1.10.2022 – 1.16.2022 Full-Circle

We got another surprise this week in Christmas Cove!

Since we’ve been back in St. Thomas (back from when we did our sailing lessons in April 2021), we’ve been on the lookout for our instructor, Captain Jose on Salty Candy. He used to have a slip in the Red Hook marina that was right next to the fuel dock, but there has been a power yacht in its place. We also heard a woman call over the VHF radio a couple weeks ago about Salty Candy getting fuel (we were in St. John at the time) and thought maybe Captain Jose had either sold the boat or left the sailing school.

But on Wednesday, Mike saw that Salty Candy was in Christmas Cove! We dinghied over to say hi and to see if he remembered us, which he did! It was great to catch up with him and tell him of our sailing journey since we did his class :)

On not so good news, our watermaker became dysfunctional again. It is still able to produce water, but our bilge alarm (area of the hulls that’s under the floorboards) went off and Mike found it filling with water. Mike diagnosed that the hose is leaking so some of the water is going into our tanks and the rest is going into the bilge. Our bilge pump also wasn’t working well, so Mike went over to Red Hook to get a new one so we could clear out the water in the bilges. We also decided we may as well order a new watermaker (we were planning to eventually) – our new one (when it arrives in hopefully no more than 2-3 weeks) will be able to produce twice the volume of water (40 gallons/hour)!

On Friday, I had my first work-related trip back to the mainland as a speaker for a veterinary conference in Orlando. I was a little anxious (not sure about Mike) about him being alone on the boat for the first time…but he did great! While I was away, he was able to a couple minor projects-

• Troubleshoot and fix the helm windlass - our windlass is what enables us to drop and lower our anchor. The main windlass is at the front cockpit which requires both of us to anchor - usually Mike is at the helm and I'm controlling the windlass at the bow. There is a switch at the helm that allows the anchor to drop, but it's been broken since we moved aboard. Mike was able to trace the wiring to the source and fix it so that now whoever is at the helm can anchor (which we would only do if one of us was alone on the boat)

• Removed the back on our indoor salon bench - the back of the bench has been a minor inconvenience for us because it is positioned too far back to actually sit comfortable and therefore takes up more space in the walkway through the salon and galley.

There was also a visit to the cove with more live music (same band, different boat) over the weekend!