Tuesday 1st May

Kralendjik
Bonaire

12 09.387 N
68 16.822 W

Here we are on the second public holiday in a row – today it is for Labour day and yet again almost everything is closed for the day. We timed the ordering of spare parts badly as the customs offices don’t clear anything on public holidays and even if our stuff has arrived in the country we won’t be able to get it until Thursday at the earliest. So here we sit – waiting, something we are not terribly good at. We have had an email from Dale and Lorie telling us that they have arrived in Puerto Rico, their passage was not the most pleasant but they are safe. Gerry made a quick run into immigration to let them know that we weren’t leaving today as we had originally told them, as to be expected they were not in the least concerned and told him to just come back in when we were ready to leave. Again it was a very windy day here, far too windy to get in the water so we kept busy by making even more mess on the boat than normal. I decided to sand back the wood slats on the steering seat and re varnish them, Gerry not to be out done then decided that if I was going to get a brush out and ruin it then we might as well sand back the wood work around the stove and sink in the galley and re varnish that at the same time. The difference between the 2 jobs? The seat was done out on deck and created little to no mess as the wind blew all the sanding away (besides it was done with a fine grade sand paper on a block) where as Gerry got out the power sander (more grunt – see Tim the tool man Taylor for details!) to sand the kitchen top surrounds. You would be correct in guessing that he didn’t move anything in the kitchen or cover it to protect it from the sanded varnish/wood dust, nor did he close the a joining bedroom door and just about everything in the surrounding area – bed, clothes, shelving, spice racks, cooker, air vents, carpet, doors, steps, glasses rack, kettle, pots and pans etc. is covered in a fine film of orange/brown, with the exception of the edges that he applied masking tape to so that the varnish would only be applied to the wood. I applied 2 coats of varnish to the seat slats and then left it to dry completely, thinking that I would give it another coat in the morning to finish it off. Gerry made a good job of varnishing the kitchen surrounds, the problem now is the age old one – it makes the rest of the wood work look in need of attention. By late afternoon the varnish was touch dry but not sufficiently dry to even think about using the stove or the sink so we decided that we would eat ashore. We cleaned up the obvious mess, thinking we would do the rest in the morning. We clambered in the dink and made our way into Karel’s dock, we had decide to try Mona Lisa’s for dinner and made our way straight to the restaurant. Sitting outside at one of the tables were Heather and Scott from the boat Scott Free, whom we had met in Los Testigos. After exchanging greetings we joined them at their table and proceeded to order our dinner, they were already eating theirs. We caught up with their journey to here and told them about ours, shared our possible onwards routes and enjoyed some chat and gossip about the sailing experience. They had arrived just that afternoon and were very tired so after finishing eating we all made our way back to our dinks and our boats for the night. We invited them for drinks the next evening if they had no other plans but they were trying to get into the marina for a couple of days so we arranged to call them and leave the evening flexible. Although it doesn’t sound like we did much the time flew by. Hopefully we will have some idea in the morning if our spare part has arrived (or is even on its way).