Woke or rather slept to the frogs singing some melody that we could not catch and as dawn approached the frogs quieted and the birds took over. It was melancholy for me and perhaps a bit distributing for the boys. Ted’s room was comfortable with a ceiling fan and fridge, such a nice retreat!
We headed to the yard after a scrumptious breakfast to finish up our projects and chores and to schedule work with many people. Here is the list I had to organize: Raquel, the office manager, clears our boat into the country, provides the temporary import, scheduled the haul out and storage. Jason is the yard manager, Neil’s is our project manager who handles all the workers and departments. Martin handles the canvas work (we are estimating out a new dingy storage cover, re-sticking of the dingy chaps, and window covers for storage), Herve handles the electrical and refrigeration (our freezer needed an evac and new sensor and we are installing a new solar charger that has been on the boat since we bought her which will add about 30% more “p’s” and hopefully save our zincs), Louis (Louie) handles the rigging (had a standing rigging survey and he said ours looked great! Catana over built our boat, making it super über strong, and even though it is 10+ years old it doesn’t need replacing now. However we will need to replace our life lines), Jimmy is the painter (repair the corrosion around the foot of the mast and the bow sprit), Peter will be working on our teak estimate (replace the teak on the stairs, hatches, and perhaps our cockpit table), Sage will be doing our battery checks each month (to keep an eye on our port starter battery which may be replaced) and Isaac will do our boat maintenance monthly (check for leaks, mildew, and pther such stuff). Lots of arranging, meeting, pointing, estimating … Now let’s see what we can afford to do. The good news is that the standing rigging replacement would have been about $20k – delayed for now – yeah Catana!
After our busy day, we headed to the bar and celebrated happy hour with the yard folks and bought them some wine and beers. Anything to get special treatment on our boat :). Seriously, it appears they treat all the boats with special care.
We headed back to the hotel with our German friends and continued our happy hour with our bartender John. We met a Andy from Switzerland and several people on a boat from Grenada. 3 from Guatemala and one from Portland. The funny thing was that 3 of them just graduated from the Austin Acton Business School so we had a lot to talk about. Our happy hour turned into dinner with all 9 of us. Unfortunately the boys had enough (3 sheets to the wind) and we called it an early night at 9p which was probably good as we have to get up at 445a