April 2011 - London to Bequia - Page 4

25 April 2011 Chatham Bay to Charlestown Bay, Canouan
We awoke to a beautiful morning with a steady wind – perfect for sailing. After breakfast, we tidied up the mess from being at anchor for four days and left at nine o’clock. We motored out of the anchorage and, ten minutes later, we had the sails up and off we went. The wind was coming from the North East which was roughly where we were going, so it was a beat all the way.

As this was our first time sailing, I took the opportunity to try out a few things. I had full sails up on starboard tack in about 18-20 knots apparent wind and the boat was heeled over too much. I put 10 rolls onto the roller reefing and the boat was sailing better. I put the Hydrovane wind vane on and it only took me about five minutes to get the settings right, so that the Hydrovane was steering us. I love having a Hydrovane…

When we did the first tack, I tried to roll away some of the jib because I thought that it might get hung up on the inner forestay. That was a disaster – it took me ages to roll it way, by which time we had stopped dead in the water. We sheeted in again, got some speed back, tacked and let the jib out again. The boat seems to be stiffer on port tack which makes sense because I think that we have more weight on the port side – water tank, books, spares, etc.

We sailed almost into Saline Bay on Mayreau before tacking again. This time we tacked with a full jib and found that it will slide past the inner forestay. We did a few short tacks up the coast of Mayreau to clear Catholic Rocks and I cursed on every tack because the bimini frame is in the way of the winches and it’s impossible to do a full winding action. It’s a bloody awful design – God knows how Sergio has put up with it for the past eight years. It would be exhausting to short tack in confined waters.

We found that the wind direction indicator was about 20 degrees out of alignment – on starboard tack we were pointing about 20 degrees and on port tack we were pointing about 60 degrees. That was soon altered by adjusting the calibration on the indicator. Meanwhile, Glenys kept popping below to check the lockers and if anything was crashing about – all seems to be okay.

We arrived in Charlestown Bay, Canouan at about two o’clock and anchored in a very rolly anchorage – it’s only for one night and we don’t have much choice. We used to anchor in a small exposed bay to the North, but the swell is coming from the north east and I think that it’ll be worse there.

So all in all, we had a great sail and got to know the boat a little better. There are a few jobs to be done - the bimini interfering with the winches is driving me crazy and the roller reefing for the jib seems incredibly stiff – I had to use a winch to roll it away when we arrived.

We ate down below for the first time because the gusts of wind were so strong. It was surprisingly cool in the saloon.

26 April 2011 Charlestown Bay to Bequia
What an awful night, the wind kept blowing in shrieking gusts; it kept raining and we rolled all the time. I spent all night dozing then jumping up to close the hatch above our bed.

It was overcast and very windy in the morning. I checked the weather forecast on the Internet which said showers and East 20-25 knot winds. We decided that this anchorage is not good and we might as well go up to Bequia which is only 20 miles away, albeit upwind.

The wind was gusting as we left the anchorage, so I put up the main with 10 wraps to reef it and we put out a reefed jib on starboard tack. As we cleared the north of the island, we were pointing as high as we could and the wind was 20-25 knots across the deck with 6-8 foot, steep waves. We were heeling over quite a lot and I was pretty worried about the squall clouds that we could see to windward.

A squall hit us about an hour out. We could see the rain coming like a wall towards us, and the wind started to gust up to 30 knots. The boat started to heel over more, but nothing too drastic – I should have reefed a bit more before the squall arrived. Both Glenys and I were pretty anxious until it had gone past.

It was a very bouncy crossing with the constant threat of more squalls, but we only had one more squall hit us and I reefed before it arrived which was much more comfortable. I messed up my navigation and eased our course a little off the wind for a couple of hours. This meant that we had to beat up wind for the last hour and still ended up about half a mile south of the point. We’d had enough tacking and beating upwind by this point, so we cheated and motored upwind in pretty big waves into Admiralty Bay.

We anchored off Princess Margaret’s Beach after a hard 4½ hour upwind sail. I’ve still not worked out how much we should be reefing the sails – it will take a lot more playing about to get it right. The motion of the boat is good and we managed to do this passage without feeling sea sick. I’m amazed how resilient our stomachs are – I used to get sea sick very quickly and it would take me a few days at sea to be able to go below.

It rained and rained for the next two hours. We managed to sort out a few things in between the squalls – such as 10 minutes to put the outboard back on the dinghy and then dive for cover. Eventually, we managed to rush into town and have a quick walk around. I found a man who could cut two pieces of teak to support the life raft on deck and we bought some essential food – bread, chicken and a case of beer.

I talked to Sam of Knock Refrigeration about fixing the freezer. He says that the gurgling is because the Freon has leaked out. He wants to find the leak, remove the compressor, change the oil and recharge the system. His workshop is a real scruffy hole and he can’t give me a quote, just says that it will cost $ 45-60 US per hour. I’m not too sure.

We just made it back to the boat before the next squall and had dinner below again. We were in bed by nine o’clock – shattered.

27 April 2011 Bequia
We had a much better night – no rain showers and we slept well. I checked the weather forecast and it looks like this rainy weather is here for 4 or 5 days – bummer.

The first rain shower hit us at about nine o’clock. We lurked about until eleven o’clock when it looked a lot brighter, before going into town. We dropped off our dirty laundry to get it washed and went to the post office to see if our mail had arrived yet – Gareth posted it about seven days ago, but no sign of it. Another British guy was in the post office and said that the record for mail getting from the UK is 13 days – nothing changes. Our debit cards expire in a few days’ time and there are some new cards in the post – we may have to hang about and wait for them.

We dropped in to see Sam of Knock Refrigeration and he is going to be on the Jack’s Dock on the beach at 0900 tomorrow. Glenys got some prices for foam and Sunbrella to make some cockpit cushions – if we have guests they’ll have to sit on bare wood, which is bloody hard. I dropped a drawing into the wood yard for the pieces of wood for the life raft – they should be ready by Friday morning. Glenys dragged me into every supermarket and the vegetable market and I dragged her into every hardware store and chandlery.

One of the market ladies recommended an eating place called “Rush Hour”, so we went to try the pork and rice. There wasn’t much rushing going on. They had two things on the menu – Pork & Rice and Chicken & Rice – we had one of each. When it eventually arrived it was very tasty, but a much bigger meal than we normally have at lunch time. In the afternoon, we wandered around doing the same as the morning – supermarkets and chandlers.

Back on the boat, I swam to the beach to work off the Pork & Rice and mooched about. I was hoping that the guy from Grenadines Sails was going to come and look at modifying the bimini frame, but when I talked to him on the VHF radio, he’d fallen behind on a job he had to finish today - maybe tomorrow...

28 April 2011 Bequia
After breakfast, I moved everything out of the way so that Sam could get at the freezer compressor. I took some pictures of the current installation, including close-ups of the wiring in case he removed the compressor and messed it all up. At least I have documentation of where everything was originally.

Sam was standing on the dock at ten minutes to nine, so I went and picked him up. By half past nine he had set up a pressure gauge on the low pressure side of the compressor and put some Freon gas into the system. He then had to wait for the system to get to the correct temperature, let the compressor switch off and try to detect the leak. He was there until midday (chattering away to us) before he declared the system okay. He seemed to detect a leak around one of the compression fittings on the compressor but after tightening it said that it was OK. Nice chap, it was interesting to talk to a local for a change even if it was costing me £30 an hour…

The guy from Grenadines Sails turned up mid-morning; he’d been measuring up another boat nearby and called in to look at my bimini. We agree a plan to move the strut that is interfering with the winch and Glenys took him back to town in the dinghy. While Sam was waiting again for the freezer to do something, I took the bimini frame apart and took one part of the frame in the dinghy to Grenadine Sails. They bent the frame and I went to pick them up in the afternoon.

It took two hours of faffing about to refit it, but it is much better now that it’s a couple of inches higher at the back and the winches are now clear. The guy knew what he was doing to get the bimini tight and in the correct shape, but he was a little rough on the boat. We now have quite a few scratches on the gel coat and there are four self-tapper screws sticking about ½ inch into the aft shower. I’ll replace these with bolts in the next few days and seal it with silicone sealant.

We had Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner with our last bottle of red wine - at £6 per bottle, we'll just have to survive with beer and rum until we get to Martinique.

29 April 2011 Bequia
We caught the half past nine ferry to Kingstown, St Vincent. I was quite excited about going on a ferry – small things, small minds. It takes about an hour to make the crossing and it was very rolly in the NE swell, but again I was able to read without feeling seasick – what’s happened to me?

Kingstown is a busy little place. Lots of people milling about, weaving in and out of the very dense traffic, from which there is a constant honking of horns and shouting. We wandered around the town going into supermarkets and hardware shops looking for bits and pieces. Glenys bought some bed sheets - our only set of sheets are becoming a little “stiff” with the salt and sweat… I bought a nice little box to house the electronic soft-starter for my compressor. Glenys bought a few pots and pans. We looked at foam to make some cockpit cushions, but it seemed expensive.

We had lunch in a little bar/restaurant called VJ’s. I had a chicken roti and Glenys had a chicken dinner with rice – it all came to £10 with a drink. They’d run out of Coca Cola, so the waiter suggested “Mauby” which is a local St Vincent drink made from a kind of bark. It’s okay but has a bitter after taste – been there, tried that…

We wandered around in the afternoon intending to catch the return ferry at four o’clock. We arrived back at the Ferry Port in plenty of time, but then found that the Bequia Express was running late. There’s another ferry company called Admiral which does the same run and had a ferry leaving at half past four. By twenty five past four there was no sign of the Bequia Express, so we hopped on the Admiral ferry. It cost us another £10 but it was worth it because the Bequia Express passed us about 45 minutes later –we would have been sitting there until half past six. We met Carol and John from “Sweet Caroline” on the ferry.

30 April 2011 Bequia
We woke up to sunshine and a nice breeze – perhaps the trade winds are back? We went into town and I picked up the two pieces of teak to support the life-raft on the front deck and some screws to fit it. Glenys bought some white Sunbrella (nylon canvas) to cover the life-raft – it has an ugly black rubber band around it that we would like to hide. We bought some mackerel-type fish from the market and two cases of beer and a few things from the supermarket.

Back on the boat, I ran the generator, set the water maker going and started to shape the teak supports to the match the deck. I hadn’t gone very far before Carol and John from “Sweet Caroline” turned up. I’d (foolishly) said that I could give Carol some e-Books for her Kindle, so I had to stop everything and boot up my laptop. I copied about 100 books onto her hard disk drive and then stopped the water maker. I opened the valve to reverse-flush the osmotic membranes with fresh water from the water tanks - normally this is done for about a minute.

I stopped the generator and showed Carol the software that I use to manage eBooks and they went off into town. We had lunch and Glenys asked if she could put down the saloon seat which I had lifted to check the water level on our top tank. I decided to check the water level again and found to my surprise that the top tank was empty. It slowly dawned on me that I’d not shut the reverse-flush valve on the water-maker – we had been pumping all our fresh water out of the tanks for 45 minutes. We had to run the water maker for another two hours to get the water level back to where it should have been – idiot!

I carried on with shaping the teak supports for the life raft. This was a very labour intensive as I had to cut out a curved section to fit the shape of the life raft canister – I ended up drawing the profile, making lots of small vertical saw cuts and then chiselling out the shape. Took me a couple of hours to do something that would take 5 minutes with a band saw or a jigsaw – I still haven’t found the jigsaw that Sergio says he left behind.

I screwed the pieces onto the deck and was just finishing off when I looked up to see a wall of rain racing towards us as a huge squall hit Bequia. I grabbed one or two tools from the deck, shouted “Rain” to Glenys and started to close hatches. The rain was torrential – I had loads of tools on deck and could only watch them all get drenched. The squall only lasted five minutes, but an hour later my chisels, plane and other tools where already showing rust – I’ll have to spend a couple of hours cleaning them up sometime.

We were going to have a fish barbeque tonight but the weather was still squally, so Glenys magically produced a fish and rice dinner with plantains.