Another year ends and a new one begins. We miss all the people we met last year who are either done with their year of cruising and back at home now, or have sped on ahead of us and are already in the Caribbean, or perhaps in the Med, or even the Pacific. We keep in touch with some of our friends through email, and with others through the SSB radio. High-frequency radio is an amazing thing: on the first day of the new year, we talked with Joss in Virgin Gorda, and then a few minutes later with Effie in Maine. We're still growing barnacles in Vero Beach, hanging out with a few old friends and a few new ones.
Meeting people is always a great joy for us. In addition to all the cruisers we have met, we've had the pleasure of meeting several people who first "met" us through our web pages. As much as we enjoy getting email from "virtual stowaways", it's even better when we get a chance to meet in person. When we were at Herrington Harbour in Maryland, Debbie and Fred took us out to dinner on their way to check out a used Caliber 40, in Fernandina Beach Judy took me grocery shopping, and here in Vero, Gordon and Bonnie, who live nearby, gave us the full tour-guide treatment and helped us fill our dinghy with provisions and supplies. We love talking to wannabe cruisers, because then we can show off all our hard-earned knowledge! And it's always helpful to meet someone in port who knows what's available, where to get it, and best of all, who has a car to transport us there and back.
Vero Beach is a very social place, although it seems that for the most part the social groups form up early and stick together. It takes a bit of effort to get to know people, especially since in the cold weather people are hunkered down below rather than sitting in the cockpit. The best place to meet people seems to be on the free city bus, because the boat people are pretty much the only people who use the bus system. (I should say that the only white people who use the buses are cruisers. This says something about the demographics of both Vero Beach and the cruising community.) We met a few people we'd like to see down the road, but not everyone's going where we are. Some boats are headed for the Keys, some for Florida's west coast.
One couple we met are our new record-holders for smallest cruising boat. Last year we met a few couples on 27-footers, and heard of but didn't actually meet a singlehander on a 26-footer. None of them can hold a candle to the Canadian couple who have been living aboard and cruising on a 20 foot boat for the past year and a half. It's hard to explain just how small 20 feet, is, but trust me, it's small. 20 feet is half our boat's length, but width and length are related, so their boat's volume is perhaps one-quarter of Windom's. Our dinghy engine has almost twice the horsepower of their boat's engine! The husband is a big guy, too -- we're amazed the boat would be big enough for just him, let alone for him, his wife, and their cat. Their story is a little fuzzy, but the impression we get is that perhaps things didn't go well in business for him, he lost his license to do whatever it is he does, he got sued, they lost all their money, and they quietly skedaddled out of town. They cruise until they run out of funds, then work for a while wherever they've ended up until they have enough to hit the road again.
Our project list isn't exactly dwindling, but at least we put a pretty good dent in it. The problem is that projects tend to expand. One morning we finally got around to changing the oil and oil filter, something we should have done a month ago. Changing the oil with our Reverso pump system is easy, but removing the old oil filter makes a mess, and it took a while to clean up. As long as we were changing the oil filter, we might as well change the fuel filter. And since we had to slacken the alternator belts to reach the fuel filter, and they've been squealing and throwing off dust, why not replace them as well? (They turned out to be cracked and stiff, and we should probably have changed them a month ago too.) The coolant level seemed a little low, so we topped that off. By then, it was cocktail hour.
Another job we tackled was our first ever head rebuild. Marine heads are a marvel of valves and gaskets, and as long as everything works, there's no need to investigate too closely exactly how it works. When it doesn't work, it's time to take it all apart, replace the worn bits, and put it back together again. The forward head had stopped working shortly after we left the Chesapeake. This was inconvenient although not disastrous (since as we all know, two heads are better than one!) but we were tired of the inconvenience, and we figured we'd better fix the forward head before the aft head started acting up in sympathy.
Britt flushed many gallons of warm, soapy water down the head before taking it apart, but it still smelled yucky when he opened it up. We could see instantly why it wasn't working: the joker valve was covered with calcium carbonate, preventing it from sealing properly against backflow. Calcium carbonate, which is formed by a reaction between urine and seawater, also thinly coated the piston chamber and the hose junctions. Like fatty deposits in the heart and blood vessels of someone who eats too much cholesterol and not enough oatmeal, the build-up was, so to speak, giving our head a heart attack. We flush a cup of vinegar and let it sit in the system every few weeks, to keep the deposits down, but it's a pretty weak acid; some people use stronger solutions, but they can damage the head's rubber parts. We replaced the valves and all the o-rings, gaskets, and balls, and scraped all the calcium carbonate out of the pump body before reassembly. Somehow we managed to get all sixty zillion little plastic bits back in the correct places in more or less the correct order, and we now when we pump on the handle, the water goes in and the ick goes out, just like it's supposed to.
We continue to set low temperature records here in Florida, making the Vero Beach Municipal Marina's slogan ("Where the Tropics Begin") a cruel joke. Our heater is on all the time, and we make excuses to gather for cocktails in the late afternoon on boats with fully-enclosed cockpits, which have been warmed by a full day of sunshine. Miami isn't much warmer, but Joss gleefully told us on the radio that it's been 85° every day for the past week down in Virgin Gorda. Grr.
We just ordered solar panels, so we'll be hanging out here for a while longer. After long hours with marine catalogs, review articles, and all our 12v reference books, Britt decided upon 3 55-watt Siemens panels. While we wait for them to be delivered, we'll work on our other projects and continue to provision, stock up on spares, and generally shop until we drop.