Day 15 (2020-03-27) Today we tackled the winch for the furler, this one was also impossible to service fully. Of course, repositioning the second winch was not as simple as the first one, it was not just the case of emptying a lazerette. For this one we needed to remove one of the gas bottles compartments/mini locker, so we had to drill out some rivets drop the locker into the "basement" lazerette do the work and then refit the locker into its original position. A full morning project. After that, we smashed the internet watching the news, not believing how messed up things are in the USA.
And it was also laundry day.
Day 16 (2020-03-28) Took advantage of our french neighbour going to the shops to go buy more food with him avoiding the taxis. This time I didn’t forget to buy butter and I found fresh eggs, 60 of them. Bought more junk food to comfort us, but didn’t find much fresh produce and did my good deed for the day. Earlier in the morning, I had seen some of the older french ladies in the marina leave on their folding bikes, we bumped into them quite far from the marina surprisingly (but at the same time not because there weren’t many fresh veggies). They didn’t recognise me immediately with my face mask and sunglasses but the moment they realised it was me they were so happy. When they understood that I was offering to take their shopping in our neighbour cargo/boot to help them they were almost in tears, unfortunately, their bikes wouldn’t fit in the car so I couldn’t give them a ride. I grabbed all their bags and waited for them to finish the shopping at the group of veggie stalls so I could take it all with me. Later in the morning, we bumped into them again on the way back to the marina, we stopped the car again and grabbed all the new bags they had filled in their shop. By the time we all met up in the marina to give them the shopping bags they and their husbands were almost to tears, because of me they had managed to buy 3 times more food than they could transport by bike. In the afternoon I decided to wash Ella’s bed and re-stuff it with extra foam, I used the offcuts from the mattress we had bought a year ago. My baby dog is now 5 years old and with her hip-dysplasia, we thought her bed is needing a bit more in terms of comfort (the old stuffing was not so fluffy anymore). This was another project for a few days because it started raining.
Day 17 (2020-03-29) Kept busy re-stuffing Ella’s bed while John started planning the rearrangement of the electronics in the Nav station. Something that has been annoying us since day one. Maybe all the cabling behind the panel would also get sorted... Day 18 (2020-03-30) Cleaning day, big cleaning day. Ella got a bath and John started on the Nav station project. Day 19 (2020-03-31) We kept busy with our new unnecessary projects starting with the Nav station project. We painted the new door panel recess that will finally allow us to close the decorative door that is supposed to hide all the electronics when not in use. We also tackled the crazy task of reorganising all the cables related to the equipment. We relocated some equipment to allow better access to tighten the stanchions and we removed a few cables that weren’t connected to any equipment and discovered that we can connect our AIS transceiver to a PC (the necessary cable is in place and we had no idea we could do that) we also discovered equipment we didn’t even know we had and that allow us to connect to the PC for planning, routing, etc. Very happy with the result and now that we discovered two new things about our system I guess there are a few more things to keep us entertained with the new possibilities of usage of our existing equipment. Might finish this project tomorrow or the day after. Day 20 (2020-04-01) Finally finished the Nav station project, all electronics installed and tested. Took most of the day reinstalling everything and checking all was working fine... Looks great!
Had lunch at 11.20 am. Oops a bit early. Day 21 (2020-04-02) It rained last night and although there wasn’t much in the way of southerly winds when we woke up this morning the boat was covered in orange Sahara sand/dust, so the first part of the morning was spent washing the boat with the extremely helpful assistance of Ella. Then the focus of work shifted to the installation of a new 50 amp circuit breaker between the solar panels and the MPPT (solar controller). The remaining of the day ended up to be a repetition of most quarantine days, watch the news, watch some Netflix, focus on food.