It's officially boat repair season for City Dogs. When isn't it though? Oh yeah, when we're actually out on the water sailing (which we've been doing a bunch of lately when the weather permits).
Or when we're underwater diving, snorkeling, or seeing some of the amazing marine life on this awesome island! (Even then we have to change the zinc anode, and do routine maintenance like cleaning some of the growth off the bottom).
Of course, we know it's a privilege to be able to see things like the amazing staghorn coral in the background above or the gorgeous pillar coral formation below.
We don't always get to see big things like sharks and rays, sometimes like during our sail today at the Horseshoe site in New Port Royal, we just get to see all the little things that make the reef so amazing, like everyone's favorite: brain coral!
So let's see, getting back to boat work, we had to repair a small rip in our mainsail caused by a non-approved piece of hardware holding the slugs into the mast. We also have to get a new slug -- one of ours cracked -- but we're waiting for someone to bring that down because sourcing sailing parts in Roatan is pretty much impossible. We'll have that soon -- for the meantime we're sailing with a reefed main.
And we had to patch a small leak that we had in our less than year old dinghy (they sure don't make them like they used to). It was still under warranty but West Marine's closest authorized repair shop was in Jamaica -- and there's no way we're travelling 1,500 nautical miles in hurricane season to get our dinghy repaired there!
We also recently remarked all 200 feet of our anchor chain. We've been putting it off for some time now, but after blindly guessing for the past few anchoring sessions, we decided it just couldn't wait any longer. The paint we applied way back at El Milagro marina in Isla Mujeres is pretty much impossible to see, so we gave it a good cleaning, then applied liberal amounts of white paint every twenty feet. We've also tied yellow ribbon on the links every twenty feet so when the paint starts going next time, we'll at least, in theory, still have the yellow string to tell depths as we anchor.
It's also City Dogs driving time! We finally bit the bullet and got a used car from one of the most reputable shops on the island -- Big Mike's Auto down in French Harbor. It's not a pickup, not an SUV or a Hummer -- it's a good functional vehicle that'll get us from point a to point b.
We got a good deal on a Mitsubishi Lancer -- it looks great, drives great and will be key to keeping our interests mobile moving forward. The days of borrowing cars, renting cars, and begging car rides from everyone we know are officially over.
Fozzie Bear and Mischa love it, but then again, they love going for a ride in any car with functioning air conditioning.
Now we can do a little more exploring.
And a little more relaxing.
And see a bit more of this amazing island we're calling home.
It's not all beautiful beaches and gorgeous resorts but it's a picturesque slice of Caribbean paradise nonetheless.
