January 2012 - Grenada to Antigua - Page 3

13 January 2012   Admiralty Bay to Cumberland Bay, St Vincent
Lazy start to the day. I managed to pick up someone’s internet router for free, so I caught up on emails.  It’s Brett’s birthday tomorrow, so we transferred some cash into his account – before they flew back to the UK, Glenys gave Tash a birthday card telling him to look in his bank account.

I rang a company in Martinique that provides spare parts for Volvo engines and asked them to get me an exhaust elbow to replace the cracked and leaking one on our engine.  It used up all of my remaining £6.00 of credit for a three minute call because I was using a Grenada SIM card in St Vincent – gutted…

We set off at ten o’clock and started to motor-sail out of the bay.  I put up the main sail with one reef and foolishly let out the entire jib as we headed out.  Suddenly, as we rounded the corner into the channel between Bequia and St Vincent, we had thirty knots of wind and steep breaking seas – will I ever learn?  We heeled over dramatically and had to reef the flogging jib.  I then had to go and dance the light fandango on the foredeck, getting drenched as I reefed the main.  Even with a heavily reefed main and jib, we were crashing along at six knots.  To make matters worse, Glenys took a big wave full on as she peeked out around the spray hood – she was dripping wet...

Fishing Boats in Cumberland Bay, St Vincent

After twenty minutes, it calmed down and an hour later, the wind dropped completely as we entered the lee of St Vincent. We had to motor the rest of the way to Cumberland Bay – it was like we were on a different planet.  

Cumberland Bay is a lovely bay with very steep hills surrounding it.  The sea bed is also very steep and shallows extremely quickly near the shore.  The only way to anchor in this bay is to drop a bow anchor in 10-15 metres of water and then take a stern line ashore and tie it onto something to stop the boat drifting back out to sea.  The locals have cottoned onto the fact that taking a line ashore is a bit of a pain, so they row out and for $10EC (£2.50) will row your line ashore and tie you onto something.

Once tied on, there’s a procession of boat boys who come over and sell whatever they can – Mangos?  Fish?  A Hike up the volcano?  Tomatoes?  Dinner at a beach bar?  They’re very pleasant about it and after 30 minutes, they left us in peace.  I like this place. 

On the way over from Bequia, our digital voltmeter started to show weird readings.  I investigated and found that we have a deck leak, which is dripping sea water into our electrical panel – this is not good news, as there are a huge number of wires, switches and circuit boards in there that won’t like sea water.  So instead of relaxing, I ended up disassembling part of the boat to find that the port genoa track is leaking.  I did a quick bodge job, squeezing silicone sealant around the bolts, but I’m going to have to remove and reseal both genoa tracks in St Lucia – I’m not looking forward to it.

We had an early fish dinner, ready for an early start tomorrow. 

14 January 2012   Cumberland Bay to Rodney Bay, St Lucia
We got up at six o’clock and managed to get away by half past six.  Our shore line was tied up to Joseph’s bar and he’d said that he would un-tie it in the morning.  I could see him on the beach and shouted over for him to release our rope.  Unfortunately he has a very bad leg and moves extremely slowly, so it took him ten minutes to un-tie us, get into his boat and paddle out for his $10EC.  I was itching to get away and nearly dived in the water to un-tie the damn rope myself. 

The weather looked pretty grim as we motored out of the bay and up the coast of St Vincent - overcast and raining, but we could see sunshine ahead.  I pulled up the main with a heavy reef in it and, when we hit the top of the island, we had steep, six to nine foot waves and 25-30 knots of wind.  We sailed hard on the wind for 30 minutes, but we were being stopped by the waves and slowing down to 2-3 knots.  

Glenys takes a full-on wave

As we had to go thirty miles in these conditions, which would take at least six hours, I had a dilemma; I either put up more sail to get more power, but we would heel over more and it would be very unpleasant; or we could motor-sail which would be less unpleasant.  I started the engine and we motor sailed across to St Lucia.  

It was a tough five hours before we were in the lee of the Pitons.  We were getting huge walls of water crashing along the deck, which would occasionally dump gallons of water into the cockpit.  Glenys eventually put on her swimming costume and I spent the journey in a pair of swimming shorts.  Fortunately, my bodge job on the deck leak seemed to work, but we also have a leak from the front hatch, which I’ll need to sort out now. 

We motored up the coast of St Lucia and anchored off Pigeon Island in Rodney Bay at half past four.  Steve and Lynn invited us over for cocktails on “Celebration” with “Sheer Tenacity” and Doug & Wendy from “Nahanni River”.  It was a good evening, with lots of nibbles and rum punch.

15 January 2012   Rodney Bay, St Lucia
It’s Sunday today, so we had a quiet day. I’ve still not sorted out a regulator for the wind generator and noticed that the voltage on our batteries was up to 15.2 Volts again because it’s very windy.  The high voltage is gradually boiling the batteries dry and they will be destroyed soon, so I spent four hours on the Internet deciding the best way to regulate the beast and then ordering some bits.

I received a quote from Martinique for the engine exhaust elbow and they want £500 for it!  I managed to locate one in the UK for £250 and ordered it. My brother Andy will bring out with him to Antigua.

Glenys chilled out and did some more work on her cook book.  She made Nachos and Fish Tortillas for dinner, so we spent a while taking photographs of her dishes for the web site – it’s not easy to get a good picture of a plate of food.

16 January 2012   Rodney Bay, St Lucia
I woke up wondering about our timetable for going to the States and whether to get hauled out there. I think that it might be cheaper to get some big jobs done there - I suspect that the labour charges might be more, but the materials will be much cheaper. After writing out a list of jobs, I reckon that we'd need to be hauled out for a month – June is probably the best time.

We’re only going to be here for another couple of days, so I prevaricated about whether to bother to clear in to customs.  I decided to make the effort because we were going ashore anyway.  After clearing in, we called in to see John and Sunny on “Notre Vie”, who are stuck here waiting for a new dinghy after they lost theirs in the big seas while towing it from St Vincent.  We then went to the shopping mall for groceries.

Back on the boat, I started to look at boat yards in the Chesapeake. Mauri from “Smidge” has recommended one near Annapolis and I want to get some other quotes.

Fish Tortillas photographed for the Cookbook

A Coast Guard boat cruised around the anchorage and chose to inspect us.  The officer came on board, filled in a safety questionnaire and inspected our documentation – I’m so glad that I cleared in.

Later in the afternoon, we went to a “raft up” party organised by Helen and Dave from “Jammin”.  There were over fifteen dinghies rafted up on a single anchor just off the beach, passing around hors d'oeuvres and drinking copious amounts of alcohol – very strange but enjoyable.

17 January 2012   Rodney Bay, St Lucia
We’re waiting for the wind and waves to drop, so that we can sail to Le Marin in Martinique.  Today was a “hanging about” day.

I spent most of the day researching boat yards in the Chesapeake area. I finally whittled it down to four and sent emails off requesting quotations.

Glenys continued working on her cookery book.  It’s fun but it’s becoming a little tedious taking food photographs – tonight was Three Layer Salad.

18 January 2012   Rodney Bay, St Lucia
I got up this morning planning to leave for Martinique tomorrow.  Over breakfast, Glenys mentioned that we were going to do a repair on the sail.  On the way up from St Vincent, we’d noticed that the sacrificial strip on the leech of the jib was starting to come loose.  Bugger, I’d forgotten about that!  

I lowered the jib to the deck and found that 15-20 feet of the sail needs repairing.  I jumped in the dinghy and went into the marina to see the sail maker.  He said that he would try to get it done in the next few days.  What to do?  Should we try to repair it ourselves which would take hours to do it manually with a needle and palm, or stay here for a few more days?  I decided that I’d rather get it sorted out properly, so I arranged to drop the sail off tomorrow.

Removing the Genoa Track

I was really annoyed with myself because I totally forgot about the sail problem and we’ve been sitting here for days just waiting for the weather to clear.  As penance for my lack of planning, I decided to remove the leaking genoa track that I temporarily fixed in St Vincent.   Glenys wisely decided to keep out of my way and went to a ladies-only afternoon at a local hotel.

It was very cathartic to be doing something.  It took an hour to remove the ceiling linings and remove the track from the deck.  I then spent four hours cleaning the old, sticky sealant from the deck and the track before I could refit it with new sealant.

I’d just about finished at five o’clock when Glenys came back from her Ladies Afternoon.  She tells me that there were thirty ladies there, gossiping and then chilling out by the pool – I was glad to have missed it.  Glenys says that’s why it was “Ladies Only”

We had Banana Bread and Quesadillas to be photographed this evening.

19 January 2012   Rodney Bay, St Lucia
I dropped the sail off at the sail maker and he says that he’ll try to get it back to us in four days’ time – I’m deeply depressed.

I spent some time working out how to fit a “pump out” facility to our holding tank.  This is very glamorous.  Normally our toilets flush our effluent directly out to sea.  The American Government is very anal about this and has strict laws stating that you cannot discharge a marine toilet within 3 miles of the coast.  I personally think that the billions of fish on the East coast of America produce more effluent than all of the yachts in the world, but who am I to argue with authority.

So anyway, we have a holding tank which will store our effluent.  In the States they have pump out facilities that have a big vacuum hose that suck the effluent out of one’s holding tank.   We don’t have a deck fitting to allow this, so that was my task today.  I’ve figured out a way of doing it, so now all I need to do is get hold of the correct pipe fittings and drill a two inch hole in our deck for the fitting.

I spent the rest of the day mooching about, reading about our proposed sailing route through the Bahamas to the USA and then to Cuba.  I received several quotes back from boatyards in the Chesapeake and it looks like a boat yard at a funky place called Deltaville is coming out on top.

We had Pizza for dinner tonight – no photograph session for a change.