Daily Archives: Monday June 11th, 2012

A week at ‘la casita’ with Memé

So, she’s off, back to San José !! My mother was here the last week and we “shared” the little house she rented for five days. Actually the children moved in since the moment she arrived, and the day after David and me followed, and so, enjoyed the air conditioned, the “huge” kitchen and a 100% dry bed.

Since there is not much to do here in Golfito, exept for buying parts for the boat… well, we stayed inside quite almost the whole time. Every evening we had a little chat on the bench in the terrasse, wondering what do people actually do in this lost corner of the world, at the border between Costa Rica and Panama, with heavy humidity and heat the whole day and the whole night. But the good thing is, we worked a lot on my label Coquito the time we where together… we discussed new ideas for the coming collections and skyped a lot with Annette, our college in Berlin.

And of course, Bruno and Viola where extremely happy to have her near and spend 24h/24h with their “memé”. That made also the farewell a little sad, and they cryed a lot, saying they wanted to go back to Argentina with her – their plan was that we would come and pick up them a couple of days later-  :) So, mum, it was great to have you here, even you didn’t put a foot on the Rancho Relaxo this time !

Posted in Coquito, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Work | 6 Comments

Wedding of the bacteria

That’s what our friend Guenther called it, when we emptied the jerrycans into the tank and suddently all our good diesel turned into a sludgy mess. Yesterday I finally motivated myself and got down into the engine dungeon to look at our fuel situation. First I connected a two meter fuel hose to our waste-oil pump and got about 30 l of (not too bad) diesel out of the tank.

I then disconnected all hoses and openend our fuel tank to have a first look. Definately bacterias. And lots of them ! I pumped the rest of the dirt into the jerrycans and swiped the whole tank clean. Then I started dismounting the fuel in- and outlets and cleaned all these parts. I discovered that the fuel outlet was a pipe-in-a-pipe and only held in place by a piece of rubber !! – And the fuel meter, which is stainless steel was mounted inside an aluminium (!!) pipe. How anyone doing business with boats would put an aluminium pipe inside a stainless stell tank is a mystery to me. I just think of it as another solved legacy problem.

I also discovered the reason for our mess: It was the diesel we got from the Flamenco Bay Marina ! (Thanks guys !) When I looked into the jerrycans, we filled in the marina, there was about half a liter of diesel left. After a week in the sun, one clearly could see the mud/bacteria seperating down at the bottom. Our problems during our last journey also only started after we put that diesel into our tank. Well, well…..

Now I’m gonna go into town to look whether the new fuel filters have arrived, thereafter I’ll put everything together again.

ps: Yes, we consistently use anti-bacteria additive for our fuel. Unfortunately not the good Grotamar 82, because it’s not available here…

Posted in Learning for life, LosLocos, Pics, Rancho Relaxo, Sailing, Work | Comments Off