North Sound, Virgin Gorda is wonderful. It appears to be an ancient caldera. Nearly a complete circle of 400-600 foot mountains, green and verdant, surrounding a basin of clear blue water with a uniform 40-60 foot depths. Bitter End Yacht Club at the east end of the basin is a major supporter of the Salty Dawg Rally, providing us with free moorings for as long as a month. Needless to say, the harbor is full of Dawgs.
Our first order of business is to dry out. Tricia and I to Gun Creek and a taxi to Leverick Bay to do a mountain of laundry. Evidently, so did everyone else. 3 washers, 3 dryers- lots of waiting. 7 hours later, we had a HUGE bag of clean clothes, and new friends, JW and Ginny from Over Budget. Ginny and I took advantage of the time to take a taxi to Spanish Town and get "island phones". Obviously, we don't want to use AT&T in the islands and pay roaming charges. So we bought new, unlocked phones and SIM cards from a local provider. As we change islands, we will just change SIM cards and providers. Not a cheap taxi ride, but a necessary one.
That night, after unpacking our mountains of clean laundry, Mat looked at me and said, "Where is my orange bathing suit?" Frantically, we looked in lockers, thinking it had gotten put away with another pile of clothes. Mat asked me if we were missing anything else? I had no idea how to answer. There was just too much to keep track of, and I was at a loss. The next day we dinghied to Leverick Bay very early, and lo and behold, an entire load of laundry sat, undone, in a dryer. As it is typical for laundry to be pulled out of a machine by another user, I was relieved to find that it was all still there (as far as I know), and no one had stolen it or dumped it on the floor so that they could use the dryer. We were lucky, since there was still a line of boaters trying to do laundry after we left the day before. And believe it or not, we brought more laundry with us, so after another three hours, laundry was done.
Music looks like the Beverly Hillbillies Boat. All the sails, and stuff from every locker are piled on deck to dry while we air out the lockers. Interior is the same. This would be fine, if it didn't rain every hour or so. Brief, warm showers, but nothing gets dry. At least the salt is getting rinsed out. Not every Dawg's boat looks like this, and we've heard comments like, 'Oh, you're the boat with the pink blanket over the sails." Embarrassing, yes. We'll have to work on that, but the Ware Water Curse follows us wherever we go.
In addition to the drying out process, which literally took a week of hard work cleaning every crevice in the boat, the boat item in most immediate need of repair was the refrigerator. Bill on Lancer told us during our laundry foray that he had used a repair guy named Polo out of Spanish Town. So with our new cell phone, a call was placed and Albert, the technician, was sent over the next day. Albert identified the problem to be our water coolant pump, and off he went to find another one. A call from Polo told us he would have to order one. He hung up before Mat could confirm how long that would take. In the mean time, the galley cabinets were pulled apart, and stuff stacked everywhere to facilitate access to the fridge compressor and parts. The inside of the boat looked like the Beverly Hillbillies Truck too. By the next day, I was ready to put it all back, not knowing how long in Island Time it would take to get the part, but before I could get started, Albert was back, had lunch with us, replaced the pump, and was off. Only after I started to put things away did I notice a leak under the sink. Mat, fearing the worst - that our compressor had gone up, called Polo. By evening hours Albert was back again, and quickly found a leak around a hose he hadn't tightened well enough (we didn't see it!). Thankful that everything was fixed, but not completely convinced, we said a prayer, hoping it would be cold when we awoke. The next day we had cold drinks (and a few days later even ice!). We had been 10 days without refrigeration. It is doable, but we don't want to do it again.
While Mat and Tricia busied ourselves cleaning, Cary and Ginny set up school at the Pub every morning where they can get WiFi. (We could get wifi from our booster on the boat, but the girls prefer to "go" to school). The staff and other cruisers are very supportive and comment at how hard they are working. Evidently homeschooling for high schoolers is more challenging, as the younger boat kids seem to have a lot more free time than C&G. They are taking it well, and working to get caught up after the hiatus during the trip down.
No comments:
Post a Comment