Day 8, Year 6 Odulphus Arrives!
Date: Monday, November 1, 2010
Weather: Sunny; Winds NE 25
Location: Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richards Bay, South Africa
The big news of today was that when we got up and looked around outside, we saw Odulphus on the end of the pier behind us. Odulphus arrived last night after dark, along with Single Malt, a Swiss boat that we know. Both boats had good trips. It took them eleven days to get here but they avoided the southerly winds and got here in one piece. We had dinner with Pieter and Carla tonight and are so glad they arrived safe and sound.
Our freezer story has come full circle. Oakie arrived this morning with both our old and our new compressor and declared that both work just fine but both needed new electronic cards. We have no idea what this is but another $850 later we appear to have a freezer using our old compressor. It has a larger cooling unit than the new compressor and Oakie thought it best to reinstall it. I say that we ‘appear’ to have a freezer as it is not down to freezing temperature yet. Oakie explained that it will take about 24 hours to stabilize. Right now the temp is going up and down and he says that is normal. Again, we have no clue, so we are just hopeful. Our trip to the game park has been delayed until next week (I’ll explain that in a minute), so Oakie will return tomorrow to make sure everything is working fine. I’m not going to get too excited yet. I’ll wait until tomorrow.
Now I’ll explain about the delay in visiting Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve. Since we were planning to visit in mid-week and it is not school vacation time, we thought we would have no problem reserving a place to stay in the park. But unfortunately, that was not true. There was no room this week, but we were able to reserve safari tents for next week. So we have flip-flopped our plans. Constance and Windbird will make day trips to Durban this week to pick up needed boat parts and get our life rafts re-serviced. On Wednesday, Ed and Lynne will go down and deliver the life rafts and a sail that they need repaired. Then on Thursday, Mark and I will go down and pick up a couple of toilets that we desperately need. We have to do it on successive days as there is not enough room in the car for four people plus boat stuff. Then next Tuesday we will take off for our first game park experience.
It was a WINDY day here today. Our refrigeration repair man, Oakie, explained to us that the strong winds they used to get here in August have been arriving in November for the past couple of years. And the warm summer weather we should be experiencing has been delayed and will probably arrive in late December. So it is cooler than normal, which is fine with us. We are wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts in the evenings and we are using a sheet, and sometimes a polar fleece blanket, at night. The temperature never seems to fall below 68 degrees F, but seems mighty cool after being in the tropics for months.
