We put Solitude back in the water on January 4. The shadow from the old name and home port (Marie, San Diego) has been almost entirely removed from the wet sanding work – cheers to all the wonderful memories and adventures on Marie!
We settled into our slip and noticed a slow leak coming from the newly replaced rudder packing gland, which the Marine Group resolved first thing the following morning. That night, a noise woke us up around midnight. Jim got out of bed and as he headed towards the companionway to have a look outside, he realized the noise was coming from inside the boat. There was a fuzzy intruder in the galley rustling pots in the drying rack. We grabbed a headlamp and saw a bushy tail. A very large..squirrel? From a snack of cabbage and limes, it leaped from behind the coffee maker, across the companionway stairs and into the aft cabin. Now we could see the ringed tail and pointy snout of a small coatimundi. He had pushed in the screen from the galley porthole and let himself in. Getting a coatimundi out from the aft cabin, this will be fun. Luckily the hatch into the cockpit locker from the aft cabin was still open from the rudder packing work earlier in the day and the coati ran right into the open locker. We closed the hatch and opened the locker from the cockpit above and waited – as we watched from behind all closed boards of the companionway down below. Within a few minutes his head popped up and he jumped out of the locker and ran down the dock. Perfecto!
While we are slightly delayed waiting on a marine electrician, we are enjoying walking the nearby beaches, checking out some of the local hotel properties, touring the impressive Flora Farms property, provisioning, reading C.M. Mayo’s Miraculous Air, cleaning and organizing the boat and practicing our Spanish.
SV Solitude 