After a fitful night’s sleep, we both felt somewhat rested this morning and, although it was supposed to be a day of rest after our passage, Roy decided to start work on all the niggly issues that had raised their ugly heads during the passage, as well as complete some maintenance tasks on the engines, given the amount of motoring we’d had to do. The latter including checking the oil on both engines and replacing the oil on both saildrives. He also tried to repair the clutch of the mainsail halyard that had started to slip, but, although we had the necessary spares, it was too risky to attempt to remove the clutch from the mast to complete the repairs. Instead, he re-routed the halyard to the clutch in the cockpit, reserved for the spinnaker halyard and returned that halyard to the mast.
From there he moved on to the starboard bilge to remove the water that had continued to leak from the hot water heater, a repair still to be undertaken while we are here in Djibouti. Fixing the website, however, is going to require a decent data connection to troubleshoot the issue, which more than likely is related to the software update that Roy did just before we left the Maldives. Fortunately all the blogs have posted, but just can’t be accessed at the moment.
In between all this activity, Talulah Ruby III arrived this morning, followed by Golden Spirit this afternoon. We’re expecting the remaining yachts that were sailing with us to arrive sometime tomorrow. Fortunately, by the time we both needed a nap, the doctor arrived to do our PCR test, much later than originally scheduled, resulting in us having to spend an extra day onboard, while we await the results before our clearance will be issued.
Since Elaine’s nap lasted longer than Roy’s, he took the time to bake an assortment of breads; a wholemeal crusty loaf and a “half-and-half” loaf - one half raisin bread for himself and the other a cranberry loaf for Elaine, since she doesn’t like raisins. He is truly a very thoughtful husband!
A nice long chat to Keenan, who had arrived in Houston, after his first medical emergency as a Captain, brought our day to a close, but not before we enjoyed a sundowner and our last packet of biltong we had been saving to celebrate our eventual departure from SE Asia.
