December 8, 2024
Still at the boat yard under a scorching sun; it’s 90 degrees (32 C) outside. Not sure what is the temperature inside the cabin, but it remains manageable thanks to the Vornado. I may be the only one left here. Today is Little Candles Day or Immaculate Conception Eve, an observed religious holiday in Colombia that marks the start of the Christmas season. Few people came to work at the yard and those who did left after lunch.
And so it happens that the engine will not be ready today either. It finally started two days ago, but then the mechanics realized the engine sat too high on its base (the floorboards wouldn’t close properly) and was misaligned with the propeller shaft. They spent all day yesterday and part of this morning trying to fix the problem but to no avail. Jesus, the manager of the boat yard, will come in person tomorrow morning to help figure out what needs to be done. But it seems very unlikely I will be out of here before Tuesday.
It is not only the engine that has been dragging. Pending jobs include:
- Installing Starlink (the base for the antenna is ready)
- Rebeding a couple of leaky hatches
- Checking the generator
- Repairing the outboard (they took it away yesterday)
- Cleaning the bilges
- Checking the bilge pumps and the water pump
- Figuring out if the battery charger is properly set for the new batteries (it doesn’t look like).
On the positive side, I’ve made a lot of progress sorting things inside the boat. I went through every storage space (almost) and got rid of some 200 pounds of stuff that BEHEMOTH and I don’t need. As I told my wife, with the pounds lost he is becoming a normal cat.
I kept the tools and most of the replacement parts, engine oil, some cleaning products and sprays against different types of insects, but got rid of old cans of paint, an oversupply of hoses of all sizes and types, and things classified as unidentifiable objects. A nice surprise was finding a Magna gas BBQ that is in excellent shape and that I’ll use one day for grilling fish (see pic).
I also sorted all the sails and I plan to set them up when I move to the marina which is just 20 minutes motoring from the yard.
I am still on a 03:30 – 19:30 schedule which serves me well. Before work starts on the boat at around 09:00, I have time to catch with paid work. Around 17:30 – the time when all workers retire from the yard –, I move the cockpit to relax with a glass of gin before fixing dinner. Two days ago I went grocery shopping for a second time and as a consequence my dinners have become a bit more sophisticated. Yesterday I had pasta Bolognese with two glasses of a decent Tempranillo. I also started watching Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, but didn’t get very far.
Since today is a holiday, after posting this I am just going to relax and read. I am past the middle of Determined by Robert Sapolsky from Stanford University. It is an entertaining and easy to digest review of the scientific evidence against the existence of free-will. It is hard to accept, our brain is designed to make us feel in control, and yet our genes and the environment of our early days (when it’s clear we didn’t have free will) might determine our future. Recommended reading. Like me, starting next year, you may no longer want to celebrate your birthday. Since our days are numbered, every additional year of life is one year closer to death.
Since I’m on it, another book I wanted to recommend is White Holes by Carlo Rovelli, one of the leading theoretical physicists trying to integrate relativity theory and quantum mechanics. In a very poetic book where he follows Dante to the end of hell, he shows that it’s possible that black holes turn into white holes (when Dante meets Beatriz). These white holes are very small but pervade the universe and could be the source of what astronomers call dark energy, which makes 70% of the universe.
Sailing to the Pacific 