Day 64, Year 5: Cold, but not the Temperature
Date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; NE Winds 10
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

Mark woke up this morning with a killer cold. He was coughing in the rental car yesterday, but we had hoped it was the air conditioning. But not so. So we had to slow down a bit today and hopefully he will get to sleep early tonight and will wake up tomorrow feeling much better. That’s optimistic, but one can always hope.

Our little power struggles are continuing, but we did get our alternator back this afternoon and if Mark feels up to it, he will install it in the morning. His contribution to the power issue today was to remove all of the leads from the shunt, clean the connections, and then reattach the leads. The shunt is basically a metal device that is wired to the batteries and allows us to read the amperage that the batteries are consuming or putting out at any one time. We had no further wild readings on our battery monitor for the remainder of the day, but we will have to see what tomorrow morning brings. We just have to keep checking on this issue one little step at a time.

I borrowed Scot Free II’s canner once again and this time I actually got the spaghetti sauce made and am waiting for the canning process to be done as I write this log. If the whole process works, it will be great to have the canned spaghetti sauce with ground beef when we are doing passages. This helps reduce the amount of meat I need to keep in the freezer and the canned sauce is like an instant meal. I can heat it up in the microwave if things are really rough, so I’m so glad I’m finally getting this done.

We had Ed and Lynne of Constance over this evening for Happy Hour. They arrived here yesterday, but we got home so late last night that we didn’t get to connect. They are the only couple we know of at this point headed our way this year but we know there will be others. But until we meet those people, Constance and Windbird have a lot in common and it is great fun to get together and discuss our plans. They are staying here for New Year’s Eve and we might decide to stay here as well, especially if Mark is not feeling better. We will just have to see what tomorrow morning brings.