Day 178, Year 1: Busy Day
Date: Thursday, April 13, 2006
Weather: Cloudy Early Morning, Sunny Day, A Little Cooler and Windy
Location: Academy Bay, Puerto Ayoro, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos
When we got up this morning, I think we thought we were going to have a relaxed day-but that didn’t happen. First thing, I checked the e-mail to see if Heather and Jed arrived home safely. They did, so that was a great relief. We were then supposed to have a diesel fuel delivery between 10 and 11, and then a water delivery later in the day. Instead, we had a water delivery at about 9:30. There wasn’t quite enough water, so the water taxi had to go back to shore and bring more water out to us. Since the same taxi was going to deliver fuel to us and to Procyon, everything else got delayed by our water delivery. By 11:30 the fuel still hadn’t arrived, so we decided to go in for lunch and ask for the fuel delivery around 2:00 PM. We had made plans to have lunch with Randy and Sherri from Procyon and Margaret and Patrick from Aqua Magic. We had lunch and then got back to the boat to wait for the fuel delivery.
In the meantime, I checked the Fed Ex tracking of the parts we need for the transmission repair. Jack Law at Mack Boring in New Jersey had worked hard on Monday to make sure the shipment went out as soon as possible. The tracking shows that the 14 pound package was shipped from New Jersey to the Fed Ex center in the US, and then on to Bogota, Columbia, and Panama City, Panama. Our agent here tells us that once things arrive in Panama, they usually arrive here 24 hours later. But tomorrow is Good Friday and this is Easter weekend, so we might not get the shipment until early next week. In any case, we truly appreciate the fact that Jack Law personally made sure the parts were sent out to us as soon as possible. We know people here with Yamaha engine problems that are having to wait two weeks for things to be shipped. Thankfully our Yanmar dealer seems to be able to get things moving quickly and we really appreciate that. Thank you, Jack Law.
Later in the afternoon the fuel arrived. It had to be siphoned from jerry cans into the tanks, and that took a while. We then decided to scrub the teak deck, and that took a while. And by this time is was almost dark. We headed into town for dinner and ended up eating at a local spot with our agent, Johnny Romero. He has been dealing with some mega yachts this week and having some difficulties, so we ate and brainstormed ways for him to deal with difficult customers. We ended up on the same water taxi home as Margaret and Patrick from Aqua Magic, so we stopped by their boat to visit. Busy, busy day.
In the meantime, we are beginning to feel like “Galapagos endemic species”. It seems like everything else here is endemic, meaning that this is the only place in the world where the species is found. And since this is the only place in the world where we can be found, we are therefore endemic. Good logic, wrong conclusions. But I like feeling “endemic” and we continue to enjoy our time here.
Maybe tomorrow will be the quiet, lazy day we have been looking forward to since Panama. We shall see.
