Sunday 1st April

Tyrrel Bay
Carriacou

12 27.328 N
61 29.291 W

RIP. Ollie Vlasak (10/6/30 – 1/4/07) you have left a mark on our lives, we will miss you.

It rained pretty hard during the night and we awoke to wet soggy ground, the pathway from the chalet to the boat yard was like a mud bath. Once we arrived at the boat Gerry went up the ladder first and shouted at me not to follow as he had got a shock off the ladder. I was about half way up the ladder at this point and had just gotten a shock myself; I very quickly descended and unplugged the power cable from the box. Gerry then proceeded to try and find where the fault was, eventually concluding that it was not on the boat, it was something to do with the power box. We plugged into a different box and the problem seemed to disappear. I cleaned out the defrosted freezer and then as I was trying to check our email it suddenly began raining again and shortly afterwards the reverse polarity light in the navigation station began to blink – there was a problem with the power again. I yelled at Gerry to turn the power off at source and he began to investigate again. Dale had joined us and the pair of them had been chipping at paint, it was probably a welcome break for them to be checking the power supply. We could find no fault on the boat and again concluded that it was something to do with the rain and the power box so we didn’t plug back in, just ran our electrics on the inverter and batteries. The three of us scrapped away at the paint until just after lunchtime, we had broken the back of it and what was left would have to be sanded off as it was not coming off. We were very pleased with ourselves as it had been a hard and tiring job. Gerry suggested that he and Dale go to the chalet for a beer; I wanted to send a couple of emails so I stayed behind for a while. Gerry came to find me a bit later as unknown to me Lorie had arrived with salad for lunch and they were all waiting for me to arrive before eating. We congratulated ourselves on getting the paint off the hull and then agreed to spend the afternoon relaxing so Dale and Lorie returned to their boat, Gerry and I showered and then Gerry fell asleep. I did the dishes, made a meatloaf and read my book. As dinner time approached Gerry and I wandered down the dock to meet Dale and Lorie, taking photos of our paint free hull. As it was Gerry’s birthday we had decided to eat out, unfortunately the only place open was the pizza place, so that’s where we went. It wasn’t much of a birthday – no presents, no cake, no candles (not that we could have lit that many!) and a day of working hard, we’ll make up for it somewhere along the way.