An education in diesel

By Alexander

Sadly I'm beginning to feel that our education is going on a downhill slide. You see, yesterday instead of school we learned how to service a Volvo Penta MD2030 diesel engine.

Dad squeezing into the engine compartment.  Not a lot of room to work in there.

We had to get out a lot of parts and tools. Once everything was out dad went into the engine hatch with me right next to him to pass him things and give him paper towel when he needed to get the gunk off of his hands.

We pulled out a lot of tools and cleaning stuff to work on the engines.

We had to change the fuel pre-filter, the primary filter and the impeller, and clean the raw sea water strainer.  We didn’t even get around to changing the oil. It was kind of a hassle. We had to do both engines and things got a bit messy down there, especially on the first engine.  Things went a lot more smoothly on the second engine, since by then we knew what we were doing.

The fuel pre-filter.

The raw water sea strainer on the starboard side probably should have been cleaned a while ago. It had some small mussels in it.  The rest of the strainers and filters weren’t too bad, but we changed them all anyway, since it was time, and we wanted to make sure we knew how to do it right.

Mussels in the raw water sea strainer.  Good thing this was there to keep them from getting into our engine.

Christopher was charged with taking the pictures which you see in this blog and mom was getting tools and filling jugs with diesel that dad was using to flush out the filter bowls. It was all a very cool process.

After all that was finished with we went to the beach and ran around in the waves. A real monster took Christopher and me out like bowling pins. After being smashed into the sea floor by that wave we went for a walk along the beach.

Christopher enjoying the waves.

By the time we got back to the boat iwas time to start making dinner. Hence my delicious clam chowder. Sadly I didn’t get to take any pictures of it but trust me it was great. You, too, can make it at your home.

Start by sautéing a diced onion in oil on low. While it’s slowly cooking Dice three small potatoes and a red pepper. Add the other diced vegetables to the onions and let them sizzle. Meanwhile pop open a can of clam and evaporated milk. Add all the vegetables to a pot along with the milk, clam and a bay leaf. Oh and some pepper. Let that come to a boil for about two minutes and then put the lid on and let it simmer on low. After about ten to fifteen minutes the soup is ready to eat. You can add some salt if you like but not too much. I made that mistake. It was just a tiny bit too salty. Serve with buns and it feeds the whole family! Seriously it’s a good soup.

Have a nice rest of the day and look up the WestJet Christmas video. It’s hilarious.

Back from work. Back to work.

Posted by Scot

Flying over Bimini, where we first entered the Bahamas.

I got back to Georgetown yesterday, after a couple of uneventful days of travel.  It is great to be back somewhere warm!  It has been a bit windy and rainy, though.  So much so that instead of having Sara come across Elizabeth Harbour to get me in the dinghy, I took the water taxi, since the waves and chop were pretty big.  As soon as I told Elvis (the water taxi owner) where I was going, he burst into a big grin and said "Oh, yeah, Monashee!  You've been away for the week.  Your wife and family are all fine, man!

As those of you who know Sara probably guessed, she has met most of Georgetown this week.  After I got back to the boat and unloaded my luggage, we paddled across to Volleyball beach, and spent the afternoon watching the kids play with their new friend, and chatting with people Sara got to know over the course of the week.  There are some really interesting folks here, and it was great to get some other perspectives on the cruising lifestyle.

The kids hanging out with their new friend Colleen.

Today, though, we decided to get down to work.  We are hoping to move on from Georgetown, and head towards Cuba in the next week or so, but before we go, there are a few outstanding boat projects that we want to get done.  Georgetown is by no means a metropolis, but for the next couple of months, it may well represent our best opportunity to find supplies and parts if we need them, so we are hoping to get the boat sorted out before we go.

Fate wasn't cooperating today, though.  It was one of those extremely frustrating boat days, where every project we started lead to more projects, and in the end, we didn't really accomplish much of anything.

The day started out with me trying to fix our leaky pump on our starboard toilet.  Ever since we have been on the boat, it has dripped a bit of water, and while it is not a big deal, I thought it would be an easy fix.  There was a screw missing where the pump attaches to the toilet, and I figured just putting a new one in would do it.  Well, Sara had tried that while I was away, since she managed to get the right sized screw from a store here.  It didn't work.

Taking apart the toilet pump.  This was one of the bigger rooms I got to work in today.

So today, I took the pump apart, and found what I thought was the problem - the O-ring wasn't seated right.  We had a spare O-ring on board, so I put that in, and reattached the pump.  The leak was even worse.  So I took out the new O-ring, put back in the old one, and made sure it seemed to be seated right.  Screwed everything back together, and it all looked good.  Until half an hour later, when Sara reported to me that it was still leaking, pretty much the same as before.  I'll need to get back to it, but by that time, I was already on to project number 2.

Toilet pump, cleaned and ready to reinstall.

This was another leak issue, but this time, it was our dinghy.  We have had slow leaks in each pontoon since we got on the boat, making it necessary to pump up the dinghy every few days.  Again, not a big deal, but I though this would be a good opportunity to find the leaks and patch them.   So the kids and I took the dinghy over to the beach with the patch kit and some soapy water.  Before long, we had identified two small leaks that seemed to be the culprits.  Just as we were getting ready to patch things up, though, it started to rain.  Since I didn't want to put the patches on a wet dinghy, we headed back to the boat to try something else.

Since it was raining pretty hard, we decided we would work on our power monitor, which faithful readers of the blog will remember, has been giving us trouble since Miami.  Back then, we pulled the monitor out of the wall, and hooked up a new cable to it, which seemed to work, so we figured the original cable was bad.  Since then, we haven't gotten around to running the cable through the boat back to where the monitor is supposed to sit in the wall, so it has lived under our kitchen sink.

Today, we decided to run the wire.  This involves pulling a bunch of ceiling panels (called headliners) down, and threading the wire through some pretty inaccessible spots.  To get the headliners down in Christopher's room, you first have to take down the fan, ceiling light and hatch screen that are screwed into it.  After doing all that, we started to run the wire back toward the galley.  It looked like the wire ran right under the salon floor, so we thought we would pull up the floor to make sure it went where we wanted it to.

Unfortunately, to pull up the main salon floor, you need to take the table out.  OK, what's a few more screws?  We pulled the table out, then pulled up the floor, and both gasped.  There were two surprises waiting for us.  The first was that there was no wire run under the floor, so pulling it up hadn't done us any good at all.  The second surprise was that it appeared that the floor had probably never been pulled up in the lifetime of the boat.  In fact, buried under the layers of dirt and sand there appeared to be sawdust, which has probably been there since the boat was constructed.  I guess that makes sense, since there is really nothing under the floor to get at, so no reason to pull it up.

Sub-floor surprise.

Anyway, there was no way Sara and I were going to live over all that dirt.  It was OK when we didn't know it was there, but now we had a new project.  After a solid hour of scrubbing, scraping and cleaning, we finally had a sub floor we could live with.

Aaaah, that's better.  Now what were we doing?

So back in went the floor and the table.  Now it was getting sort of late, but we still had enough steam to try and finish the cable run.  We finally just decided to tape the new cable to the old cable and pull it through.  With a little shoving and fighting, and drilling one new hole, we finally managed to get the new cable all the way back to the power hub.  Once there, we plugged everything in and .... nothing.  The power display, which had been working fine using this cable and living under the kitchen sink for a month, did nothing.  We plugged it in and out, took the display out of the wall, tried every cable we had on board.  Still nothing.

Fortunately, the company that makes the display (Outback) is on the west coast of the US, so it was still early in the day there.  We called them, and after a few minutes of testing with their guidance, we figured out it wasn't the cable or the display.  Which left us with the power hub.  I took down the panel in our bedroom behind which it lives, and unscrewed it from the wall.  Sure enough, one of the pins in the connector was broken.  In fact, it was probably this pin which had been wonky all along, and it just decided to break completely today, so the display didn't work.

Anyway, this is getting to be a pretty long story.  Suffice it to say, we spent the next hour or two putting the boat back together, getting all the access panels closed and headliners back up.  I have ordered a new power hub online, and hopefully it can be delivered to the Bahamas within a reasonable time frame, so we can plug it in and get on the road.  

OK, just got to get all this put away, and we're done.

It is a truism that cruising is really mostly about fixing your boat in exotic places.  Conventional wisdom also states that starting any single project on a boat will reveal several more that you didn't know existed.  I think we proved both those aphorisms today.  Hopefully tomorrow, we'll actually get something done.

C.U.B.A. (chickens under basic administration)

Posted by Christofoo and Alexander too.

Cuba is a beautifully tropical archipelago south east of Florida. The main island is the largest in all of the Caribbean, at 1250km long. The capital of Cuba is Havana.



Cuba has always had a struggle with the government and following order. They have had many attempts at overthrowing the government and revolution, and one succeeded. Raul and Fidel Castro, accompanied by Che Guevara. They overthrew the government and managed to change Cuba from socialist to communist in 1959 (huge improvement, I know).

Americans can no longer go into Cuba but this is not really the Cubans fault. Well… it depends how you look at it. The situation was caused by the Cuban missile crisis. Here’s how it went down. The U.S. had moved missiles into Turkey pointed at Russia. Since Cuba was in the soviet republic at the time, the Russians decided to move missiles into Cuba pointed at the U.S. The Americans decided it was wise to create a blockade around Cuba saying that Cuba was on “Quarantine”.

After all this the U.S. supported an embargo which has kept Cuba from any 1st world commercialism and resources. All the cars in Cuba are 50 years old and they only have things like microwaves, cell phones and computers from the black market.



Eventually after tons of politics nobody really wants to hear about, Cuba ended up giving up the missiles. They did shoot down a U.S. pilot though. So after all this the Americans decided that none of their people should be aloud in Cuba. (But we’re Canadians so Yaaaaaaaaaay!)

If you're planning on buying something in Cuba you will probably need some convertible pesos. That is the currency that is used in the tourism industry in Cuba and it will be accepted anywhere you go. You may hear Cubans calling this currency CUC. These have the same value as a U.S. dollar. I don’t know where the U and the other C come from but that is the abbreviated form for convertible pesos. Cubans are paid wages in Cuban pesos. (CUP - Don’t ask me).


You know the economy has suffered a blow, when doctors are getting paid 350 CUPs a month. One American dollar is equal to 26 Cuban pesos (CUPs). Sadly this happens to be the case in Cuba. Although Cubans get food stamps which allow them to buy food at a nominal price and  they get free education, tourism is usually the only reason for using convertibles (CUCs).

Cuba should be credited for it’s amazing education system. They have more doctors than any other country in the world.  Industry in Cuba is comprised primarily of “unrecorded transactions”. This seems a little suspect to me but these transactions could be anything so there need be no assumptions about what goes on in them. (Drug dealing might be a problem Cuba should address). The second biggest industry is the one of nickel mining and selling. The third biggest is Cuban cigars. No wonder.


Cubans speak mainly Spanish which is their national language. They also enjoy sports, originally influenced by Americans, like baseball. They have a little bit of internet in Cuba, although this internet is HIGHLY MONITORED. The Cuban government do lots of things like reading other peoples emails, censoring sites, and only permitting Wi-Fi in small areas that, again, are tightly monitored.

Not to scare anybody because nothing here has been confirmed, but the Cuban government has been accused of a lot. From torture to illegal execution to unfair trials. I’m sure that Cuba has nothing to hide and we’re going to be fine. But then why did they have the highest number of imprisoned journalists in 2008? This country has police which are called PNR.  Just dial 106 and they will come to help.
P.S. don’t be worried we’ll be fine.



These are some of the places we might visit in Cuba....

Santiago de Cuba
 Santiago de Cuba has several world heritage sites, like many other cities in Cuba. One of them is a biosphere, which, for the sake of this blog, I will describe as just a fancy, beautiful, natural area. Another world heritage site is the Citadel of San Pedro De La Roca. The citadel is a prime example of Spanish military architecture.



One of the things we will probably get to do in Santiago is a hike up 454 steps to reach the top of a giant rock from which an amazing view can be seen.

Trinidad
Trinidad, is full of old museums. This is probably because Trinidad is VERY old. This also contributes to the fact that they got a great spot to build a city. It is full of natural beauty, especially on the beaches and mountains.



Havana
Havana is a place that sounds like banana and savanna and it’s the capital of Cuba. Havana 1 everywhere else 0. There are three major sections to the city. Old Havana, Vedado and the new suburban district. It’s a great place to see a statue of John Lennon. Maybe even snatch his glasses. (You would't be the first.) You can go for a stroll on Havana’s waterfront. They have a museum dedicated to learning about the revolution and a statue for it as well. There is plenty of restaurants and a large music culture. All in all Havana banana savanna is a very interesting place.



Thank you and good night! chickens!

Manta Rays at the Beach

Posted by Christopher and Alexander

As you may know we have been staying at a little moorage for a while.  A quick swim from our boat is a beach called Volleyball Beach.  But this is no normal beach! This beach is frequented by manta rays hoping for some leftovers from the conch salad shack.

A Stingray gliding through the water.

The people working there will often feed the rays, or allow tourists to feed them. (No sign that says “DO NOT FEED RAYS”). They are so comfortable with humans that they will slide right over your feet and creep you out! Yes we speak from experience.

This one's crawling all over Christopher's feet!

They range from the size of a drying cloth to the size of a small circular rug. A big, small circular rug. We often wade into the water just to have the insanely creepy thrill of having one of these suckers slide over our feet. Also occasionally we can grab some leftover conch guts from the pile of conch shells and hold them in the water.

The handsome face of a Stingray

Then the manta rays will slither up and nibble/suck/whatever they do to eat, and take the conch out of our hands. We do avoid the tails as some people say they can sting but other than that the manta rays are buckets of flat, slimy, entertainment.


Manta ray fun facts:
 1. Guess what? We just researched it for the fun facts, and what we believed to be mantas actually turns out to be stingrays ! Sorry about the error!

2. Stingrays are related to sharks

3. Stingrays do have a poisonous barb on the end of their tails but it’s only used in self defense. Even so we’ll be careful

Surviving Alberta

 Posted by Scot

Red Deer in the deep freeze.

As I walk out of the hotel, the cold blasts me in the face like a wall, trying to push me back indoors.  Instantly I start to cough, as the water vapour in my nose and airways freezes, irritating my lungs.  The rental car takes a while to turn over, but when it does, the thermometer confirms how bitter it is.  -31 degrees Celsius.  The radio weatherman makes it out even worse, saying it is -37, but feels like -49 with the windchill!  This is serious cold.  The kind of cold that makes people leave their cars running in the parking lot when they go into the mall for a couple of hours.  The kind of cold that can be deadly, if your car happens to break down or run out of gas on a lonely road.  Knowing I have an hour and a half drive back to Calgary with no really warm clothing or emergency equipment makes me a bit nervous.

OK, I know this picture shows that the car was in drive, but I was going really slowly.  Really.

The relatively warm temperatures that greeted me when I landed in Calgary a week ago didn't last long.  They were soon replaced with central Alberta's first blizzard of the year.  More than 30 cm of snow fell over two days, and the winds were up to 80 km/h.  Schools were closed, and people were warned to stay home if they didn't have to go out.  There were  more than 200 car accidents in Calgary in the space of 48 hours.  I was surprised that Alberta wasn't that prepared to deal with this weather.  Even 5 days later, the parking lot surrounding my hotel has not been cleared of snow.  It is now a rutted, icy mess, making it an adventure to get in and out.  Fortunately, the drive to the hospital is only 5 minutes.  My rental RAV 4 starts every time, and motors through the snow without much trouble.

Driving back to Calgary, I stop at Tim Horton's on the way out of town, grabbing my last Timmy's coffee and bagel for a while.  En route, I listen to CBC Radio 2, enjoying the unapologetic schmaltz of Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe, which gets me every time.  It is his Christmas show, and is predictably sappy, but the Christmas stories and Christmas carols are perfect for the wintry roads.  I revel in the Canadiana of it all - it will be a while before I see any of this again.  Christmas in the Caribbean will be as big a contrast as I can imagine.
 

Canadiana on the highway.

 
I have been Skyping with Sara and the kids every day - sometimes twice per day.  I make Sara show me around the boat, inside and out, to remind me of what it all looks like.  Given my current surroundings, it doesn't seem real.  I can't shake the feeling that our whole trip up to this point has been something I imagined, or dreamed.  I doesn't seem possible that I'll be in Miami tonight, and back on the boat by lunch time tomorrow.  
 
It has been good to get back to work for a bit, not only to top up our bank account, but also to stretch my mental muscles, and make sure I remember how to "ICU".  Other than the usual awkwardness that always accompanies the first few days of an ICU week, as I get to know the patients, things have gone well.  I feel like I am pretty much up to speed.  It's good to know my knowledge and skills have some staying power.  It has been 3 months since my last ICU week.  This is the longest I have gone without stepping in an ICU for almost 15 years.

Goodbye for now, Alberta.  See you again in the spring (when you are warmer!)

I can't wait to get back to the boat.  I surprise myself by thinking of it as home, now.  I can't wait to get back home.

On a Mooring Ball for a Week

Posted by Sara

We dingyed into town on Thursday - a wet, gray, blustery morning - to drop Scot off for his taxi to the island’s airport.  His flight was one hour to Miami and then he flew West Jet direct from Miami to Calgary the next day.

A dark gray rainy day as Scot left.  Looking across the bay at Georgetown.  Will have to run the generator - no solar.

In anticipation of Scot’s leaving, we moored the boat on a mooring ball ($18/day) for the time he will be away.  The kids and I can anchor on our own now, but it allows us to not worry about the weather and moving the boat around the bay as the winds and waves shift.

Monashee happy on our mooring ball.  Still gray weather & no solar.

A wide-angle view of the bay we are moored in.  Monashee just on the right.  Georgetown across the bay in the distance.   Twice as many boats to our right as well.

The mooring field is a great location as we are beside a lot of other boats in ‘cruiser central’ and we are sitting about 30’ off shore from the most popular beach in Elizabeth Harbour, Volleyball Beach.   In addition to all the transient cruisers who come and pick up a mooring ball or anchor here to be part of the action, many tourists from the resorts on the main island rent boats for the day or come over in the water taxi to hang out on the beach and partake of the drinks and BBQ at the popular Chat n’ Chill beach bar.  There are two volleyball courts, several hammocks, picnic tables, a Conch Salad Shack, and someone has even thrown up their shingle on a tree advertising the ‘Flip Flop Repair Shop'.

Volleyball Beach just behind our boat.  Sunny again - solar - ya!

The kids can kayak or swim over anytime they want or we can just sit in our cockpit and people-watch.  The permanent cruisers who are around are 60+ year old sailors who I’m sure would be delighted to help us out if we have any issues with the boat.

The kids looking both ways for boat traffic before swimming back to Monashee after going to the Chat n' Chill beach bar for fries.

Our mooring  is also just on the west side of Stocking Island.  There is a 3 minute long path from this side of the island to a mile long beach on the exposed east side of the island where the waves crash in from the Atlantic (or whatever is between us and the Atlantic.)  The point is - the waves are big & crashy!

The beach is always empty and the kids love to go over and jump in the big waves.  We were nervous to swim over there to start as the waves are hugely powerful and the undertow is extreme but we saw a group of people playing in the waves over there a few days ago so figured if they weren't being towed out to sea, it was an OK place to swim - so we have found our secret swimming hole.

Mile long beach on the east side of the island with waves crashing in.  They don't look so big here, but there are!

Kids getting pounded by the waves.  It's our daily exercise.

I have a few projects to keep me occupied for the week.  We have fast WiFi here so I will get all our corporate tax info sent to our accountant.   I am also starting to re-provision the boat for the next leg of our adventure which at this point sounds like Cuba.  Cuba is mainly Spanish so I will also pull out the Rosetta Stone Spanish language program we brought along to brush up on my Spanish.  Having spent a year living in Mexico 25 years ago, I could speak Spanish quite well at one point so I am hoping the program will ‘refresh’ my memory.  The kids are also going to learn as much as they can.  They have been doing French up to this point to keep up with the Canadian school curriculum but since the computer the French program is on went to Canada with Scot, we will start on Spanish.

Arts and Crafts!

Posted by Katie

Today I will write about arts and crafts which is code for pretty much anything.  Now the art of crafts is the main thing in this blog.  The thing is, at Fort Lauderdale I was looking for a poster for my room but sadly I never found one.  So now every once in a while I put up and take down crafts from my walls.

Some of my second favorites.

This is the life of a person who would like something on their wall that is creative and unique.  I like to make a new piece at least every two weeks.  My most unique and favourite piece is a picture of a monohull.   It has a bright green sail and a white mast, blue water, red background and an orange sun to make it look like a sunset.  It was made out of cut up paper and was the art project that got my award for 'made me most proud.'

Oh I forgot to tell you about the 40 horse power motor

On my pre-Christmas party my Grandma and Grandpa got me the cutest little sea otter stuffy.  So I thought I should bring in the art of hugging the cutest little stuffy in the universe!

HE'S SOOOOOOO  FLUFFY!!!!!!!!!!

My Grandma and Grandpa also got me a nail polish set and soon enough I became a little bit obsessed with it.  But I’m happy to note that I am still not that girly.

Like my pink nails?

Do you know what I love doing? ….

Yes, Baking!  I bake cakes, pancakes, apple crumble, brownies and all those kind of things.  Some mornings I make pancakes but the Monashee tradition (stating now) is that whenever I make pancakes the art of me wearing bunny ears must be attended and I think that’s about it.

Looking awesome!

 Byyeee !