People are clamoring for an update. There’s not much, really. We’re still stranded at the work dock in Jolly Harbour. It’s actually not too bad. What’s frustrating though is not the daily noise of all kinds of engines, nor the bottom paint dust that ruined an entire week of Kathy’s waxing and polishing Ñandú’s deck, back in Virginia. It’s not the nauseating smell of burnt garbage from the landfill upwind of us (we seem to be downwind of all the bad things around here). It’s neither the fact that alternator brackets seem to break deliberately before thanksgiving so that our wait-for-parts routine gets extended by several days, nor that I had to remove and reinstall an alternator to change a bracket for, I believe, the fifteenth time. It’s also not the fact that the starboard engine had to be removed and completely disassembled for an overhaul. After all, we’re floating, we have a nice view that includes water and sailboat races, people are friendly, the temperature (and the flies) receded after the breeze came back, the second mate left, [Wait! No, that shouldn’t be part of this sentence!] at a walking distance we have a well-provisioned marine store and the best grocery store we’ve seen east of 80°W, and lastly, our to-do list of boat tasks shrank to an historical low thanks to so much time with nothing else to do. The really frustrating part is that it’s been six months since we last anchored by a secluded tropical beach, and after sailing thousands of miles we’re so close—a mere two miles—to being back to that… yet so seemingly far.
Anyhow, here’s a few random thoughts an pictures.
Not a fruit. “What is that fruit?” I asked the street vendor. “It’s not a fruit, it’s a vegetable,” he replied categorically. “Not a fruit, huh?” “No, you have to cook it.” “How do you call it?” “Bread fruit.”
Tape is our new nemesis. I found the reason why we didn’t hear the overheating alarm: the buzzer had been muffled with masking tape (and not by any of us). And we got the diesel tanks emptied and cleaned in an attempt to solve the fuel blockage issues. Yup, we found more tape in there. A square of packing tape.
Too much to ask. In the age of the self-driving car… is it too much to ask that an engine simply shuts down automatically before destroying itself? Apparently, it is.
Professional vs. amateur. On the best day of our passage to Antigua we managed to make 168 miles. The same week on the same ocean François Gabart, a French sailor, sailed 851 nautical miles in 24 hours. He’s attempting to break the solo round-the-world record of 49 days. He’ll most likely succeed.
We’ve been wondering how it’s been going. We were hoping you were anchored and drinking tropical sundowners. But no, you are boating instead. Do you know how the tape came to be and are protecting the guilty?
The view looks pretty amazing!
Yup, just boating. But we *are* having tropical sundowners too!
The lemon-green color points to the only people I’ve seen using that peculiar color for masking tape. But to fully understand how the tape came to be and judge properly, I’ll have to tell you the whole story. When we took possession of the boat, Ñandú was still unfinished, and one pending issue was an electrical one (I never fully understood exactly what) that caused the buzzer to alert constantly every time the engines run. Since the boat had to be moved 5 miles from her splash site to a mooring buoy, and then several times from the buoy to a nearby dock and back, I suspect someone decided the alarm didn’t need to be that loud. Said problem was quickly solved but the tapes remained there. To be fair, the alarm was not fully silenced and you could still hear it… with the engines at low RPMs.
Then another problem was uncovered: when the house batteries were full the alternators would stop producing current, and the engine panel would mistakenly believe that there was a problem and the buzzer would start doing its noise. This usually happened after turning a second engine on to prepare for docking, so it was always at low RPMs. So, if someone would have told me then that, during the most stressful thing you do as a captain (that is, docking) I could have that already annoying false alarm made louder, I’m not positive I would have accepted. Ironically, that problem was finally solved a few days before we left for Antigua.
By the way, the ultimate source of all these issues was our decision to go with Lithium batteries. It’s a great technology and we’re very happy with the batteries themselves, but we ended up as guinea pigs and paying the cost of other people learning.
Now it’s your turn for an update. You’re way overdue!
So unfair: ” the second mate left, [Wait! No, that shouldn’t be part of this sentence!] ”
But it may well be my line!
😛
Seems my convoluted ways didn’t get my point across. Let me put it more succinctly: we miss you!
Perhaps you should follow advice of your feline more often…
Happy Xmas! (I refuse to say Christmas in the age of Twitler).
Yeah, I should really be on top things as he is, right? LOL!