January 13-30, 2011 -- Curacao
Click on the thumbnail for a map during this time period
Curacao Marine
We arrived back at Curacao (and Curacao Marine) on January
13. We have been mostly busy with projects ever since, but we have
also taken a few days off now and then to see a bit of the island.
On on of our first trips, we went to see an ostrich farm. Sound hokey? Actually, the tour through the farm was interesting and
enjoyable. The ostriches are raised for meat (and eggs), which
owing to currently low production, are all consumed at the on-premises
restaurant. There are also emus, the Australian analog, but since
they are somewhat smaller, they are not butchered and are maintained just for
the tourists to see. The farm attempts to be self sufficient, feeding the
scraps from the butchering to the crocodiles that are kept in a well-fenced
pond, maintaining a herd of sheep to strip the pens of grass before rotating in
a batch of ostriches, since the grass contains enough salt to sicken the birds
but not the sheep, they (the sheep) being a special breed from Barbados that
have adapted to salty grass, and finally, feeding the scraps from the restaurant
to Asian pigs.
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An adult emu
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Baby emu
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Emu (left) and ostrich egg
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Black male and grey female
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Feeding an ostrich
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Chuck takes his turn at feeding
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Hand held out will result in the ostrich clamping down on it with its beak
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Egg broken to show its construction
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Crocodile
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Very fat pig
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Sheep used to clean the correls of (salty) grass
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Standing on an ostrich egg -- demonstrating their strength
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Truck used for the tour of the farm
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Juvenile heads
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Very young ostriches
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Young ostriches are kept separately so they can be sheltered if it rains
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Ostrich art at the restaurant
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On the next day we ventured up to the north end of the island, where we visited
the Teka Boka National Park, with its blow holes and natural bridges and
petroglyph-bearing cliffs. Also visited an extensive cave system.
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Petroglyph
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Chuck photographing petroglyphs
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Barb in the cave
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"Pirate's head" in the ceiling of the cave
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Locals at a beach on the north end of the island
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In the national park
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Later after many days of boat projects, we joined Ian and Westa (Marsha
Claire) and visited the amazing Kura Hulanda Museum in Otrabanda. Housed in an extensive complex of restored 19th century buildings, the museum is
the creation of Jacob Gelt Dekker, a 52-year old self-made millionaire who was
formerly a dentist in Amsterdam. Subjects covered include such
disparate areas as evolution, slave trade, and art and artifacts from the
ancient empires of West Africa.
The
list of boat projects on this haul-out has been unusually long and challenging.
For example, Chuck used a heat gun to strip off the varnish from all of the cap
rails. That was a major project, but one made necessary by the fact
that the varnish was inexplicably bubbling up in the heat of the sun.
Some spots were fine, but others were a total mess, and there was no way to make
a clean seam between the "fine" and "mess", so it all had to come up. What was causing the bubbles? Not at all certain, but last season in
Trinidad we employed a worker to clean the fiberglass, and we suspect he let
harsh chemicals fall and remain upon the cap rails. As this is written it
remains to use a chemical stripper to remove the remaining varnish that clings
to the grain of the rails, and then a few spots will have to be bleached, and
then there is the question of how to refinish the rails.
It was time to dissemble the windlass and clean and re-grease the innards.
The caulking around the windlass was cracked and failing, and so that needed to
be replaced.
The wind vane had stopped turning at some point during our visit to the States,
and so I sat in the bosun's chair and Barb winched me up to the top of the mast,
where I removed the vane and brought it down for a stern scolding. "If you
want to be on my boat you have to indicate the correct wind speed. You got
it?" Those words, plus a tiny drop of PB Blaster followed by the merest
smidgeon of Boeshield T-9 has the vane responding to the mildest puffs of wind
again.
We fed out all 300+ feet of the chain for the primary anchor, a 110-lb. Bruce,
with the intention of reversing end-to-end, but ultimately decided not to do so
since it looked in good shape probably because we were on moorings for a lot of
last year and didn't use the anchor all of the time. We did change out the
swivel and shackles though
The secondary anchor, a smaller CQR, has mostly rope rode
with perhaps 30 feet of chain at the end. A few of the end links where it
feeds into the chain locker were rusty, and so I decided to remove them.
(Actually, it was the Admiral's decision.) I should have used a hacksaw to
remove the links, but I was anxious to avoid getting rust spots on the foredeck,
and so I used a bolt cutter. One long handle down on the deck, the other
gripped by my two hands as I bounced on the arm, struggling to break through the
link. When at last the link broke, I fell with a lurch and hurt my right
ankle and my right (new artificial) knee. As I only now reconstruct the
"accident", the handle must have smacked my calf just below the knee. As
the days progressed my calf became increasing sore, and we began to fear that I
had a blood clot. A call back to the office of the surgeon in North Dakota
resulted in the advice to get an ultra-sound assessment ASAP. We learned a
lot about seeing doctors in Curacao in the process. A non-productive visit
to an emergency room after 5 pm. A visit to a private doctor on night
call, who provided the all-important referral to a private clinic -- said to be
the best on the island -- which we visited the next morning. After being
shuffled to at least three different crowded waiting rooms, with relatively long
waits in each, we had a visit to one of the doctors who runs the clinic.
Another important piece of paper is obtained, this one marked (in Dutch)
"urgent" and requesting the ultra-sound. Alas, the admonition is ignored.
By the time the ultra-sound is conducted and the report obtained, it is well
past noon. We return to the waiting room of the clinic doctor, but none of
the three clerks now knows where the doctor is, nor when he will return. I
get the distinct impression that he has gone for the day. The report is in
Dutch. The clerks decline to translate it for me. But the doctor who
conducted the ultra-sound had clearly said that there was no thrombosis but that
instead there was a bruise on the calf muscle with some blood in the
tissue. A torn muscle and/or some hematoma didn't sound nearly so scary as
a blood clot, and so we returned to the boat.
Some projects were "farmed out", either because Chuck
needed to baby his knee and shoulders, or because the task required a bona fide
mechanic. We had the boat washed and waxed, and had the bottom
painted with anti-fouling paint. We had the heat exchangers for the
John Deere and the stabilizer removed and cleaned. We had the
cutlass bearing replaced, which required the removal of the propeller and shaft.
We took the life raft in for servicing and repacking. We were told that
the price would be $200 plus whatever the restocking of out-of-date items would
cost. So we were not too happy when the total turned out to be a whopping
$1223.17 (and that was after Barb talked them into a 10% discount on the
supplies). Supposedly everything was expired and all had to be replaced.
They did give us all the old supplies and we kept the flares and medical kit.
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John Deere heat exchanger removed but not yet cleaned.
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Preparing to remove the drive shaft
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Drive shaft after removal and before being cleaned
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The old cutlass bearing had to be cut out
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New cutlass bearing partially inserted
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Barb has been busy conducting a top-to-bottom inventory of all of our spare
parts and tools and supplies. We finally decided it was time to update the
2008 list after we spent days looking for parts for a number of our projects.
Somehow replacement parts don't always go back to where the previous spare was
kept.
On Saturday, Jan. 29, Barb, Westa - s/v Marsha Claire and Elaine - s/v
Dr. Flue decided to host a pot luck for the marina. So Barb made up
some posters and Elaine's husband Martin talked to the management about getting
a gas grill. The party was very well attended and was great fun --
especially when it was discovered that some very good musicians were in
attendance. The guitarist Gerry was from the s/v Northern Sky and
the banjo player Jimi and trombonist Tad from s/v Chi Ching. The
party lasted well into the night, culminating in a New Orleans style march
around the marina, led, not coincidentally, by the trombonist Tad from New
Orleans.
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Tad, Gerry and Jimi
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Jimi - s/v Chi Ching
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Gerry - s/v Northern Sky
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Chuck with Mark and Karen from s/v Susurra
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Other unfinished business includes the repair of the water maker, but we have
decided that can best be accomplished after we are back in the water, owing to
the difficulty of getting the unit out of the boat and down to the ground while
we are on the hard. And also, to the extent that repair measures will be
stepwise, it will be much easier to test the results of any given step if we are
in the water.
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