Day 22, Year 2: Work Day on Windbird
Date: Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Weather Today: Sunny Again
Location: Suva, Fiji
Today was another work day. Mark had high hopes of repairing the Sunbrella cover on the headsail, reinforcing the stitching on the dodger, and then sewing new velcro on our Dorade covers. He only completed number one on the list, however, as the Sailrite sewing machine just wasn’t behaving itself this morning. Of course, Mark was trying to sew through very, very thick layers of material, and I’m sure that had something to do with the misbehaving sewing machine. He was sitting out on the foredeck all day and he has a sunburn to prove it. At some point in the afternoon, I handed him a shirt to put on, but it was too little too late. He’ll probably just be brown in the morning, as he hardly ever really burns, but tonight he is a nice shade of crimson. After a frustrating day of sewing, around 3 PM we raised the repaired headsail. There is really nothing wrong with the sail, but the thread that was used to attach the Sunbrella cover was obviously not UV rated. Little by little, it has been disintegrating, and that is why Mark is having to repair. The same is true on the dodger. We reinforced the stitching on the bimini before leaving Whangarei, but we thought the dodger was fine. Well, it is not, so tomorrow or Friday we will have to remove it and do the repairs. For those of you who aren’t boaters, the dodger is what could be referred to as the windshield and canvas covering over the forward part of the cockpit and the bimini is the canvas covering over the back part of the cockpit. I spent my day doing more laundry (still doing things from the passage) and doing a thorough cleaning of the aft cabin. It was time to deep clean and then refresh all of the wood with lemon oil. Because of all of the louvered doors, cleaning the aft cabin takes a while.
So that was about all of the excitement on Windbird today. The weather has been absolutely beautiful ever since we arrived here, but I am expecting rain any time now. Suva is usually rainy, so I am really surprised that we have had five straight beautiful days. Not much else to report except that Ohani Kai left today and Moorea is leaving tomorrow. Since both boats are on the fast track home, we probably won’t see them out here again. We’ll just have to visit them in California once they are home.
