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Slowing down
Slow Everything including internet
The last week has been slow and easy. We really haven't done much other than relax, shop, eat, put on water, clean the boat, download charts, meet people, download charts, download charts...
I've been trying to update our charts since they came in and it's 14 Gig of updates. At 1-2mbps that takes a long time. And of course the internet can't stay stable for 30 hours at a pop. I've been working on this all week.
Sam and I made our own metal polish and have been testing it on the stainless. It's working pretty well. I also have been working on the brightwork and getting water. In the last few storms we have gotten between 50 and 100 gallons every storm off our canvas. We have been catching it in buckets and putting it in our large rain barrel and then we pump it into the tanks with the deck wash pump. I need to design a manifold with valves so that I can use the fresh water pump to pull it into the tanks then switch the valves and go the other way.
We also have been meeting a lot of new folks who are arriving either on their way out of the hurricane box or staying here like us. We like meeting new people and as we've said before please if you're here in Luperon come by and say hello!!! we'll be here for the next 6 months at least.
Date:Mon, 08 Apr 2024 19:55:00 GMT
2nd Week in Luperon
Eclipse Day!
The last week has been filled with fun and exploring. We're getting settled in now and finding sources of food, water, friends, supplies, and things to do. We got our sun covers sorted out after several years of trying to figure it out. We will need some bows to put under the stern section where it was designed for entrance at the rear for stern tying. But it's working great and the temprature is much better! We can keep our hatches open even in the rain.
We rented a car with Sparrow and went for a long drive a couple days ago. We drove around the country side all day and had a wonderful time. Our first stop was a little farm run by a Bahamian man who came here and got stuck for Covid, so he decided to buy land instead of a boat. We get eggs and other vegetables from him. One of the things I'd never seen before was pumpkins that had taken over the trees like climbing vines! So the pumpkins were literally hanging from the trees!
The country side is very rural and the houses are built along the roads but behind the houses is either a farm or undeveloped range land.
Sunday we went for a walk around between the Marina and the Beach on the other side of the ridge. We rode up the hill in a little three wheeled taxi called a Margarita and walked back down. The views were amazing! There's a lot of hope and grand ideas here that never seem to quite come to fruition. We saw lots of attempts to build resorts and rental property that evidently failed. On one had it's cool but on the other the abandoned property and broken dreams are sad. However I'm not sure I want this to turn into a tourist haven. Tourists bring money it's true but they end up destroying what makes the place wonderful. And resorts are often, fake. I'm not sure why we have a love affair with fake places, fake cities and fake theme parks. Personally we like the real world with all it's good and bad points.
Today was the eclipse. We didn't see anything here because it was cloudy and rainy. However we managed to collect nearly 100 gallons of rain water which we put in the tank of course. We had buckets out under the sun covers and put out the 50 gallon rain barrel to dump them into as they filled up. The dinghy got so full that it tipped and dumped half the water out, so we lost quite a bit before we got it pumped out. Well, it looks like the rapture didn't happen yet this year. There is so much rhetoric on the internet about this eclipse it's kinda weird. Well we're not waiting for the world to end. We're here doing real things in the real world experiencing other cultures and people and having a ton of fun at the same time. Tonight we're going to a sing along in the town square where we sing songs in Spanish to help learn the language. I want to say our Spanish is improving but that means we've gone from 10 words to 20... ha ha. (it's not that bad actually, we're starting to understand a few things).
Yesterday we went to a softball game in town. It was a double header and Luperon won both games. It was fun. These people really love their baseball! So we listened to music and watched baseball all afternoon!
Our friends on Rum Rations are on their way from Georgetown and should be here this evening or tomorrow. They have no engine, and they lost their steering about 50 miles from Georgetown. It took them 6 hours to get it working again so they are hobbled together and we heard from them just outside Mayaguana. I hope they don't run aground here on the reefs. When they arrive we're going to take them to dinner! Well that's it for now! I'll try to be more consistant in the future but we got distracted by the activities!