Sorry (again!) for the delay - we are still recovering a bit from our guests (we had a blast, but in all the fun forgot to put them to work more - though they sure offered PLENTY of times!!). Here's a list of things to fix:
bilge pump (broke the day David and Isabelle arrived, short circuit we think/hope); radar; outboard; and other miscellaneous leaks (head sink) and still trying to find the perfect belt for the alternator, and probably a few other things we are forgetting right now. . .never a dull moment here on Tupo!!
From Janet:
January 31, 2007
Wow, it's hard to believe January is almost over. This morning while I was drinking my coffee, I tried fishing with our small fishing pole and caught three more porcupine fish/puffer fish. I pretty much knew that's what I was going to get, but I did it anyway. Yesterday we had a really great day. We decided to go in and enjoy the humongous beautiful pool at the Las Hadas (the fairies) resort. The anchorage happens to be right in front of this hotel so they worked out a deal with boaters where you can pay a small fee per day to tie up the dingy and use the resort facilities. They told us we had to use white towels at the pool though, to "blend in" with the other guests. Of course we didn't have white towels (we've probably never actually owned white towels), so we had to buy some at the supermarket. Anyway, we spent several hours at the pool and had a couple cocktails, and they actually had a fairly decent DJ there playing music. It was a nice little escape from the boat. (It may not seem like we need to do that, but once in awhile we do.)
While at the pool we noticed two old guys and thought they might be from sailboat "Bad Kitty" whose name cracks us up every time we hear it on the radio. Eric started talking with them and wrangled an invitation for happy hour drinks. So we rowed home and changed, and rowed over to Bad Kitty about 5 p.m. Larry is the captain, and his brother (Coach) and sister-in-law (Nancy) were visiting from Rochester. Larry said he sent his wife home to earn some money. So Nancy started making us Tanqueray & tonics and we had a great time. Nancy gave us their contact info and said we could stay with them in Rochester, though she had had quite a few drinks so we doubt she would remember anyway. They were a lot of fun. Larry said he named the boat because the manufacturer is Nauticat. (naughty cat) ha ha. We resisted the urge to overstay happy hour to get invited to dinner (admittedly has happened before) (and Bad Kitty told us they didn't have any food anyway), so we rowed back to Tupo.
We had just stepped on deck, and we heard somebody yelling, "hey where you from?" Seattle! "Cool, have you guys had dinner yet because we caught a Dorado [mahi-mahi] and it's on the grill" how lucky are we? So we rowed over to Nonnie for dinner with Captain Paul and his friend Mike on board. Strangely enough, Paul is also from Rochester, but now lives in Washington state. They both came down on the Ha Ha (organized boat race from the Bay Area to Mexico), but Mike defected from his boat and joined Paul at some point. They were also very cool and invited us back over today for a fishing tutorial from Gary on "Harleken" (not exactly sure of the spelling, but no ‘q’). After listening to Gary, it seems like maybe we were moving too slow much of the time we were trolling (he says minimum 5 knots) and had too much weight on the lures (he says all the fish we want will come right to the surface). He gave us a couple double hooks.
I managed to score two decent books from our new friends: Water for Elephants , a novel about the circus in the 30s, and 1421: The Year China Discovered America, which argues that the Chinese had mapped out the Americas and Columbus had their maps.
The outboard stopped working last week and Eric has tried to fix it countless times. Now we are just rowing everywhere. (I use the term "we" generously here).
So today we emailed our good friend Jeff Pincus and we asked him if he still has plans to come visit us. He had told us he wanted to ride his motorcycle for a couple thousand miles down here to see us.. but we haven't heard from him in a few weeks. He replied immediately and said, "yes in fact, I'm leaving Seattle today." In a way it feels he is giving us a taste of our own medicine (with regard to lack of communication). That's cool though, we hope he makes it!
Pictures to come later (hopefully tomorrow). . .