Category: Cruise prep

We interrupt the planned post to tell you this…

Well, I was in the middle of writing a post to update you about our past two weeks here in St. Kitt’s & Nevis, but I got interrupted by a potential weather window, which turned into a real (albeit not ideal) window we’re taking to go to Guadeloupe. 

So…we’re leaving at midnight for what will hopefully be not a horrible passage that will hopefully land us in Guadeloupe before sunset Wednesday. I’ll post sometime later this week to let you know how the passage went, and to fill you in on our past couple of weeks.

🙏 🤞🛥

What’s cruising without a few bumps in the road?

We’ve been back in St. Kitt’s for a week and the boat is still not in the water. The boat work we’d asked to have done started the day before we arrived. We told them what we needed done last June when we dropped her off for storage, and again in November, and December, and earlier this month. Last January, the boat work we’d asked for started on the day we arrived, so I suppose this year is an improvement. Island time.The big job that needed doing, which Dave and I could not do, was the bottom copper coat. Dave is extremelyallergic to the hardener in this epoxy-based paint. Before we launched last January, Dave spoke to the then yard manager about the job and learned there is a guy on the island who does it as an outside contractor. We’d buy the supplies in St. Martin and bring them back with us in June, which we did. Dave met the guy in June, at the boatyard, to discuss the job; all seemed good. When November rolled around, nobody could get in touch with him. When we still hadn’t heard anything after Christmas, Dave contacted the yard owner who put Dave in touch with another guy who could do it, I’ll call him Bob. Dave and Bob texted back and forth and Dave said it sounded like Bob knew what he was doing, so told him to go ahead.

We’re pretty sure our boat is the first one Bob has copper coated. First, the hull needs to be sanded and smooth and any pits that don’t sand smooth need to be filled. Our hull is still pitted in places. The time-sensitive, epoxy-based copper coat requires a crew of 3-4 to do it well. Bob had one other guy working with him who was less than dedicated to the work. Finally, the hardened copper coat needs to be sanded smooth. Bob and the other guy showed up Monday with one battery powered sander, no way to recharge it, and not enough sandpaper. By Tuesday morning, with only about one quarter of the final sanding done, Dave suggested buying electric sanders and more paper. Away Dave & Bob went and returned with the needed supplies. That helped, because the sanding was finished this afternoon. In speaking with Dave daily, Bob has acknowledged throughout the process what he should have done differently. If he ever does this type of job again, we’re sure he’ll do it even better. Bob is a good worker and learns from his efforts. The other guy did a lot of sitting and half-hearted sanding. It stinks to have to pay $45/hour/person for amateur work, but pay we shall. 

On the upside, Dave and Bob bonded a little. On Friday, Dave had given Bob a spare solar panel we’d gotten for free but couldn’t use. When Dave bought the sanders, he told Bob he could keep one after the work was done. During their drive, they discovered a shared love of hunting. Bob hunts wild boar on the island, a lot of wild boar. He gifted us with 8 pounds of boar meat! We do meet some mighty nice folk on our travels.

 That was just one bump in the road.

Our windlass needed attention. (For you non-boaters, the windlass raises and lowers our anchor and chain). Dave came prepared with a rebuild kit. The job took longer than anticipated. Dave not only did the anticipated rebuild, but also a lot of correcting of things that were poorly done when it was initially built. The windlass had also been installed poorly, so he improved that before reinstalling it. I even got to play a role in this, doing a small epoxy repair job on the mounting base. Monday night, just after sunset, it was reinstalled and we tested it. As Dave punched the up and down buttons, the lights inside Lady flickered on and off. In addition, the anchor went down, but not back up. It also made some unfortunate, complaining sounds. There’s also a way to crank the gypsy (the part the chain links sit in) manually with a handle should the motor die, and that wasn’t working. Ack! By early Tuesday afternoon, Dave had it sorted. Our windlass works now!

The flickering lights during our windlass test, were the result of another bump in the road. Our 12V golf cart batteries run the house load of fridge, freezer, lights, stereo, dinghy lift and windlass. Their capacity was basically non-existent, so the windlass calling for all that power tanked them, causing the lights to go off. Dave had purchased two 12V car batteries last year, so he switched the wiring to those. They’re temporary, because their capacity is not as high as a that of healthy golf cart batteries. Unfortunately, nobody sells golf cart batteries on this island, so we’ll probably have to buy those in Guadeloupe.

Still with me? I have two more bumps to go.

Bump #4 was our replacement multifunction display (the chart plotter that allows us to set routes and navigate, see our speed and depth). The original started delaminating last year, which turned out to be a warranty issue. So last June Dave removed it, lugged it home, and shipped it back to Garmin who sent us a new, bigger and better replacement for free! Too bad they sent us the wrong model. We have front and side scan sonar transducers and a depth sounder. The multifunction display they sent does not have the proper ports for these. Depth is an important thing to know, especially when traversing or anchoring in shallow areas. Dave was able to connect the front scan sonar which can also serve as a depth reader. It’s not ideal, but if Garmin can’t (or won’t) ship the correct display to the Caribbean on their dime, the exchange will have to wait until we’re back in the U.S.

The final (for now) bump in the road was the theft of the gas can out of our dinghy. Had we not stupidly left the gas can in our dinghy, unlocked, it wouldn’t have been stolen. Mea culpa. Fortunately for us, the local Budget Marine store had one in stock. Off we went to Basseterre today to purchase said gas can and requisite attachments, as well as a couple of unrelated items we needed. This trip also provided us with the opportunity to eat at one of our favorite local restaurants, El Freddo. It wasn’t a bad way to spend a few hours today.

Upon our return to the boat yard this afternoon, we learned that the bottom work is finished, the power wash has been started and will be completed in the morning, and they can launch us tomorrow, although they have to schedule us around two other boats being launched. Bob needs about 2 hours while Lady is in the lift slings to copper coat the areas where she was resting on the jack stands. They won’t be able to be sanded smooth afterward, but it’s better than not having those areas coated at all. If all goes well, we should be in the water by late afternoon. They have an open slip at a rickety old dock that we can stay at for a night or two while we do our provisioning runs. 

Perhaps by the next time I post, we’ll be someplace more interesting. This season we hope to visit, in no particular order, Nevis, Montserrat, Dominica, Guadeloupe and Antigua. I will, of course, keep you posted. 

Until next time, stay safe and take care of each other! 

Back

I’m baaaack!

We arrived in Nassau last Saturday afternoon. This time around, “we” is me, Dave and our friend Ian, who is with us for a couple of weeks. We checked into our one-night hotel, then took the public bus to the ALIV store to get a data SIM card for our MiFi device. Then back to the hotel for very strong, fruity rum drinks, followed by dinner in their restaurant. We crashed early.

Sunday morning we met our taxi at 5:45am for the short trip back to the airport for our 7:30am flight to Great Harbor Cay. The short, 20-minute flight landed us just after 8am, where we were met by our pre-scheduled taxi. We were at the marina and on Indigo Lady by 8:30am. Back on our second home at last!

She was in good shape (relief!). We quickly set about opening her up, cleaning, sorting, unpacking, etc. We spent three days getting ready to head out of the marina. Lots of boat and tech chores were interspersed with bike rides to town for lunch (the first day when we were too tired to make food) as well as provisions and alcohol. Wednesday morning we settled up with the marina, bid them farewell, topped off our diesel and gas and started our multi-step trek toward Nassau.

As always, we are dependent on the weather and sea conditions. A big blow (wind only, no storms) was forecast for Friday-Saturday/Sunday, so we planned two stops along the Berry Islands chain. Wednesday night we stopped at Soldier Cay. Thursday we headed down to Frasers Hog Cay at the southern end of the chain. This is one of the few anchorages in the Berries with westerly protection and that’s the direction the winds are coming from. They started to kick up Friday afternoon and were very robust overnight, holding around 20-25 knots with gusts into the low 30’s. On a small boat like ours, this is very noisy, so I did not really sleep last night (sigh). Yesterday after breakfast we dinghied ashore, before the winds kicked up, for a walk on the beach and on part of what appeared to be an old trail, probably associated with the Berry Island Club Marina that closed down around 2017 or so. Today is too windy to do anything but stay inside. We’ll probably watch movies and play games. It’s a bit chilly to be outside. The air temp is only 60-degrees but there’s on heck of a wind chill. (Ya, I know, you in the north are thinking “poor babies, so cold for you.”)

We may be in warmer climes with beautiful scenery, but it hasn’t been all fun and games. Thus far Dave and Ian have had to trouble shoot a through-hull shut off for the port generator’s cooling system that had failed in the closed position, thus preventing cooling. Thankfully They got it into the permanently open position which should be fine until we get a replacement; my folks are bringing two with them when they come to join us next weekend. Dave and Ian have patched and re-patched a leak in our dingy. Our starboard generator, the one we finally got running last June after it being asleep for a year, conked out on us again while we were en route to Soldier Cay. We had stopped to reel in a fish and it wouldn’t restart after that. The helm display was reporting low voltage on the starting battery. So Dave engaged the cross ship cable and the port generator ran both motors, which is what we’d been doing this for a year, so it’s familiar territory. The boys tried to troubleshoot the source of the low voltage notification, because it turned out the battery was fine, but they found nothing. So of course once they put everything back together the generator started. That may sound like a good thing, but since root cause has not been ascertained and therefore cannot be permanently fixed, we have to expect that starboard generator may not start on any given day. It ran for a while on Thursday but then started acting like it wasn’t getting fuel, so again the port generator ran both motors. When we got to our current anchorage that afternoon they worked on that issue and tested both generators and starboard seemed happy. We’ll see once we head for Nassau tomorrow or Monday.

Once we get to Nassau, we hope to be able to anchor in West End Bay and do some diving and snorkeling before returning to the very busy Nassau Harbor Friday or Saturday. Ian flies home early Saturday afternoon and my folks fly in early that evening. We’ll spend a night or two in a marina slip to facilitate a big provisioning run and getting my folks onboard more easily. Then we plan to take the next weather window to continue to the Exumas. 

I plan to post something to my blog once a week. We’ll see how that goes 😉

Well, we’re off… sort of

Well, I’m not writing this from Florida as I’d hoped.

The most important reason for our delay is the photo in this post. Those are Dave’s hands. Notice the large bump on the right hand? He’d been having some swelling on the back side of that hand since October. It was intermittent at first, not nearly as large, and more spread out across the back of his hand; sometimes one section would swell and not another. By December it was more focused near the wrist and more persistent. Since late January it’s been as you see it and it feels less like fluid. Since October he’s seen two primary care physicians, two osteopath assistants and one osteopath; he’s been prescribed exercises and a formed splint; he’s had an x-ray, an ultra-sound guided cortisone injection (effects lasted all of two days) and an MRI. This past Wednesday he finally landed with a hand specialist who told him he needs surgery to remove the inflamed tissue gathering there, to check that the underlying tendons are okay and to repair them if necessary. It will be a short in/out procedure with a two week recovery period. His surgery is schedule for the first week of March.

In the meantime, we’re heading down to the boat in Florida for two weeks to install all the upgrades to our solar-electric system, fix our freezer and make a repair to dingy. The freezer failed the day before we left in September, at the end of our diving trek to the Keys. At least it had good timing. Dingy has rub marks from how we have her mounted under our solar roof and Dave will be adding some rubber in those areas so she doesn’t rub herself into a leak. We’re also hoping that the Ocean Volt representative (only one in the US) will be able to come aboard one day to do a complete system review with Dave.

Our failed (three times now) battery control box (and parts for the port one still onboard) have made it to the USA and are en route to the marina to meet us. We have all the other parts we need here and will bring them down with us along with the non-perishable provisions for 8 weeks (we’d already bought them before Dave knew he needed surgery), and fresh groceries for the two weeks we’ll be there. We want to avoid any long forays out into public since COVID is spiking again down there and they have a couple of those new strains. We’re driving down, so we have plenty of room for all our stuff.

To sum up: We’re driving down to Florida for about two weeks of repairs. We’re returning for Dave’s surgery and will be home until he is healed. After that, we will return to Lady and cruise, possibly through August. Dave is fine with cruising during hurricane season, I’m less willing to do so after July once it tends to ramp up, so that will be a negotiation, but we have to have a functioning boat and hands first. Baby steps.

Stay safe and take care of each other!