Miscellaneous Ramblings and Klingon Death Camp.........

Who's rustier....man or machine ?

Through blog statistics and sleuthing, we've established beyond a reasonable doubt that the SV L'ORIENT blog now has more diverse readership than any publication in the history of man with two notable exceptions- The Bible and 50 Shades of Gray; "Wow", you say......Quite a Bold Statement. We now have substantial readership in Northwest Canada......meaning native Canadians (more appropriately "First Peoples"). Adding this to our American great plains cohort of Doomsday Preppers (who we call "Last Peoples")...need I say more? Case closed.

Today concludes 21 straight days at the gym......or Klingon Death Camp. This is a 90 degrees, no AC and less maintenance affair on the second floor of a blighted village block in downtown Kralendijk, Bonaire which we affectionately call "the Dijk". With strange techno-music blasting and the guttural mutterings of the 6'7 tall membership and their gangly aryan brood (with a few post-colonial Indonesians and ex-pat Venezuelans).......you could close your eyes and imagine you're a prisoner in a B rated sci-fi affair with a fat, alcoholic William Shatner and some character actor in alien make-up. Or not.

Couple of Klingons discussing their evil plans

The gym-goers are very violence-oriented. It's all about MMA (mixed martial arts) here. There's a dude here (I tried to discretely take his pic but failed) who dons gloves and a mouthpiece and fights his girlfriend each Saturday for 15 minutes. This isn't light tapping or shadow boxing; they are literally punching and kicking each other at full force, each trying to kill the other. The girlfriend gives as much as she takes, too.........Then they go eat lunch together holding hands. A Dutch mating ritual ? Go figure. Anyway, it's $59 per month so whatever. What you see is what you get; rusty machines, use of duct tape on an industrial scale......they even leave the windows open on the rare occasions it rains (guess it cleans the machines).

At least the duct tape matches the seat

Actually, we're told it hasn't rained in Bonaire heavily since February........not so great because with the wind howling every day, the island is atomizing and our boat looks like those grainy films of WWII North Africa.....the Desert Fox and all that.......every halyard is brown with dirt (even our chic blue/green rope with the white fleck...Fendi Casa would sell this). In a complete home design meltdown, I turned on the fresh water and did the unthinkable (at least to cruisers). I washed down the boat with precious fresh water. Really this was kind of a show-off move; while others schlep heavy blue jerry cans to shore and mete water on their boats out drop by drop, L'ORIENT has a 130 liter per hour Grand Turismo, twin turbo, supercharged water maker (or something akin). Washing your boat this way is the equivalent of lighting a cigar with a $100 bill in front of your friends (not that we allow smoking on our boat; it's gross).

Trees apparently need water more than once per year

Kirstin and I are continuing to work on our language skills; Kirstin is rapidly progressing in French and my 35 year battle with German continues. Helm auf. The problem we have is that the foreign cruisers we meet, be they from France, Germany, Austria, Holland, wherever..........all speak impeccable English and don't like the inefficiency of conversing with two eager, yet struggling yankees trying to branch out.

Yesterday, we saw a German guy with three kids and a tiny dinghy that was blocked at the dinghy dock.........I went over and offered to move Crabby so he could get out.

Tom- "Darf ich ihnen helfen ?"
German dude- at first confused.......was this Ami speaking Dutch ? Then, in perfect English "Very nice.......would you mind moving your dinghy so I can get out ?"

The trouble is we never get to practice our foreign languages with real locals. This guy seemed interesting too.......his boat is called "Herz auf Gold" or "heart of gold". Kind of an old, metal, small boat. With three kids on board and a tired wife........it could have been called more correctly "Eltern ohne Geld"......or "Parents without money". Hahaha. Skills aren't dead yet !!!

Ciao for now.