Not much has happened during the last week, and I fear that it will not be before we leave St. Martin and sail to Puerto Rico that there will be anything interesting to report from Gudrun. Island life runs it's course around us, and boats come and go. One of the boats to come last week was the
An-Tiki, a raft which has left the Canary Islands together with me in early February. And one of the boats to leave was the Eclipse of Mr. Abramovich, though it was back only hours later. Looks like a test run for the biggest private yacht in the world, it has been said the boat is up for charter now. So in case a raft doesn't appeal to you, grab some of those millions from your sugar bowl, jump into your helicopter, and arrange a landing on one of her two heli pads. Meanwhile we are busy with little things. Or with bigger things like filling up the water tanks. Though after the installation of a salt-water pump in the galley the fresh-water consumption has gone down significantly. But we have to be careful to rinse the cutlery well with fresh water, or otherwise it starts to rust quickly. Usually the Dinghy-runs are quite fun. Unless we run out of fuel like last Saturday. Then it's "all hands to the oars!", which is especially fun when the hands are attached to a female body, as you can see on the picture. Though credit to the other sailors - three of the four boats that passed us offered help. But we were adamant in our shame and took turns for an hour rowing to the gas station. More skilled rowers would probably have done it in a couple of minutes
. Electricity is still a concern. The two solar panels provide just enough power to run the fridge, two laptops, the stereo, and charge the cameras - on a sunny day. When it's cloudy the output is not enough, and the batteries are slowly drained. After I exchanged the Rutland Windgenerator for the Silentwind the situation improved. The Silentwind is more silent (indeed!) and produces more electricity at lower wind speeds, and we gained every day 10 to 20 Ah of charge. Unfortunately not for very long, because two days after I installed the Silentwind the wind dropped to less then 10kn and has stayed there since. And for the last two days it was cloudy and rained a lot, and the batteries are draining fast. But there will be sunny & windy days again, I'm sure, and I have hope that with our current setup we won't have to run the engine to charge the batteries. And of course there is a good side to little wind too. The swell is down and the boat doesn't roll so much anymore (only a little). I could finally take down the genoa and can now investigate why it takes so much force to furl or unfurl the sail. Other than that I am still busy with the Rescue Diver course, and almost every evening there is a social call to follow, either on a boat or a bar. We like it and enjoy hearing the stories and experiences of others. But between the morning exercises, diving, running errands, doing stuff on the boat and being social in the evenings there remains precious little time for our interests. So not much has happened in terms of photography, video or writing.
