ON THE WAY

I had watch last night and talked to one of the boat drivers for a minute or two. At that time we were 49 hours from Belize. We should arrive about 5am on Sunday. Apparently they are entertaining the guests that were suppose to join us Saturday night. They will join us Sunday night instead.

I am still seriously considering getting off the boat in Belize and not going on the first charter. I dislike just about everything on this boat. The captain had a management style that I don’t like also.

Last night on watch, I washed a lot of dishes that were left lying around. Later I decided to do some laundry. It was still going when the Captain woke up about 6am and he was really nasty in telling me I should have finished the laundry that was lying around and should have folded the items I removed from the dryer. I had no idea whose it was or that we were responsible for folding other people’s clothes. It was his tone that was the real problem however. I explained I didn’t know the rules and he suggested that if I was home I would fold the previous clothes. Frankly, that doesn’t happen very often and you certainly wouldn’t do that at a public Laundromat. It appears that we’ll be doing laundry and dishes every time we have watch when there are guest on board. You also have to prepare the boat for the next days dives and guests.

Today I helped with the scuba tanks some more. We removed the valves again and took off the old O rings. We don’t have enough new ones so we are attempting to reuse the old ones. I cleaned them up and lubed them. I put some epoxy primer on the tanks that is suppose to help prevent rust. It is suppose to dry for 24 hours but they started painting over it within a couple of hours. It was very runny and still as wet as when I applied it. Every thing around here is done to expedite things regardless of whether its right or wrong. I looked up the procedure this morning for inspecting tanks and we definitely did not do it correctly. Steel tanks are to be left alone or sent someone so steel balls can be placed inside and tumbled to remove rust. We didn't have the tools and we used a steel cable for cleaning. This is pretty scary.

Later I was asked to clean up the sun deck. I cleaned a bunch of shelves and some storage lockers. Then I had to start cleaning chairs. We have about 40 chairs and each one had to be hand scrubbed and then washed down