We are being taught patience.  Everything takes a while longer that you’d think.  All is going well with the repair, and we are getting tons of other things done that I’d thought we’d just do as we travelled.  It’s really far better to get it all done now, but I was impatient.  (Or should I say I AM impatient?)  Anyway, we are getting to know lots more about our boat, and getting lots of little repairs and upgrades done.  What makes it more fun is that we have no car… all our trips to the store or wherever are done by bike.  Cherryl loves it!  She has been lusting after that cool little trailer for years, and now she finally gets to use it!

We are staying in an AirBnb, a nice little condo very close to the boat.  The grounds are very beautiful!  We start most days with a nice long walk, then go to the boat and work on things, (see last post about messing around on boats), and then try to get back to the condo before the afternoon thunderstorms.  We’ve seen some torrential rains! (And we’ve been pretty lucky to miss biking in serious rain!)

Riding the bikes around town gives us lots more range that walking, and lets us see some cool stuff.  Like this Tesla Farm 😉 and a typical Post Office.

If this sign is here, the machine is broken! ?

(If this sign is here, it means the machine is broken! Really??)

This beautiful tree is just before our turn off the sidewalk into our condo area.

There is a nature trail near here, which we hope to explore tomorrow.  Looks like a very overgrown jungle.  This fence is along one edge… very cool looking…

But did you notice the Snake?

One thing we are still waiting on is our stern thruster.  Some of you have asked what is a thruster anyway, and how do they work?  So here are the Cliff Notes on Thrusters.

Notice the hole in the bow… it contains an auger-like propeller, housed in a tube that runs the width of the bow. Some are electrically powered; some, like ours, are hydraulic.

So here is the bow thruster in its tube, and the stern thruster in a special housing.  The stern is much wider than the bow, so it doesn’t make sense to have a tube running all the way from side to side.  Instead, a housing is made at the midline, wide enough to hold the propeller and get a good body of water rushing through, but narrow enough to allow access to the propeller.  So the point of all these tubes and augers is that we can move the bow, stern, or whole boat sideways when docking or maneuvering in tight spaces.  (Wish my stern thruster had been working a couple of weeks ago!)

Staying here a while isn’t so bad… this is the view from the stairs up to our condo!