Dear F&F,
January 10, 2009
After tea & oatmeal we got back to the generator job by 8 am. I was the tool fetcher & moral support as usual. It turned out that we needed to replace the coolant temperature sensor. It is a small locker where the generator is installed (3 feet wide x 2 � feet deep x 2 feet high). The same space holds 300 feet of anchor line, with 325 feet of anchor chain on top. He puts cushions down to pad his bones from this lumpy, pokey floor.
Thank God he was a dentist & used to working while looking in a small mirror & doing tedious, detailed work. It should have been \”plug and play\”, but partly due to the access problem and the fact that they left no service loop on the wiring it was a major pain & took 5 hours! I know that sounds crazy, but we only took 2 short drink & potty breaks, otherwise it was non-stop. Poor Scott is contorted in there with no visual, doing the impossible.
Even I, who was not down in the trenches, am worn out. The good news is that it was successful & we are back in the power business, including the scuba compressor. Scott is stiff, sore & dirty, but immensely encouraged & relieved. Cheers to my mechanic!
We are too worn out & there is no sign of mantas anyway, so no diving today. There were 2 of the commercial boats here diving this morning. \”Nautilus Explorer\” said they didn\’t see any mantas either so left to return to the Boiler where they had mantas all day yesterday. It is too windy & rough for us to go in the dinghy around to that side. We must wait for calmer conditions.
The Nautilus boat was kind enough to let us give them our trash. Since Scott was still wedged into the generator locker at the time, I did \”salad bowl\” duty. I picked up Chuck & Linda\’s trash also, then zoomed out to Nautilus in our dinghy. Five guys are standing there, watching me on the stern while I miss a graceful approach & have to circle back around. Oh well, I am no longer embarrassed about such things. I do my best & know that I will get better with practice.
We are pretty pooped from the big job & just going to take it easy. Linda generously gave me 4 packets of yeast & also a recipe for beer bread that doesn\’t require yeast. I actually still have bread frozen, but would like to experiment since that takes up a lot of room & I could have packed other stuff like frozen peas, maybe frozen fruit even for more variety after the fresh was used up. I cut into my last avocado with lunch (chicken tacos) & was so happy that it was still good. I think I have a slimy jicama in the fridge. So hard to know how long you can keep stuff. I was amazed that Chuck & Linda served lovely crunchy cabbage with last night\’s fish tacos, she said it was a month old without refrigeration. Apparently jicama also keeps better out of the fridge. We are learning.
Scott & Cindy