Shitty death!!! Our built in, 12 volt, Nova Cool refrigerator bit the dust this morning. According to the manufacturer’s tag, our unit was built in 1993 and I know from our boat builder that it was installed in 1994. That means that we got 19 years of active service out of our unit, so I guess it doesn’t really owe us anything.

   I spent thirty minutes removing the old unit and all it’s associated wiring and copper conduit. I gave it a brief, but proper burial at sea and then had a warm beer to celebrate it's life and death and all the cool (pun intended) times we had together. Good-bye old friend...

I haven’t settled on a replacement unit yet, but I’ve been looking at the Engel refrigerator retro-fit unit pretty closely.

We’ve had good luck with the Engel freezers over the years, so I think their replacement unit might fit the bill for us.

   I really like the ultra efficient, low amperage aspect of their gear. Given what they say on their website, coupled with our first hand experience, I feel confident that we can reduce the amount of electricity the old refrigerator ate by about half.

Trust me, when you are making all of your own electricity, any reduction in total consumption is a good thing

   In other news, I’ve been out fishing twice in the last week with moderate success. The first trip out I snagged a pair of medium Hogfish on the reef outside right across from St. Francis. The second time it was too rough to go diving, so I used a friends fish trap and ended up with 12 pan size Mangrove snappers.

   Once they were gutted and scaled, I put 8 of them in the freezer for later and then proceeded to grill the remaining 4 of them, stuffed with random veggies, for dinner. They were good, but there were leftovers due to the shear number of fish present.

   It looks like we’ll be moving ashore for a month to house sit for our new friend Sally. Sally is heading back to the U.S. for eye surgery and she is leaving behind her Dalmatian Bella. Bella seems like a nice dog, but she is terrified of the weasels, so it remains to be seen how well that will work out.

   On the health front, my knee has gotten pretty good and while it’s not perfect, it’s pretty usable. I sort of played volleyball this morning. I say sort of, because we played three on three and I was the designated setter for my team, which means I didn’t have to leave the net and therefore rarely ended up in the sand. It wasn’t great, but at least it was something.

   My trip back the U.S. to help Adam bring a 47 foot cat back seems to be on schedule. I will be booking my ticket tomorrow and heading back on Friday. Hopefully all will go well and I’ll be back on island by the following Thursday.

Ok, that’s about it. More to follow, end of line …