After a very nice 8 day journey we have arrived in Punta del Este. We had great sailing most of the time, maybe a little too much motoring, but overall a very nice passage.

I was quite satisfied to be in a marina tonight, as the winds picked up to blow a steady 40 knots during the night, sometimes gusting to full storm strength. I tried to capture the spray flying over the breakwater in the middle of the night. Not so easy, but you get the idea.

Also I got a quick answer to a question I had yesterday. I was wondering why they had drilled so many holes in the pier, in what seemed like an afterthought after it was built. This morning I had the answer. The pier is not solid, it sits on pillars. And the storm causes the water level to rise significantly, almost a meter. The water reaches the level of the pier, and without these holes there would be lots of load on the concrete slabs from waves hitting it from underneath, and air getting trapped under it. Now air and water comes up as fountains instead, lessening the load from the impact.


 

 
Ok, finally it’s time to sail again. Feels good. The sails are back on. Food supplies full. I illustrate this with a picture of a Brazilian avocado. Very large, very good. We made a big bowl of Guacamole for the trip. Fruits and vegetables are so much more fun to shop and eat here, compared to Sweden.

The weather is kind of shitty: Overcast, rain showers and erratic winds. But the ocean is calling… Punta del Este, here we go.


 

I think I have enough trouble dealing with my own mistakes. But on top of that I have to deal with a multitude of standard products that fail. Here’s another one to add to the list: Today I was investigating a leak in one of the manual bilge pumps. It is less than two years old, but when I took it apart still it turned out it was the membrane that was cracked.

Now I deliberately bough rather expensive Johnson SPX pumps. And still they do not even last this long before the material fails. I guess as usual, the marine product manufacturers are laughing all the way to the bank….


 

The Journeyman has been in the water almost two years now, and the antifouling paint is dying. I dived for a few hours to clean the hull, but I was forced to end early by an invasion of microscopic shrimp. I guess their way of protesting me destroying their habitat was to crawl all over me…


 

 
Today I was making a small excursion with some friends who came to visit. Since I had been anchored for quite a long time in this muddy bay, I had a notion that there might be a lot of mud on the anchor. So before my friends arrived I went into town and bought an extension hose for the high pressure washdown pump I have in the cockpit. The hose of the washdown pump was not long enough to reach the bow previously.

This turned out to be a very wise move. As the chain came up it was covered in major thick coats of mud. It feels good to have working foresight at least sometimes!


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