Sunday, April 5, 2020

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI
18.20.016N
64.55.440W

Today was a lazy day.  At least for me. 

We woke to sea gulls making a huge racket circling the anchorage.  I suspect, with fewer fisherman out, the birds are searching for fishing chum closer in.  At least that’s my guess as I don’t recall them being here a couple of weeks ago. 

About mid morning, Gerry popped by, then he and Dale made a garbage run into town and dropped by Griffin on the way back to catch up on the local gossip.  Apparently, there are 2 flotillas heading north.  I didn’t get the skinny on the second one. 

When Dale got back, he decided to keep busy by cleaning the shower sump pump.  It became one of those little jobs that turned into a big job.  It was not only full of water but apparently gnats had decided this was the perfect place to lay their eggs.  Yuck!  I’m glad I didn’t see the worst of it.  In any event, he decided that the float switch (that had been acting up) wasn’t worth salvaging and would just replace it with the one on the guest side (as we aren’t expecting guests until July).  That’s when the job grew.  That one was corroded.  Again, he tried to cut back to “clean” wires but was unsuccessful.  So now we need 2 more float switches.  If you remember, he had replaced our port bilge pump float switch with one that was too big but he was able to “McGuyver” it into place to work; which it has.  That makes a total of 3 float switches needed.  As no marine stores are opened today or at least we had a problem trying to catch a “safari” bus the last time we tried on a Sunday, he thought he would put it off until tomorrow as there is a Budget Marine in Red Hook on the east side of the island.   He checked the Budget Marine website and found that they carried the right ones in their catalog but that doesn’t mean they’ll have them in their stores.  He’ll check by telephone tomorrow.  

After that, he fixed the step (again) and returned the fiddle support.  Then he sanded the fiddle a bit as he suspects it’s swelling due to the constant humidity causing the hang up.  Once done, it was time for a nap. 

I, on the other hand, worked diligently on puzzles.  A couple of word puzzles; a couple of Sudoko puzzles; a crypto puzzle and then made a pasta salad for dinner.  There were a couple of peppers that needed to be used before they went bad.  Add a fresh onion, some celery, boil some pasta, then look out Rachel Ray!

We gathered on Opal for Bubba Burgers and Nicky added some caramel laden brownies for dessert.  We kicked around the fate of the world and decided that we had best stay here until we know what is happening further down island.  We can’t believe some of the rumors we’re hearing about restrictions on St. Lucia keeping boaters from visiting one another on their respective boats.  That would definitely cramp our style.  Too bad, Dale really liked St. Lucia.  I’d love to learn the stats on boaters developing CoVID-19 as we haven’t heard of any. 

Guess that’s it for today.  Not much to report.