LAHOWIND » Just you, me, + the dog.

Boat Loads of Baby Shrimp.

And boat chores. Lots of em!

It feels like we have spent the past few days unleashing on our list of boat chores.

We’ve replaced our bathroom faucet, replaced the coolant lines to our hot water tank, replaced the sending unit for our engine temperature gauge, restocked our pantry, cleaned the boat, filled up our gas tanks, cleaned our cockpit cushions and solar panels, worked on organizing and stowing crap inside the boat, checked our battery bank, cranked out several loads of laundry, filled up all the water tanks, greased up the manual head pump, and raised our new American flag.

Phew! We need a vacation! Oh wait… ;))

I am happy to report we have a much cleaner and more properly functioning boat as a result.

We majorly scrubbed the boat from top to bottom, and let me just tell ya, after sitting for 3+ months at a marina that bottom was a mess! I’m quite certain we were growing a full-blown baby shrimp sanctuary complete with sheets of lettuce and chunks of other nastiness along our entire hull. Disgusting. Thankfully, we were smart enough to hire someone to help with this chore.

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We drove the boat over to Playa Buye the other day so our marina buddy Cha could work on cleaning the boat bottom in a somewhat clearer and shallower area. He worked for about an hour or so, as we watched chunks of sea gunk get scraped off the boat…much to the delight of tons small fish in the area.

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Jereme also jumped in the water to check out a few miscellaneous items around the boat (zinc, propellor, etc.) and to make sure we were in ship-shape to start cruising again! Which we are! Woot woot!

That bottom cleaning task, however, is one crappy job! Poor Cha was covered from head to toe with thousands, and I literally mean thousands, of teeny tiny super smelly baby shrimp when he was done. :((( Poor guy. I think I was so disgusted I couldn’t even bring myself to snap a quick photo of the mess. The boat (cockpit mostly) was also totally covered in shrimp following said bottom cleaning. Not a fun post cleaning cleanup. :((

As usual, Oliver kept an eye on everything and made sure we all stayed on task. ;))

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