Waiting for Christmas … Curacao Edition

December 18, 2023

What’s new on Home Free? Not much really. We arrived in Curacao a little over a week ago and will hang out here for almost a month.

I did fly home to take care of some personal matters last week, and successfully picked up a bunch of parts and pieces that will hopefully make the boat better. Since my return I have set about improving a few things.

It would be silly to complain about the heat here in Curacao, but it is hot. Then I went home for a week and while it wasn’t really cold, it was much colder than here, and I think I prefer hot. The heat allows me to ride a bicycle comfortably and go around with minimal clothing and footwear. Luckily I missed almost all of the snow in Canada and had a great opportunity to catch up with family. (Notably, when I flew into Pearson, I rented a car and drove to the island. From the moment I left the garage at Pearson, to the moment I stepped into the house on Amherst Island, about three and a half hours, it didn’t stop raining for a second. It was unusual and stressful all at once.)

So what’s on tap? Today was mostly about changing oil in my engines. Despite having changed the oil in June before putting the boat up, Lugger Bob advises an oil change after leaving the boat unloved for a month or more. I did run the boat from Grenada to here on the oil that I added in Grenada, but now I have fresh oil and filters for the next 250 hours or so which should help to keep the engines in awesome shape.

Now that we have decided to keep the Starlink all the time, it is possible to stream a whole bunch of media, and for me that typically means music. I added a couple of new Sonos speakers to the boat on this trip as well. Now we have Sonos speakers everywhere on the boat (including a ‘Roam’ which we can take outside), and that allows us to have amazing sound throughout.

Other projects upcoming include rebuilding at least one of the Xiaomi Mi Scooters. They were both destroyed during the summer having been left in standing water for a long time. I purchased a lot of spares parts and brought them back to the boat. I hope I can make at least one frankenscooter.

I have another little pet peeve, and it is that light bulbs in my meters are dying. Today I took apart my control panel for the Lugger generator to find out what bulb I need and it is such an obscure bulb that even Amazon doesn’t carry spares. Ugh. As Jinhee says, a flashlight will do the trick.

There are bumpers to replace, and latches. I will make an attempt at connecting that new Axiom chart plotter (SeaTalk NG) to the old Raymarine network (SeaTalk) to see if it can share data. (Long time readers may recall that I tried that in 2022 but failed, but I wasn’t thoroughly disappointed at that time, so I will try again. This is simply my way of trying to extend the life of the system I currently have in place.)

Jinhee was left alone on the boat for the first time ever (well, for more than a day), and she wasn’t stressed at all. She cleaned up the teak chairs on the back deck and oiled them, and even cleaned up the stern rail and oiled it. (James Knight will be pleased to hear that).

There remains a lot of ‘clean-up’ items from the work in Grenada. Snaps for covers, bolts that aren’t stainless have to be replaced with stainless bolts, and there is so much more. It is good to be back on the boat, there are projects to be completed and never a dull moment.

Of course the cycling is continuing for me as well. I am just 175km short of 6,000km for the year, so that is a rabbit that needs to be chased. It shouldn’t be a problem to put in another 175km in the next twelve days, but we do expect to move the boat as well, so we will see.

The roads here are a bit of a mystery (there isn’t a lot of straight roadway and the layout defies description) and the side roads are in terrible shape. That is countered with very well behaved drivers. I have yet to see an accident on the roadway despite the fact that drivers here don’t really follow the rules; they remain very polite just the same.

Megan (our daughter) and Emile (her significant other) arrive on Friday for some fun in the sun and we will celebrate Christmas morning here before departing for Aruba (weather permitting) for the last half of their time in the sunny south. Hopefully the weather cooperates, but so far it looks to be getting ‘better’ as time wears on.

Perhaps there is another post in me at Christmas, but this is just a short update on our relatively blissfully boring existence in Curacao. For those that rely on photos, I have nothing meaningful to share. I will endeavour to do a better job between now and Christmas.