27 November 2011 St David’s Harbour to Calvigny Harbour, Grenada
We motored around to Calvigny Harbour. The anchorage is lovely and peaceful, but the entrance is a little scary, going between two unmarked reefs. One reef had breaking seas and we couldn’t see the other one, so we kept close to the one we could see. There are only three other boats in this brilliant anchorage, which is surprising when there are probably 200 yachts packed into the other anchorages only two miles away – some cruisers are so unadventurous.
After lunch, we did a dive off the breaking reef. As is normal on the south coast of Grenada, the visibility was poor and the reef covered in a fine layer of silt. We went specifically to hunt lobster, but didn’t see any large ones, so we took a couple of small spotted lobster – more like langoustine.
We chilled out for the rest of the afternoon. No beer left so we need to go shopping tomorrow.
28 November 2011 Calvigny Harbour to Prickly Bay, Grenada
We chilled out in the morning, then after lunch motored around to Prickly Bay. I caught another 12lb Jack as we were leaving Calvigny Harbour. As luck would have it, the reel started to scream as we approached the narrow part of the channel, so it was a little stressful for Glenys steering through the reefs at 1 knot while I fought the feisty fish.
Prickly Bay isn’t as crowded as I thought it would be, but Hog Island looked busy as we motored past. We dropped off our laundry and bought a couple of cases of beer. I still haven’t managed to get the fridge fixed and now that we have beer it’s becoming critical.
In the evening, we went to happy hour where we bumped into Neil and Josie from “LucyEllen” – they were the first cruisers that we met after we bought Alba, so it was good to catch up with them.
29 November 2011 Prickly Bay to Mount Hartman Bay, Grenada
Overnight the wind veered to the south bringing a swell into the bay. We rocked and rolled all night and, in the morning, we were pitching up and down quite violently, so we decided to do some errands and then go around to Mount Hartman Bay where it will be more settled.
We walked down to Ace Hardware then to Spiceland Mall. While Glenys went to the supermarket, I wandered around the hardware store and discovered that they sell small cans of refrigerant, which I could use to recharge our fridge. Unfortunately, they don’t sell the gauges and fittings to connect the can to the fridge compressor, but one of the shop assistants said that Ace Hardware may sell them. I walked back the mile back to Ace Hardware, but the gauge that they had will only fit on a special connector for car air conditioning – ah well.
We caught a taxi from the mall back to De Big Fish and called in at Budget Marine to buy some bits and pieces. I bought a fighting belt for holding the fishing rod on my stomach – recently I’ve been catching bigger fish and the end of the rod digs in painfully while reeling them in.
After lunch, we picked up the laundry, bought some ice to cool our beer because the fridge is still turned off, and motored around to Mount Hartman Bay, which is very calm. We had a quiet night in.
30 November 2011 Mount Hartman Bay, Grenada
I rang a local fridge man, but he’s injured his leg and can’t walk properly, so he said I should ring him back in two days’ time. Then Steve from “Celebration” called on the VHF and said that he’d heard that I had a problem with my fridge and has the gauge kit to recharge a fridge. He offered to walk over this afternoon from Prickly Bay and help me sort it out. I gladly agreed. Steve mentioned that he was going into Spiceland Mall to do some shopping, so I asked him to buy me a couple of cans of refrigerant.
I turned my attention to the blocked front heads. I removed the toilet pump and, by shoving a stiff plastic tube up the waste pipe, decided that the blockage was about 18” up the main waste pipe. Now all I had to do was remove the 2” diameter reinforced pipe. I tried to remove the end under the holding tank, but there is so little room inside the cupboards that I failed abysmally. Switching strategies, I removed the whole holding tank, which is a 35 litre stainless steel tank bolted inside the cupboard. This gave me enough space to remove the pipe. The pipe had over ¼” of hard, encrusted “crud” on the inside, so I took the pipe on deck and beat it with a hammer, breaking the crud up. Loads of it poured out of the tube and it cleared the blockage. An hour later, I had it all assembled and a working toilet again - lovely job.
Steve turned up in the afternoon and we worked on the fridge. He’s built his own large engine- driven fridge system, but unfortunately, he didn’t know much about small systems, so we were experimenting on my system. He added about ¾ of a can to the system, but it was still gurgling and the pipe returning from the fridge compartment seemed to be too cold. He deduced that he’d put too much refrigerant into the system and explained how to release and monitor the pressures and left me to it.
My life for the rest of the afternoon was split into 15 minute slots:
1.Switch off the fridge and wait 15 minutes for the pressures to equalise.
2.Bleed some refrigerant out (a little at a time) and wait 15 minutes for the pressures to equalise.
3.Turn on the fridge and wait 15 minutes for the system to cool the evaporator in the fridge compartment.
4.Look at the pressure gauge connected to the low pressure side and decide if there is the correct amount of refrigerant in the system. I was aiming for it to be 10 psi – at first it was 40 psi.
5.Repeat from 1.
We went to the bar in the marina for happy hour. There was supposed to be a jazz group playing but they didn’t turn up until seven o’clock. It wasn’t a very well attended event and certainly wasn’t very “happy”, so we left before the music started.
- << Prev
- Next