Last night we arrived back t the Nongsa Point Marina just before the office closed. Frank ran our documents over to the manager hoping we could get cleared out of Indonesia today and leave tomorrow. The manager promised them back by 6 PM Nov 1st. I was heading off to the laundry room when I noticed massive black blobs of something floating around in the water between the finger piers. And then I looked at Destiny to see how close they were to us. Close? We were covered in it! Destiny's waterline was coated with tar that had created about a 6-inch high and ½-inch thick ring around her hull. I summoned Frank to come look and on closer inspection we found that the dock lines and fenders were also coated. What a mess! Frank immediately hotfooted it to the marina office to report it and to inquire about getting it power washed off.
I spent nearly the entire day getting laundry done. The washing machines here are wonderfully large, yet each load takes 80 minutes to complete. Comparatively the dryers are tiny and not very efficient, probably because most cruisers prefer to hang theirs to dry. Hanging clothes out isn't an option now because of the rain. So I sat in a chair outside in the shade with my laptop and surfed the internet, checked emails and tried once again to Skype my daughter and parents but the signal wasn't strong enough for that. Frank finished some projects that he could now accomplish with our supplies from Singapore. Late afternoon a man finally arrived with the power washer, which did manage to blast about 60% of the tar off our waterline, but apparently he didn't understand the concept of aiming the thing, and a good bit of the muck was splattered upward unto our deck, cockpit, halyards and rails. The sun was doing a fine job turning the splattered bits to gummy baked-on goo. I tried to make a pass at it with mineral spirits but the mess was overwhelming.
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