Day 22 (2020-04-03) Supermarket/veggie stand/internet shop day. This is the one time I leave the boat once a week to replenish what I can of our staple food, junk food to keep the spirits acceptable and to keep a fresh supply of veggies and fruit before Tunisia is deemed too unsafe due to community spread. There’s already signs of community spread but there’s not enough testing going on and only one case reported confirmed in Nadeul governorate (where our marina is). John hasn’t left the boat during all the quarantine time, only occasionally he walks in our pontoon and the Marina garden at early hours of the morning because he has asthma. I don’t have any morbidity conditions and I speak french so it makes more sense that I’m the one going out. Each day I do the groceries run I feel super worried, what if I get it and give it to John and one of us gets really sick? Don’t know what we would do knowing that foreigners don’t have access to the medical services in this period as informed by the embassy. Each of these outings restarts the obsessive checks for fever twice a day, marking all and any strange feelings on our COVID log... Day 23 (2020-04-04) Today we will tackle the waterlock. We did a repair on it last year on the stainless steel piece that was showing signs of corrosion and ordered the replacement part from Vetus (an all-plastic version), the replacement was only scheduled for next year but since we are stuck here without much to do and have the part already onboard might as well get this one of the future lists. Off course this project put on a fight on both of us, I even ended up with a broken lip and we haven’t even installed the new unit yet! Day 24 (2020-04-05) Finally managed to install the new waterlock unit, however after doing an engine test run we found a leak on the "tap", we believe the cap wasn’t well threaded. After tightening it better we placed a coloured rag that marks water drips very well so we can ensure there’s no further leak.
Day 25 (2020-04-06) The bloody waterlock project is still leaking! Arrr. Disassembled everything, inspected, tested it again on the dock filling it with water and then identified the leak on the connection of the threaded "tap" to the plastic body of the water lock. It wasn’t the cap that wasn’t well threaded as we thought originally. Fixed the leak. Reinstalled the all thing again. Did an engine test again, placed the coloured rag that marks water drips very well to confirm there’s no further leak. Assembled the port side back cabin again. Inspected the old waterlock unit carefully and found that we were about to have a big failure on the opposite side to the repair done last year. Anyway, we will do a full overhaul of the Volvo Penta original untitled keep as spare.
Day 26 (2020-04-07) Boat wash day!!! Sunny and warm, the perfect day to get on our knees and scrub the little black marks caused by the neighbouring powerboats when they run their engines. This only happens when we sit idle during winter in a marina. Borrowed a Sailrite for a test drive and to keep me busy with little DIY projects. Day 27 (2020-04-08) Started testing the Sailrite, got carried away and ended up building a Lee Cloth for one of our salon seats without doing a template/pattern or much planning. Using or should I say repurposing the fabric of the curtains we had back in our apartment in Macau and components of our old cockpit cushions. Doesn’t look like a professional job but considering it was my first complex project ever and done with old stuff that was just laying around I think it’s pretty cool!
Day 28 (2020-04-09) Today I spent the day doing the bottom seam from the cockpit curtains and doing some small repairs on them also. North Sails didn’t complete the job back in early 2018 when we commended the work to them and I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to finish this job. The cockpit curtains material is a phifertex style mesh and I used Tenara thread... what a nightmare! John attacked the Herculean task of scrubbing the teak decks, day one of the job.
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