MdP - Good Internet Session, Monitor Fixed, Progress on Rigging

I woke up this morning expecting to work on the cabling for shore power but the day took unexpected directions.

Alfredo saw me leaving the jetty and called me over to hand me some material on companies that might be of help to me. We started talking about the rigging and he suggested that I look at a boat with galvanized rigging at the end of the first jetty past the footbridge. I visited the boat and I was impressed with what I saw. The rigging looked heavy, strong, with no sign of rust. Alfredo told me that he ran the same set of galvanized rigging on his previous boat for 12 years, then he sold it 6 years ago and now the boat is in the Caribbean probably with the same rigging. He told me that galvanized rigging runs at about 10% of the cost of stainless rigging. I told Alfredo that my preference was for stainless rigging but if galvanized was the only thing available I would be happy with that.

I dropped by the office on the way to the restaurant for an internet session and wound up paying for 20 days at the slip which will take me to 10 March. The charge is $128 pesos per day which equates to about $29 USD or $28 AUD according to the exchange rates of several days ago. That isn't cheap but I've been told that all marinas in this part of the world are expensive. Martha understands that I need a bit of time to determine if I can have all of the required work done here in MdP. Anyhow, the head of the marina administration has not responded on what offer they can make for a long term stay.

At the restaurant I had a fruitless internet session. I was able to connect with all bars green but could not get any service. I saw where I was sending packets out but none were coming back. I looked around and say 4 or 5 people using laptops and I wondered if there was perhaps a throttle shutting me out. I returned to the boat.

Back at the jetty I saw Alfredo and before I knew it I was up the mast above the first spreader holding the end of a long tape measure that we borrowed from M&M while Alfredo took the measurement at the deck. We were measuring the length of the required inner forestay, center of eye to center of eye. "Centro de ojo Afredo?" "Si!". I then dropped down and we measured the length of the D1 lower shroud. Tomorrow at 9 AM Afredo will come by the boat then we will set off to a company that should be able to provide galvanized and probably stainless steel stays shipped in from their parent company in Buenos Aires. More conflicting information for me: Alfredo said that the question of Chinese wire is a non-issue.

I then returned to the restaurant, connected to the wall plug using my new cord, then started up the Acer and got connected to the internet with no problem. The service was amazingly fast and I was able to send a blog posting with several photographs at surprising speed. I will try to send a video clip tomorrow. I then did some banking then attacked my Gmail in-box which had over 300 items in it when I arrived in MdP. I was able to read every comment sent to the blog (a copy of each comment is sent to my Gmail account). I'd like to express my deep appreciation for all of the thoughtful comments and messages that were sent during my passage. There were many Christmas and New Years messages and believe me, they meant as much to me in February as they would have at the time. Thank you all.

I had lunch while doing my internet session (Quarter chicken and fries. The chicken was much too greasy - never again!) I did one last bit of internet work, a search for the prospects of employment of visitors to Tahiti (not good, unless a French citizen). Back at the slips I hailed Antonio and told him that I had dug up some information on Tahiti. On board I passed across the text via a thumb drive (Antonio reads English) and he used the thumb drive to pass back charts this part of South America. On the way out of his boat I pointed to the Monitor water paddle still in the water and explained that this was due to a problem with the locking mechanism that I would investigate later. I did this because M&M had already asked me why the paddle was still in the water. Antonio's reaction was Well, Why don't we look at it now? I took ten minutes to pump up the starboard tube of the Zodiac, throw it over the side, throw in the paddles and some tools, then Antonio joined me and off we went. The paddle release lever was bent but we straightened it with no problem. However, the paddle would not lock when dropped into position. Antonio soon found the problem: a small bolt that held back the paddle release mechanism had sheared off. Antonio needed Allen wrenches and soon I produced 3 sets of metric and Imperial Allen keys. While Antonio extracted the sheared screw I dug out the Monitor spares kit. Antonio removed the screw and the spares kit had a replacement, which I handed to him along with a tiny lock washer. After he replaced the screw we re-tied the severed rope for releasing the paddle and everything was back to normal with the Monitor. That was the second time that the Monitor spares kit had saved the day, and it was over $400 well spent. Soon I will complete the rehabilitation by replacing all of the Monitor control lines and have a spare set at the ready.

After tidying up the boat I went to the restaurant and returned with two 1-liter bottles of cold beer. I gave one to Antonio, who accepted it but not to drink alone. I asked to be excused and told him that I had my own bottle and I needed to get back into the boat to do some blogging and other things.

The shore power electrics would have to wait because Alfredo and I were going to set off in the morning, but I noted that with the sunshine and the boat's instruments shut down permanently along with the laptop during the night, the battery charge had actually increased from 12.8V to 13.0V. However, I wanted shore power not only for the satisfaction of achieving it, but also because it would allow me to run the refrigerator with no worries.

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