Our first order of the day on Friday was to take our tanks to the nearby dive outlet to leave them to have their hydrostatic test performed and to obtain our tags\/induction. To our surprise, the woman performing our induction, Caroline, we instantly recognised as our dive master in the BVIs back in July 2007<\/a>.\u00a0 We learned about the rules and regulations here.\u00a0 Most of the dive sites are accessible straight from the shore as the island drops off to a reef all along the west and north coast.\u00a0 Markers are placed along the coastal road where the dive sites are.\u00a0 We should be able to reach many in the dinghy and move Dignity to the established moorings when we want.<\/p>\n

After our induction to the marine park and obtaining our tags we headed off to the marina to pick up some gas for the dinghy and to pay for our mooring.\u00a0 Next we went into ‘town’ to explore some more.\u00a0 There isn’t much to it but it is definitely more European than the English Caribbean.\u00a0 I picked up a SIM for my phone as we need to stay in touch with the dive outfit for our tanks and I needed to receive a call from the US.<\/p>\n

Back on the boat we had lunch.\u00a0 Our plan was to use the hookah off the back of the boat in the afternoon so I checked it out in advance.\u00a0 I found the engine seized up.\u00a0 I pulled on the starter cord as hard as I dared but it wouldn’t turn.\u00a0 So began the task of dismantling the hookah to get at the innards.\u00a0 Once I had the engine out of the box and the pull cord off (among other things) I was able to get a wrench onto the shaft and turn it using greater leverage.\u00a0 This managed to turn the crank and once moving it eased up.\u00a0 I turned it over this way for a while adding more oil too.<\/p>\n

Once I felt it was turning easily I put everything back together and fired her up.\u00a0 The engine ran but arhythmically.\u00a0 I checked the oil again and realized I had over filled it.\u00a0 Draining the excess out appeared to put things right.\u00a0 Then came the task of clearing up the deck of spilled oil and general mess.<\/p>\n

After about 2 hours of work I had everything going.\u00a0 For our first dive we were down for about 30 mins.\u00a0 We started shallow so we couldn’t go too deep.\u00a0 We soon exhausted the accessible reef where we were so came back up and stowed everything away.<\/p>\n

We then moved the boat a little further north to be away from the Friday night loudness and to get a better internet connection.<\/p>\n

In the evening we went ashore to eat out.\u00a0 Our preferred restaurant, serving Indonesian food, was not open for business so we ended up having ribs.<\/p>\n

In amongst all the days activity I was emailing Sherri from Trinidad to arrange the order and shipment of our wind generator and spare part for Jackster.\u00a0 We have settled on the AirBreeze unit which meets our preferences of robustness, noise and output.\u00a0 Thanks to all who helped on this.<\/p>\n

No real plans for today bar checking with the dive shop for status on our tanks.\u00a0 There is only one guy on the island who does this and this is done at the weekends.\u00a0 But not every weekend.\u00a0 It depends on what else is on.\u00a0 We don’t yet know if he’s been able to do our tanks.\u00a0 If not, hopefully we can work something out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first order of the day on Friday was to take our tanks to the nearby dive outlet to leave them to have their hydrostatic test performed and to obtain our tags\/induction. To our surprise, the woman performing our induction, Caroline, we instantly recognised as our dive master in the BVIs back in July 2007. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bonaire","category-jackster","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2010"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2013,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions\/2013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboarddignity.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}