), since the departure of our guests and our return back to Hog Island.

We survived the dinghy impeller malfunction, made it across to Le Phare Bleu marina, across the epic waves.  We arrived safe but sopped and salty, and then had the dinghy motor lifted and carried away in the wheelbarrow to the engine hospital. An hour later, she was as good as new. The impeller turned out to be a little star shaped black rubber thingy… amazing that it could make or break a motor!

We are just crazy enough to have volunteered for another hash – read mud, mud and more mud. It didn’t help that the skies opened unabashedly for the first time in weeks just as we boarded the bus, en route to Cabier Lodge where the Bastille Day hash was being hosted.  We worried about getting there alive as the windows fogged up, and our driver swerved and overtook cars in washed out roads, while the cruisers inside gasped and held on. We also worried about Shiloh out in the bay, left alone to face the rain and possibly some strong winds. (Secretly I was happy that I’d set up my little rain catcher and was dying to prove to JW that we could in fact catch a meaningful amount if it really rained.)

It really rained. But it was over an hour later when we arrived and it left behind mountains of mud and slime on the trails, for the huge turn out that set off and a couple hours later, completed the hike. 

The crowd heading off on the hike (notice my French colours!)

 The highlight of the day were the crepes on offer back at the lodge. What a reward!

Our boat neighbors and blogger friends at Zero to Cruising, who are definitely the fittest couple we know, took the French theme of the day to another level, sewed up some great costumes, proceeded to run 8km in them, and then deservedly won the prize for best costume!

The after party with Mike and Rebecca from Zero to Cruising

 And all of that led to today. The day we have been leading up to for so long, that we denied and many times lost piles of meat…. The day where we admitted that the freezer was more trouble than it’s worth.

This morning as we listened to the continuing pitter patter of rain on the newly waterproofed bimini, I decided it would be a ‘cooking’ day and headed over to the freezer to pick out some chicken to thaw. But alas all the chicken was already thawed. Along with the steaks and the sausages and the soggy buns I was trying to keep fresh.

A quick sniff told me that most of them had tipped the scale between ok and might kill you in a violent and painful way. So we had to toss everything. Again.

I had that deep down GRRRRRRR anger again, and really it’s just not worth the long lasting effects of stress. I left the world of traffic jams and work deadlines for a reason. No more GRRRRRR.

So after I chewed out JW on learning he’d turned the freezer down ‘ever so slightly’ as it was drawing too much power and necessitating we run the generator for hours every evening, I resigned myself to the loss of meat.

We realised we don’t eat that much meat anyway and if we do want to make something, we’ll buy it that day, cook it up and for dessert we’ll savour the sweet display on our inverter/battery charger, showing such low current draw. We might only have to run the noisy little red generator once every two days!

Boating life takes some adjustments.  Today we are at the second Laundromat, as the first we tried had a power outage.

It’s either hunt around or handwash everything, using up our precious limited water supply on the boat and hope the things will dry, hung along the sides of the boat, as the rain squalls come over one by one…

On the bright side, this marina has fast wi-fi, cold Coke Zeros, and we have left the rolling swells back on the boat for a couple hours.

A beach scene in Bonaire... more adventure awaits!

Our friends on Chaotic Harmony meanwhile, have headed off today on a three day straight sail to Bonaire, and it has me dreaming of all the places we have yet to see. The sailing we’ve yet to do. The plans we're starting to formulate. But those are other blog posts and for now, all the little hassles melt away.