November, 2010

Nikan is 30 years old: now with a new interior!
After two weeks in Puerto Lucia, J-P woke up one morning and announced we are going to remodel Nikan's interior. (I knew something was brewing in his brain, since for days he has been staring at nothing and everything with a dreamy expression on his face.) Two months later, after six sheets of Formica, three liters of varnish, one liter of polyurethane paint, two and a half sheets of plywood, 30 linear feet of different shape moldings and hours and hours of sanding, Nikan's interior is starting to look as we imagined. Stewart Yacht Services provided us with the manpower: one very, very shy carpenter with slow, but golden hands (don't even have guts to take my camera out, let alone to ask him if I can take his picture!) and his helper, both of them working without stop, starting 8 am., half an hour for lunch, till 5 pm., no coffee breaks as we are used to, no brakes at all (majority of people don't drink here coffee anyway, even though it's one of Ecuador's major export - and if they do, it's an instant kind). J-P assists daily with various tasks, sometimes I pitch in as well, although my main function remains typical of a woman: meals preparation, vacuuming, swiping...etc. It has been busy, busy eight weeks. Unfortunately J-P has to fly back to Montreal, since his father is quite ill, so I'll try to step into his shoes as a project manager and we'll be on our way as soon as possible, since our visas are expiring shortly.