Apr 1
We're underway again! April Fools!
We found that April Fools Day is not big down here. Some people have heard about it, but adults don't seem to do much. I've never really been big on it either since I'm not creative enough to pull off good pranks, and I don't really care to be on the receiving end either.
Our air conditioning saga continues. The a/c is working fine, but the condensation water is ending up on the floor below the unit instead of draining in to the bilge as it's supposed to. I pulled the little hose off the drain pan to see if it was clogged, and it was. For whatever reason, the original hose comes off the pan as a 3/8" hose and immediately reduces to a 1/4" hose. I tried to blow through it, but crap has grown in it and clogged it up. Being such a small diameter, I can't sufficiently clean it out. Off I went to Budget Marine and bought a few feet of 3/8" hose. I put it on and tucked the end through a hole in the bulkhead to direct the water to the bilge.
We had an eighty foot sailboat come in today. It was professionally crewed boat with either the owners or charter guests aboard. They had a twelve foot draft and were worried about the depth in the bay. I contacted them on the radio and gave them instructions how to avoid the shallow spot in the middle of the bay. They ignored my instructions and came very close to the shoal, but did miss it. They then launched their dinghy with a crew member in it with a handheld depth sounder to make sure they had enough depth to get to the dock. They just ignored the fact that we were telling them they were ok. I guess they have probably encountered dock hands who don't have a clue, just as we have, but it would have been nice if they just acknowledged us and said they'd prefer to double check themselves. They got docked without incident and we left them alone.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 2
This morning the guests from the large sailboat were picked up and taken to the airport. A little later the boat left without requesting any help from us.
I was planning on putting the v-berth back together today, but once again I found water on the floor. I checked and found that the drain pan was full and overflowing again. I pulled the end of the hose out of the hole through the bulkhead and the pan suddenly drained. I think what happened was the end had curled upwards where I pushed it through the bulkhead so the end was higher than the pan. I cut about ten inches of excess off the hose and stuck it through the hole again. Hopefully that will solve it.
Tonight was burger night. We had a good turnout, and Smokey the pan player was here. After he left at 19:00, Bob put on some music. Then someone in the crowd said they had heard we had a Jimmy Buffett DVD. We do have Live at Wrigley Field, so we put that on. That kept most of the crowd here drinking for a couple more hours.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 3
This morning I tackled another repair project. The water pressure from the faucets has been poor for a while. Initially, I thought perhaps the pump was getting tired, and I was putting off dealing with it. It occurred to me though, that perhaps the only problem was the charcoal filters might be clogging up. I'm not usually lucky enough that the easy solution works, but this time I was. I replaced the filters and the pressure returned to normal. Now that the water was running fast again, I filled the water tanks which were almost empty.
The rest of the day was pretty quiet .
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 4
The shopping bus ran today. There was a pretty small group of people, only eight or nine, and of course the big bus showed up. Oh well, better than the other way around. Today is Ashley's day off, so one of us was in the bar all day. We had almost nobody in the bar all day, until about 18:00 when several local folks showed up. They ended up staying until 21:00. Barb had returned to the boat about 19:00 to make dinner, thinking I would be closing soon, but since they stayed so long, I got to eat a reheated dinner when I got there.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 5
Two guys came by taxi from the Lagoon to see if we could get a rugby game on TV for them. Bob brought the computer over and we found the game on Setanta Sports. Another customer showed up on a scooter to watch too. We found that the video kept freezing as if our Internet connection was being overloaded. The Setanta player has four settings, labeled Setting1, Setting2, etc. There is no indication of what the different settings change, but their instructions say to try all four and use the one that works best. So, I switched from Setting1 to Setting2. The video looked the same, and didn't freeze up as much, but it still froze some. So I switched it Setting3 and it quit freezing at all. The picture quality, which is never excellent, was the same as ever. I like that the problem was resolved, but as a techie, it bugged me to not know what I was really changing.
After Ashley got to work, we went into town to do our weekly grocery shopping. The store wasn't too crowded and we got everything we needed. We had a nice crowd for potluck. Only eight, but enough to have a variety of dishes. Barb actually made two things, pumpkin soup and a bread roll thing that has crumbled Italian sausage cooked in it.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 6
Happy Birthday to my brother in New York. We had a quiet day here until late in the afternoon. We had a group of people come in by small boat that were picked up by a bus and taken on a whale watching trip. I assume there was another boat involved and that they weren't trying to see whales from a bus. In the afternoon, the bus came back, and the folks all came in for a few drinks. There were six adults and nine kids. They are from England and are staying at some villas across the bay from us. The kids watched TV and played pool while the adults visited.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 7
I did the shopping for burger night today. We added a new twist to the meat acquisition this week. Bob made an arrangement with Foodland that we would get ten pounds of beef each week. We weren't sure if they planned on it being frozen or not. If it's frozen, we need to have it on Monday so it thaws in time to make the burgers. I went to the Foodland store and asked for the lady who was supposed to know the deal. After several phone calls we determined that they didn't expect us to pick the meat up until tomorrow. However, if I wanted to go to their distribution center in Tempe, I could pick it up now. I know where the distribution center is, but have never been there. I drove in and parked, not knowing which building to go to. I went to an open door and asked a guy inside where I could find Mr. Henry. Turned out I had picked the right door, as the meat processing area was just inside where I was. They had just gotten the call from the store that I was coming, so I had to wait a few minutes while they bagged up the ten pounds. It was interesting to see this "distribution center" after having been in some of the largest grocery distribution centers in the US while I was doing the trucking company back in the 90's. The man who had been sitting just inside the door for instance, was making a hundred pound bag of onions into fifty two pound bags. He was but one example of what went on here. Big bags of flour and sugar being measured into smaller bags, etc. Quite interesting. This was one of the weeks that it took many stops to get everything we needed.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 8
This morning, Barb made the hamburgers and sliced and diced the lettuce, tomato, and onions. She got everything she does for burger night done in the morning, because we're taking the afternoon off! We are going to go for a beach afternoon with Gary & Jeannie from At Last. We left about 12:30 and first went to Petit Bacaye for lunch. How they ever found this place is a mystery to me. We turned off the main road on a one lane road that went downhill towards the shore. A little before the end of the road, we turned left between two houses on an even narrower road that I wouldn't have guessed was a public road. At the end of this road we came to the beach where this cute tiki-hut style restaurant and villas was located. We were the only guests there for lunch and it was great. Jeannie had a salad with shrimp in it, while the rest of us had lobster sandwiches. The sandwich was served on toast with lots of lobster salad. It was as good or better than any lobster roll I've had in New England. After lunch we went a little further east to La Sagesse. This is another small resort with a nice beach. We had stopped here on our island tour just for a look at the beach. We took our folding chairs and bag of beer to the beach and relaxed. The water there is fairly shallow so we walked out a couple hundred feet from the beach to be in neck deep water. The surf is very mild here, being on the south side of the island. A little after 16:00, we left and went to the next bay, St. Davids, where Grenada Marine and Bellaire Plantation are located. We had never been to either. Grenada Marine is one of two boat yards in Grenada. Bellaire is another small resort. It's very nice, with very pretty grounds and cute buildings. They have a three-hour happy hour so we sat and enjoyed several drinks. We were back at the marina right at 19:00 when I told Bob we would be. I figured that would be the earliest they would be closing. As it turned out, Ashley had a ride home, and we stayed open another hour. A new boat had come in while we were gone, Cheetah, with Peter and Jenny aboard. We know a boat named Cheetah II and when we mentioned that they said they had seen Cheetah II up in St. Lucia. Small world.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 9
This morning I put the v-berth back together. The air conditioning has been running now for several days, with no further problems or water on the floor, so hope fully it's safe to do that. Of course Murphy's Law dictates that something will go wrong immediately after I put everything back where it belongs. I took a trip to the store for a couple of things, including filling our dinghy gas tank. I ran out of dinghy gas over a week ago, and I hadn't filled the tank yet because I wanted to replace the cap which has a built in gas gauge. The gas gauge part of the old one is rusty. I found that neither boat store carries the type I need, so I finally just took a wire brush and cleaned up the old one. I probably will be needing the dinghy this afternoon to help a boat pick up one of our moorings.
Once I was back at the marina, sure enough I got a call from Good To Go, who was coming in to get a mooring. I launched the dinghy and went out to help them get their line through the mooring ball. While I was out on the water, I saw another boat enter the bay. Coram Deo, who has been here before, was returning from points north. They will be coming into the marina in a few days, but for now they anchored out in the bay.
The cooler in the bar has always been very loud when it is running. It is so loud that if we are watching TV or trying to maintain a conversation right at the bar, we frequently turn it off. I thought the problem was the compressor, although it cooled great. Bob finally called a repair man who diagnosed the problem as the fan that runs when the compressor is running, not the compressor itself. He replaced the fan and now you can hardly tell it's running. Since the whole thing was under water four years ago when Ivan came through, it's amazing it worked at all. It's so much nicer now.
Tonight is burger night. I was sitting at the bar about 16:45 when Barb suddenly remembered that she had not taken the few buns left over form last week out of the fridge. As soon as she said that, I sat bolt upright and realized that I hadn't gone to the bakery to pickup this weeks fresh buns either. And I need to be cooking in an hour. I raced to Tempe hoping the bakery didn't close at 17:00. I got there in record time, a few minutes before 17:00, and got the buns. Turns out they don't close until late. That would have been quite embarrassing to have burger night with no buns. I was back at the marina by 17:15, and had a good stiff drink before starting to get the food out. We had a good crowd and following dinner we watched Wild Hogs on the big screen. Everybody loved the movie. We just have to figure out how to get them to drink more while they watch instead of just sitting there.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Apr 10
Today was a pretty quiet day. Adrian, the diver who cleans boat bottoms, was here to clean two boats in the marina. One was next to mine, so I asked him to take a look for the jeans that blew off the clothes line a few weeks ago while he was down there. I didn't get to talk to him when he was done, and there were no jeans on the dock, so I guess he either forgot or didn't find them. One of the boats he cleaned was Misfa, which has been here for a couple of months. Terry & Carol have just returned from the UK and plan to go do a little sailing, so the boat needed to be cleaned. Anytime a boat sits in these waters for a few weeks, stuff grows on it regardless of how good the bottom paint is.
The weekend's sports activity on TV is going to be The Masters golf tournament. The couple on Good To Go who came in yesterday are avid golfers, and they are here specifically because we have the TV available to watch the tournament. Ashley, our bartender, has given me crap about watching NASCAR on Sundays. She says it's boring to just watch the cars go around in circles. I told her if she thought NASCAR was boring, just wait until she saw four days of golf on TV.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.