Adventures of a Tribe

Crazy day!

Posted on July 22, 2015

It started out as a normal day in the marina. I did have to run back into Bocas to pick up a couple packages that had come in to the Mail Stop, and my time there was pleasant as always.

When I caught the water taxi back to the marina, we had to stop at the gas station for my captain to fill up.

On the ride back he asked me where I’m from and if I have family.  I answered his questions, including that I have 11 children, and his eyes grew huge, he stopped the boat, and began laughing hysterically. He asked if I was ok, and I replied that yes I was and I love being a mother and he laughed more. I started laughing because he was laughing and the two of us sat there dead in the water for several minutes, laughing and talking about families.  He’s been married for 52 years and has 3 children and has never left Bocas to travel anywhere else. What a delightfully happy chap!

When I returned to Tanda Malaika I started working on the engines again. I filled transmission fluid and radiator fluid and drained the overflow for coolant to fish out the hose that had dropped to the bottom of the reservoir. A couple of my neighbors came over again and insisted on getting down in the engine compartment too.

I told them I want to do it all so that I can learn, and they taught me many names of many things that still don’t make much sense to me but I think I learned a lot. We determined that the starter was bad so we removed it, and I dropped it off with a mechanic to look at. He found that the brushes need to be replaced. They are pretty gnarly looking.

In the mean time the creatures entertained themselves by trying on funky sunglasses and going on excursions in the dinghy.

           
While they were out, Mycah caught a fish, and was immediately horrified because she felt bad for it and didn’t know what to do with it.

She grabbed it, unhooked the darn thing and set it free and decided her fishing trip was over!

Later in the afternoon a mechanic named Dennis came over, to take a peak at one of the heads on the boat.  I thought that perhaps the macerator pump was out, but he determined that it was just stuck. It made a clanking sound inside after a while so we knew something was caught inside it.  He told me we’d have to take the toilet apart to take the macerator off, and I told him I wanted to work side by side with him so i could learn how to do it all. I had no idea what I was in for…nothing could have prepared me for it!! Removing the toilet wasn’t bad, though it did release a bit of a bad smell. Removing the macerator added a wicked aroma, but we removed bits of metal from inside, and then we noticed a small hole in the hose that carries the black water to the holding tank. With everything closed off, Dennis cut into the hose and the smell and sights reached an entirely new dimension! I think we have been wrong this whole time about hell being fire and brimstone.  I know now that hell will be paved with marine heads.  I asked the creatures to hand me a bottle of bleach, and doused everything in my path with it.  It was a bit of an out of body experience! I took the shower head and sprayed the entire bathroom down and went to drain it out the shower drain, just to find that that was not going to cooperate either, so I bailed it out with a bucket.  By the time I was done, I had a look of disgust on my face that I figured was going to be my new permanent look, and I waltzed over to the bathrooms for a scrubbing, just to find a big fat toad sitting in front of the door. I would usually take a detour and head in an entirely different direction, but I stepped right over it, told it I didn’t appreciate it’s sense of humor and went inside. Never has a shower felt so refreshing!

The creatures have been fishing again tonight and Aidan caught a catfish looking thing.

He set it free.

Now it’s time for me to snuggle down and dream of…anything but toilets.