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Diane's DiaryNovember 28 Friday Larry has 2 huge blood blisters on 2 toes, the foot is all swollen and very painful so he can't walk much. We had a very stormy day and night weather wise. I went to Immigration to extend our time here. They originally give you 2 weeks and then you need to go back to Immigration. However, Immigration never tells you this, just other cruisers, so you have to be aware of it or they can throw you out of the country. Fortunately, they did not have to see Larry and I was in there for about 5 minutes. I went with Halliday Girl and Skyus and after we walked over to the 2 big supermarkets. They will drive you back for free - It's about a 15-25 minutes walk over there and both stores have better prices than the supermarket in town. We got back to Karel's dock with a ride from the supermarket and I stayed with the groceries while the others went to the supermarket in town. We waited at the dock for around 20 minutes for a big storm with lots of wind and rain to pass, but wound up getting soaked by another storm on our way to the boats. I put the groceries away, we had lunch and than it was on and, off again rain the entire day. We both fell asleep for a little while on the settees. We have the AC on half of one settee so it takes up a lot of room and we can't use part of this settee. Around 4pm, it stopped raining so I went to the marina to get some water (at 10 cents a gallon it's not cheap!). However, since we have little sun and almost no wind we have to run the engine just to charge the batteries let alone run the water maker. Anyway, I walked over to WannaDive to get some prices on renting equipment but there was no one there! November 29 Saturday Larry still can't walk and the foot is looking worse so he's just staying on the boat and keeping it elevated as much as possible. I suggested he go to the doctor but he doesn't want to go. Since this is the weekend, he can get a doctor tomorrow or else he'll have to wait till Monday or go to the hospital. Bruce, from Skyus, and I went over to WannaDive to see if we could make a deal with 4 people renting equipment - they gave us a little break but not much. Turns out it will be $200 to rent a BCD and regulator for 12 days so it's pretty expensive to rent the gear. It's actually cheaper to buy your own stuff - plus, rentals are never very good. I went by dinghy to sv Nerida as she had a BCD for sale. I asked her if I could bring it to a dive shop to get it checked out before I decided if I wanted to buy it. In the PM, I took the dinghy into town and then walked to Carib Inn to check out their gear as everyone told us they had good stuff. I asked his opinion on the BCD from Nerida and he told me not to buy it, as it was British equipment and I would have a hard time getting spare parts for it. The gear at Carib Inn impressed me but their prices are much more than we want to pay for equipment at this stage. I will keep looking for some used gear. At 5pm, we had Precocious Gale over for drinks and appetizers to thank our teacher for a great class. We had a good time and enjoyed their company. November 30 Sunday We had a bad night sleep with on again, off again rain the entire night so I was tired the whole day from constantly getting up to open and close the hatches. Larry's foot is still all swollen so he will stay on the boat again and try to stay off the foot as much as possible. I went to the supermarket in the AM. I took a nap after lunch, as I was tired from all the interrupted night sleep. Afterwards, I took the dinghy into the marina to get rid of garbage, and return the BCD to Nerida. I also stopped at Halliday Girl and Skyus to say hello. The wind is up slightly but it's cloudy and overcast with some rain. The wind completely died at 6pm and it's extremely hot and muggy. I worked on my logs for about 1.5 hours tonight. December 1 Monday Larry decided to go to the doctor this morning, as the foot is still not better. It was difficult for him to walk on it but it wasn't too far to walk and a taxi is minimum $7 one way for any distance. It was only about a 5minute walk to the doctor. We waited about an hour and then they said the doctor was called away to the hospital to deliver a baby and did we want to wait? Hell, no, that could be hours so they referred us to another doctor. Fortunately, we only had to wait a few minutes there. Larry has a bacterial infection in the toe. The doctor said Larry could go swimming but we didn't think this was correct advice, as we didn't think salt water would be good for an infection. He said to take antibiotics and topical antibiotics like Bactroban. He gave Larry a prescription for specific antibiotics but when we went to get it filled it would have been about $40USD. Since we had some Amoxicillin left on the boat, he'll use this instead. We don't have enough left but sv Skyus was able to give us 9 pills and so we were OK. He has to take the drugs for 2 weeks. On our way back to the dinghy, we met Andy on sv It's Good and he told us about 2 scuba tanks for sale for $80US each. That's a good price as they are usually around $100 and it's also very difficult to find used tanks on the island since the import duty on tanks is extremely high. We went back to the boat for lunch and waited out another rainstorm. We dinghied to Carib Inn along with Skyus to check out the dive equipment. Larry went back with Bruce in the dinghy as I thought I was going to have to walk to Divi Flamingo Hotel where they had the dive tanks. However, I found their dinghy dock and it wasn't to far away from Carib Inn. We'll buy the tanks if he fixes the valves on them. At 3:30pm, we went by dinghy up to Capt Don's and Buddy Dive to look for used dive equipment. Suzanne was lucky as she is XS so she was able to find gear for $250 for the regulator and BCD. However, we couldn't find any in our size. We got caught in a really bad thunder and rainstorm that lasted a long time. Thank goodness we closed all the hatches before we left the boat! Halliday Girl had invited us over for cocktails since they just got their underwater Xmas pictures back and they wanted to show them to us. We finally made it after the rain stopped - only about a half hour late but they of course understood! December 2 Tuesday We had on again, off again rain the entire night so I didn't get a good night's sleep since I was up and down closing and reopening the hatches all night. Why don't we just keep them closed you are probably wondering? Well, the boat gets really hot without any air coming in. With Larry's toe, he wasn't able to get up quickly and besides he needs to stay off the foot as much as possible so I was the one getting up all night long. Anyway, it poured out the whole daylong. I stood out in the rain and caught about 12 gallons of water in our jerry jugs! We had so much rainwater in our dinghy I decided to hand wash all the clothes I could. The water in the dinghy was pretty clean as we just had rain yesterday and pumped it all out. I did all the laundry including towels except the sheets. I put the clothes on the clothesline and lifelines and was hoping it would rain again to give them a final good rinse. And it did rain some more so they were really washed well! Anyway, it took me all morning to do the laundry. I tried to take a nap in the PM as I was tired from doing all the laundry but I couldn't sleep. I made homemade brownies and chicken satay from a recipe in my favorite cookbook. It came out pretty good, as it was the first time I ever made it. I will definitely make it again! December 3 Wednesday We went into town this morning so I could call all the dive shops to see if anyone has any used equipment for sale. I couldn't get the phone card to work on any of the pay phones. I went to the phone company but they had a line out the door. I finally just bought another phone card and made all the calls. I couldn't find any used equipment for sale. It is $200 to rent a BCD and regulator for 12 days so it's pretty expensive to rent the equipment. Plus, rental equipment is never very good usually as it's usually very abused. I know that from rental skis. Anyway, we went down to Divi Flamingo and bought our dive tanks and then went to Carib Inn and wound up buying brand new equipment or at least I did. They did not have Larry's size in a BCD and only part of his regulator but are getting the rest of the regulator in 2 days. Anyway, my BCD was $379 and 5% tax. OUCH! The regulators were $325 each also. So, as you can see diving is a very expensive sport! I figured it out and our breakeven point for using the equipment we bought is 42 dives. So, we need to get busy diving to recoup the cost of this equipment! Anyway, we really didn't want to buy new equipment but couldn't find any used. Sv HonaLee came over for cocktails. Alan bought homemade conch fritters and they were delicious! We had a good time with them! December 4 Thursday There was a cruise ship in today so town was very crowded. Larry went to use the Internet and I made some more phone calls to try and find him a BCD. One guy left a used one at the Lost Penguin restaurant for us to look at. We looked at it but it wasn't a very good quality and wasn't worth the $75 he wanted for it. Plus, it was filthy. You would have thought he would have at least cleaned it first! We found a new one at WannaDive; it was the Cressi one we learned on. It is not as nice quality as the one I got but he doesn't have any other choice. It was $350 plus tax but the owner of Wanna Dive will give it to us for $300 plus tax. Anyway, when we got back to the mooring field many of the boats were gone. We called Halliday Girl. What happened? They said the marina manager made an announcement over the VHF that there was a tropical depression NW of us that MAY bring strong west winds into the area during the evening. Should we go into the marina also? We figured it would almost be over $60USD just for one night! Pretty expensive! We listened to the weather, Larry called into the Ham net and the depression was turning into a tropical storm, however, it was pulling away from us and heading toward Cuba. Anyway, we decided to just stay on our mooring. It was a possibility we could still get some affects of the TS but it wasn't too likely we would see high west winds. We decided we had been through worse stuff. Anyway, DiviDive shop called - they had charged us for only 1 tank and could we come back and pay for the other? We hadn't noticed it as we paid in guilders but would have noticed it if we had paid in dollars. We said we would but not until the storm was over as we wanted to stay close to the boat. December 5 Friday The very late season TS a couple of hundred miles north of Aruba didn't bring those bad winds for us. However, we had gusty SE wind all night long so we didn't get good nights sleep. We were the only boat in the north part of the mooring field so it felt a little spooky! Actually, it was good there were no other boats around in case we needed to get off the mooring in a hurry. We were rolling some but we have definitely been in a lot worse conditions - like the storms out in the Aves. We dinghied into the marina this morning to get some dinghy gas ($4 gallon in the marina!), water and pick up our Fed Ex from Eric. He sent some really nice pictures of the girls (Larry's nieces) to us. We also went to the dive shop to sign up for air at the marina dive shop - 50 tanks for $100, which is the cheapest around. They have a convenient dock made for big boats but which will also accommodate dinghies. It is just outside the marina. Actually, the closest dive shop to use, almost right in front of our boat, is Yellow Submarine. This would certainly be the most convenient but unfortunately they don't have a dock at all and access is very difficult, as we would have to park at the green dock about 2 blocks down from the shop and walk back with the tanks or try to get them into the dinghy from the shore, which would not be easy. They are supposed to get a dock but who knows when that will be. So, most of the cruisers just use the marina dive shop to get their air as it is the most convenient. In the PM, I got a ride to Fed EX from the lady in the tourist office and just walked back. Eric had sent some papers from the attorney for Mom's estate that Larry had to sign. I stopped at the warehouse supermarket afterwards, as it was close by. When I got back, I dinghied over to Marlis canvas shop, as I wanted to see her cats for adoption and the molas from San Blas she had in the store. The store smelled of cat litter and the one kitten she had I was not impressed with. I was not impressed with the store much either. When I got back Jan from Nerida stopped by - she is a female single handler - we don't meet many of those! I made a spaghetti carbonara for dinner that came out terrific. December 6 Saturday I did some logs until noon today, had lunch and went into town to call Carib Inn. They told us to call first to see if the regulator came in. It had, so off we went by dinghy down to their dive shop. Larry tried on their BCD again but he really needs a larger size. He liked this one and wanted to buy it anyway but the owner Bruce told him for the second time, it was too small. So, we decided to go back to WannaDive and buy that one before it was gone. However, the hose connection was missing and their sales person didn't know how to do the connections to the regulator. They suggested coming back on Monday. When we got back to the boat I was so hot I just went swimming for a while. At 5pm, Skyus and Halliday Girl came over for drinks. They all brought their own drinks and made appetizers and I made a taco salad and some other things that went over really well. Larry's toe seems to be getting a lot better and he should be able to go diving shortly. Hope so as I am itching to go before I forget everything I learned in the course! |