Day 76, Year 6 Thanks and Praises
Date: Saturday, January 8, 2011
Weather: Sunny and Cool, Moderate Winds During the Night and All Day
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Our son Justin used to sing a song called Thanks and Praises to the Most High and I started singing that song this afternoon when we finally got responses back from all of our rental inquiries and found that the place that everyone voted as their top choice is available. The owner lives in Colorado and sent us an email late this afternoon from his Blackberry while sitting in a meeting. He confirmed our dates are available and he promised to get back to us later tonight (his lunch break). The only open dates for this house are April 23 through May 1, not quite as many days as we wanted, but it will work. It is a new house, not fancy but quite nice, right on the beach. There is no pool, but the price and the location on the north side of Vieques (vee-A-cus) are great. As soon as we heard those dates were available, we searched for flight prices and almost went into shock when we saw that the price for flights from Albuquerque were almost double what they had been a week ago. I panicked and we wrote Jo and asked her to start searching for flights, but all was remedied when we talked to our daughter Heather and family a little later. Heather searched and found that leaving a day earlier and returning a day later from Albuquerque got the flight price back to what we had seen a week ago. So hopefully we are going to be able to pull this together and have a wonderful family reunion on our own little private beach in Vieques.
We started our day with a walk into town to the library to check out the Saturday morning used book sale. We didn’t find anything we wanted, but it was a nice walk. We then hiked to the train station, probably a little more than a mile, and caught the bus there to the closest town with shopping, Fish Hoek. We bought twelve pounds of chicken breasts, four pounds of chicken thighs, loads of crackers, smoked salmon, canned kidney beans, three pounds of butter, and four huge blocks of cheddar cheese. We bought a new Ethernet cable (the old one is corroded), a new bucket, and then got back on the bus to head home. When we got to the Simon’s Town train station, we were dreading the hike uphill and then down to the Yacht Club with the heavy packs on our backs, but suddenly there was this little red van and we jumped in and said “yacht club” and off we went. It cost about $2.50 and was certainly worth it. When we got back to Windbird, we did a quick freezer defrost and then vacuum packed the chicken in smaller portions to put in the freezer. I don’t think I have ever worked so fast in my life. We were anxious to take our computers to the Yacht Club to continue our search for a place to rendezvous with our kids in the Caribbean. And you have already read the results of that search above. We still have to figure out how to get everyone from the airport in San Juan on Puerto Rico across to the island of Vieques, but that is tomorrow’s job.
Mark has a killer cold and has decided to have someone else dive down to clean the bottom of the boat. I diver came today to check out the bottom and he will do the job for $50. His schedule is filled until the week of the 17th, but since we hope to be leaving by then, he said he would come tomorrow. If that happens as plans, one more big job will be crossed off the list. Duncan and Irene of Moose have flown to Curacao for a week to wrap up some business connections there (that is where they lived before setting sail around the world), and they have left their SUV with Karen of Adriatica. She is talking the ‘girls’ food shopping on Monday, so I will be able to do most of the rest of our provisioning. I’m sure we’ll make a another trip or two to Fish Hoek, but things are starting to fall in place. By this time next week, we should be ready to leave. We’ll go to Cape Town on Monday the 17th to check out, and then leave as soon as the winds allow.
