Our friends on s/v Infini, whom we last cruised with in the Bay Islands of Honduras in early 2008, have FINALLY caught up with us, after 2 years. Hello old friends!
It is so nice to see Mike and Sue again. They have shared our dream of going to Easter Island, for the last 3 years. We have been planning for months to meet in the Galapagos and sail to Easter Island together. They ran into some late electrical issues in Panama, so we've been waiting here in the Galapagos for them. Now that they are here, we plan to leave together in about a week for Easter Island... 2000 miles... 15 days.
Our new friends on s/v Visions of Johanna... Bill, Johanna, and Gram, whom we have now shared 4 anchorages together over the last 5 weeks, are FINALLY (6 weeks later than planned) pulling anchor early tomorrow morning, heading for Easter Island.
Sue on Infini brought a big bundle of fresh mint from the market on Santa Cruz, so we have had Mojitos for the last two nights at Happy Hour. Last night a 'Hello Happy Hour' for Infini and tonight a 'Goodbye Happy Hour' for Visions. Bill on Visions is a primo 'Mojito Maker', and we've all had a great time sharing stories and planning information for Easter Island and French Polynesia.
We did another 'fuel caper' today (in the rain)... 9 plastic jugs of diesel, in the dinghy, up the dock, into a taxi, to the 'gasolinera', back to the dock, back in the dinghy, back to Visions, and into their tank. This is the ONLY way for any boat on the island to fuel. There is no fuel dock here. While we envy Visions' nice boat and nice systems, we don't envy their 2-3 gallons of diesel a day consumption (they have a generator and no solar panels). To contrast, we have used 1.2 gallons of diesel (for making water) and a couple of pints of gasoline in 2 weeks.
We also did a 'propane caper' in the last few days... You can't fill American tanks from the Ecuadorean fill system...there is no standardization in the connection (anywhere in the world)... and there is no fill system on Isabela anyway.
So we cobbled together a 'pigtail' that connects one of their tanks to one of our tanks, and procured a local 32-lb tank, and filled our tanks via gravity feed. Gram on Visions did most of the filling... he hoisted the local tank on their dinghy davit, and drained into our tanks on their stern. For $10 in propane and a little capital investment in the pigtail, we filled 3 of their small tanks and topped off 2 of our 20-lb tanks. 2/3 of the pigtail will be reusable when we need to do the same thing, but with a differnt end fitting, in French Polynesia.
It sounds easy... 'procuring a tank'. But you guys wouldn't believe how much effort went into THAT. Where the tanks are is out of town... we have no transportation... we can't do a deposit... etc. Finally Luis at Danielitas (the local grocery store) got us a tank. But it took about 3 days and 4-5 phone calls to make it happen. (you guys back there in the U.S. don't think about all these things, do you??? You think we are hanging out sipping Margaritas all the time... but instead we are spending all our time 'procuring' stuff)
We are now good for 5-6 months worth of cooking, with our 2 20-lb tanks.
Anyway, Goodbye, Visions!! We hope to see you in Easter or French Poly!!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment