Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

So Saturday morning we managed the provisioning run originally planned the day before. We walked to the mall for a bit of exercise taking a slightly different route from last time. On the way we decided to try some local breakfast freshly fried on the street. No idea what the things were called that we picked up but one was a sort of chicken pasty, one was like a sour dough bread and the other a spherical doughnut. We took one of each, the three coming to under a dollar. I wasn’t too keen on the sour dough thingy but the others were delicious. Helen enjoyed her share of all three.

First stop was the home store where we picked up a few items. I found a couple of pipes which I can make a long extension to our syringe for injecting grease into our dropless seals. Problem was they were 3m long so they’ll have to wait another trip. Next stop was the Carrefour supermarket where we picked up a little food and a lot of beer/wine. We now should have enough for the family all the way to Panama City in January.

After getting all our provisions back on the boat I headed back to Panda to complete their network setup. As ever, sleeping on the problem seemed to bring ideas into focus and it didn’t take too long to have everything going the way they hoped for. Next stop was Glide who’d also learned I enjoy a challenge. He’d been having problems with his printer. He was just completing his third attempt to install the drivers. While the compute was rebooting I removed the printer cable and put it back. By the time it had rebooted the printer was working. No idea if it was the final install or cable which fixed it but it’s the result that counts. I ended up being able to borrow their Panama Cruising guide for a couple of days. We have a copy in NJ coming to us with the kids but this allows us to plan a little ahead of time.

Helen, in the meantime, was busy preparing for the evening. We’d invited Derek and Martha back to the boat for a return meal and invited the Whiskers over too. Derek and Martha had plenty of questions still and Gerald and Dianne added an extra perspective on things.

Evening came. I picked up Derek and Martha from the dock and we spent time touring the boat before Dianne and Gerald showed up. The meal was excellent, the company better. (Right now Helen’s a little cross at me for opening too many bottles of wine. She does have a point.)

When Martha and Derek were ready to leave I dinghied them back over the bay. It was quite flat so no dinghy bums as far as I could tell. We were left with an invite to visit Martha and Derek at their sailing club today (Sunday) and go out on the clubs sunfish. Flying back on my own in the dark was fast and fun.

Dianne and Gerald stayed a little longer but soon we were left to crash.

We are awake now. We’ve got to pull ourselves together to be fit for this afternoons outing. We’ve never sailed boats so small so it will be interesting to say the least.

Thursday morning was supposed to start with an 8am pickup of both the A/C guys and the stainless steel guy. I dinghied in with the trash and waited but none turned up. I gave in and went back to the boat to wait it out.

Back on the boat I learned that the big news of the morning was that the previous evening a sailboat had been boarded and robbed while entering Boca Chica around sunset. This was the same entrance we had taken returning from the Rosarios just a few hours earlier. We knew it was not at all safe to anchor there but to be boarded is another thing. We have emailed and warned some of our friends on the way here.

I decided to head back to the dock around 8:30am and immediately ran into the first of the A/C brothers. We waited a few minutes for the other brother to show up before hopping into the dinghy. Just as we were pulling off the stainless steel guy appeared so I was able to take them all together.

The morning ended up with a lot of running around. The A/C reinstallation seemed to take longer than it should and was a little worrying as they kept popping the circuit breaker when testing. In between supporting the A/C guys I was helping raise the wing gen mast. After a couple of hours of this everyone finished together so I was able to drop them off with a single trip.

My next stop, after a quick bite to eat, was to head over to Panda to help them extend their boat network. I was there for two hours and we made some progress but only in the direction of identifying some specific issues that required resolving or circumventing.

Back to Dignity at 2pm we were getting ready to go to the notorious open air market when our son Ben skyped us. He’d already spoken to Helen while I was out. It was nice to see him as he’s hard to get hold of.

After this chat we headed ashore with Dianne and Gerald and took a cab to the open air market. It was quite an interesting place; vast, crowded, hot, filthy and often smelly. Helen and Dianne both bought some cheap young girls jewelry as hand outs for when we reach the Marquesas. I bought a hat. We ducked into the Caribe Mall for some sanity, cool air, ice cream, rotisary chicken, beer and wine before heading back to the boat for a quick wash and minor clear up before heading back out to meet Derek who’d emailed us the day before.

We didn’t have to wait too long, Cartagena standards, for him to arrive in a taxi to take us over to their apartment in Castillo Grande on the other side of the bay. There we met his wife, Martha. They had a wonderful apartment and served a great meal. We chatted about a whole bunch of things. They were particularly interested in our transition and our lifestyle as they, being avid sailors, are planning to head off around 2012. Later in the evening we walked the 2-3 miles to the Old Town where we sat in the Plaza Domingo (check) drinking fruit juice. They regularly make this trip, several times a week in fact, and are well known by the owner and the five piece band that serenaded us with three Colombian songs.

We parted company after midnight promising them dinner and a show around the boat on Saturday evening. Being many hours after our normal retirement time we fell asleep instantly upon arrival.

We woke late too so I missed my normal slot for doing the blog. Shortly after 8am I dinghied Helen over to the other side of the bay again for her dentist appointment. Back on Dignity I was joined by Gerald who’d offered to assist with installing the wind generator.

After a couple of hours work we had the unit atop the mast and the cables run down through the mast and into the starboard transom through a rubber seal.

It then took me another two to three hours in cramped sweaty condition down inside the transom wiring it all up with a cut off switch and breaker into the same box where we have the breakers for our solar panels.

Then came the testing. With Helen on the inside calling out the amps being drawn/generated I turned the unit off and on several times. Not sure what the wind speed was but it wasn’t great. We were still making 2-4 amps which was not bad considering a lot of wind gens in the anchorage were not turning. The unit is pretty quiet. We can’t hear it at all in our cabin although it can be heard in the starboard aft cabin.

Now I’m relaxing. Working in that sweat hole is exhausting but I’m glad it’s done. Tools are still strewn everywhere so the clear up still needs to be done. We’ll probably head back to the big mall today to start stocking up on Xmas essentials (ie, lots more beer and wine).