Getting chores done on the boat don’t always go according to our best laid plans. We often are overly optimistic about how much we can get done in a day, but it’s not because we overestimate how much we can personally do, it has to do with external constraints that we haven’t adjusted our expectations for.
Take for instance, refilling our propane tank. This is a task that on some islands is actually quite easy- unhook the tank, bring it to a fill or swap location, pay money, retrieve and reinstall. But on some islands can be nigh impossible.
Last week, we ran out of propane. We unhooked the tank and set it aside, and used our electrical hot plate for cooking for about a week. On Friday, we rented a car to help us run some errands. We put the propane tank in the dinghy, drove the 10 minutes to shore, retrieved the rental car, and drove with the propane tank to get it filled.
Our first setback was that it was 10:30am, on good Friday, so the propane fill station was closed.
We returned in the rental car on Saturday to the fill station with our tank, only to be told they couldn’t fill the tank we had- it has a metric nozzle, and no one in St Thomas can fill it.
So we drove to Ace Hardware, located an American tank with an American Nozzle, and paid $77 USD for it. WE also spent $24.99 on a hose converter, because an American tank wouldn’t be useable on our metric boat. We returned to the propane fill station and paid cash to have it filled. After a few more errands, we struggled to park the car (Easter weekend is the start of Carnivale here, and a carnival built in a public parking lot had wreaked havoc on all parking spots) parked, trudged everything we’ve bought back down to the dinghy dock, loaded the dinghy up, drove the 10 wet minutes back to the boat, and reinstalled the propane tank.
Except, the converter hose we had purchased didn’t fit. It was close, but unusable. So we packaged the piece, put the receipt with it, and set it aside.
On Sunday, Easter, we woke early and called ACE and Home Depot. Ace was closed, but Home Depot was open, so we took the dinghy in to the dock to the parking lot to the drive up the hill to Home Depot, where we purchased another hose converter (we also stopped at Walgreens in search of easter candy and hair clips, but that is a tale for another day). Then, we drove back to the lot, struggled to park all over again, trudged to the dock to the dinghy to the boat and attempted to fit the hose converter on the nozzle. If I haven’t mentioned that it’s also HOT here in the Caribbean please see previous blog entries.
Back to the boat and our new propane regulator…..Close. But no fit. You’d think we’d have torn our hair out at this point, but to be honest these kinds of setbacks have become so common for us we barely sigh before moving onto the next task. Paul decided to google it- and was able to juryrig a usable hose using the second Home Depot kit and “craftsmanship”- and voila, three days later we had propane again.
On Monday we came to shore and returned the original hose converter to ACE hardware and used our store credit to buy a new toilet seat. And that is the story of how it took four days to complete a task- and why we have both an American set up and a Metric set up for our cooking gas, and why we have a new easter tradition of installing fresh toilet seats on our guest and personal heads. No one’s fault- no one’s mistake- just a slower way of life that requires moving at a pace we could not have learned living on land in the US.
-Lindsay
TIBURON MARINO 