Jan 16 - 30
I'm going to depart from my normal style of writing for this installment, since not a whole lot has happened and I doubt my readers want a blow by blow about how we relaxed and went to happy hour. Ten days of this installment were also spent away from the boat, which I'll detail.
From the 16th to the 20th, we didn't do a heck of a lot. The only thing keeping us from going cruising is the missing inverter/charger that is at Signal Locker being repaired. However there was a family issue developing that affected our plans also. My ex-brother-in-law in Phoenix, who had also been my business partner back in the early 90's when I owned the trucking company, has been fighting cancer for about two years. He seemed to be doing quite well, but during the past few weeks, he took a turn for the worse. On Sunday the 20th, he lost his battle. I have remained close to my ex-wife and her whole family over the years, so I spent all day Monday flying to Phoenix. This entailed a commuter plane to San Juan, then a flight to Miami, then a flight to Phoenix. I was in the air or airports from about 08:30 to 23:30. I rented a car in Phoenix and drove to my ex's house. The week was spent helping her deal with the loss of her brother, and the pending arrangements.
Since I was in the States, I took the opportunity to get a few things from West Marine to take back to the boat. One of those things was an inverter. The inverter makes 110v power from the 12v batteries. We use it when we are not plugged in at a dock for all our 110v needs, like charging computers. Our broken inverter is a combination unit that also is the battery charger. So, when we are plugged in at a dock, we keep the batteries charged that way. The combo units make life simpler, but when you lose one you have lost them both. My logic in bringing back a new inverter (the cheaper part of the pair) is that we can leave Antigua and live off the inverter while we cruise and rely on our solar, wind, and engine charging systems for charging the batteries. This is a backup plan for if Signal Locker has not fixed the old unit by the time I return. I also bought a new faucet fixture for the shower. The old one has developed a habit of kinking the hose inside the wall when you pull the shower out to use it. I have messed with this hose in the past, and it was jury-rigged already since I couldn't get a proper replacement hose down here a couple years ago. So these two big items and a few smaller ones were added to my suitcase for the return trip.
While in Phoenix, I saw a few friends and all of my ex's family. The actual service turned out not to be until Tuesday the 30th. The service was very nice and I not only saw all the family, but also a number of old friends from the trucking company, as my brother-in-law still owned the company. I spoke at the service, on behalf of Dan's sisters and myself. With all the public speaking I have done in the past, nothing prepares you for giving a eulogy.
My original return flight had been scheduled for the 29th, so I changed it. The change was actually a better flight anyway. The original plan had me leaving Phoenix at 06:00 (which would mean leave the house about 04:00), going through Dallas and San Juan, and not getting to Antigua until almost midnight. The changed plan had me leave about midnight and fly over-night to Miami, where I waited a few hours and flew on a big jet straight to Antigua, arriving mid-afternoon.
Back at the boat, Barb was keeping a pretty low profile. We were not worried at all about her being safe by herself, but on the other hand, there is no sense broadcasting to the world that she was alone on the boat. The first few days I was gone, Barb actually wasn't feeling well, so she didn't go to happy hour. She did eat some chicken noodle soup that our TX friends left here last year and she appreciated having it. When she was feeling better, she resumed meeting Mike & Lynn for happy hour, but was not real open to people that I was off island, with the exception of a few close friends.
While I was gone, Barb took up the role of keeping on top of Signal Locker's progress with the inverter/charger. The Monday that I left, they said the part had shipped from the States, and she got a tracking number from them. By Wednesday, FedEx said the paperwork had been delivered, but it was another two days before their agent got the part cleared through Customs and in hand. The pattern of Signal Locker never returning calls when they promised continued, and Barb hounded them every day for a status.
On the Thursday I was gone, there was another crisis for Barb. She was about to make dinner and found she was out of propane. We have two propane tanks, but Barb has never actually watched close as I changed them. She did know what tools were required though. She changed her dinner plans, and on Friday Mike came over and swapped the tanks for her and took the empty one over to the yard to get it refilled. Her other crisis was that the iPod's battery died. That was easily resolved as we were chatting online via Skype Chat, so I told her where the cable was to recharge it from her computer.
On a few occasions while I was gone, Barb went with Mike & Lynn to the Crow's Nest for happy hour instead of WestPoint. The Crow's Nest is the place I refuse to go to anymore after the incident last year with watching a race there. They figured it was their chance to go and me not be an issue.
I left Phoenix at midnight Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. The flight to Miami was a full hour shorter than the flight west had been, due to the winds aloft. I didn't get much sleep on the plane, but I did finally finish reading Steve Job's 600 page biography. I've been working on that darn book for a year it seems. In Miami, I had five hours between flights, so I had something to eat and watched the show that is an airport. The flight to Antigua left right on time, and we got to Antigua about twenty minutes early. It took quite awhile to clear through Immigration, and by the time I was through, the porters had taken all the bags off the baggage carousel. I looked through them all and did not see mine. I was about to go to the counter to report it missing when I finally spotted it hiding behind another huge bag. I grabbed it and blew through Customs, with of course, nothing to declare. Gene, the taxi driver who had brought me to the airport was waiting for me outside. Within forty-five minutes I was back on the boat and changing back into shorts and bare feet. Phoenix had been fairly cool while I was there, and I did not have a jacket.
Jan 31
Back on the boat, and back to the regular format. After a great night's sleep, I got to work on installing the new shower faucet. Of course, access to the backside of the faucet is non-existent, requiring yet another four-inch access hole to be drilled in the fiberglass. I put this hole in the shower directly under the faucet. The old faucet came out pretty easy with this access, and I got the new one bolted in place. Hooking up the water lines to the new faucet was a bit of a challenge. Catalina, in their infinite wisdom when they built the boat, connected the half-inch supply hose to the fixture's supply lines, with a plastic adapter that is a barbed hose connection on one end and a threaded fitting on the other. The only problem is that the mating of the threaded end and the fixture fitting is not exact. So they had loaded the fitting up with some type of caulk. This was definitely a Rube Goldberg arrangement. I tried using their fittings but added a washer inside the plastic part, but both sides seeped water when I turned the pump on. So, we left the pump off except when we actually needed to run water, and I'll look for better connectors tomorrow at the hardware store.
On Wednesday, Barb had called Signal Locker and was told the inverter/charger was ready. She inquired how much the bill was, and was told the outrageous amount of $1050 USD. A whole new unit costs about $1400. She had asked them for a breakdown of the part, shipping, and labor, which they e-mailed. She then called them and setup a meeting between me and the owner for Friday morning to discuss the bill. So, at 16:00, I went up and rented a car so that we can be down in English Harbor tomorrow morning at 09:00.
GPS N 17-00.893 W 061-46.422 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10149.
Feb 1
Mike & Lynn met us at the boat at 08:00, and we hopped in the car and headed for English Harbor. It is about a 45 minute drive, so we were there in plenty of time for my 09:00 meeting. I went up to Signal Locker's office and met with the owner. The girl who is usually at the desk had come to work, but then went home with "a problem with high blood pressure". The problem was probably that she didn't want to be there knowing I was coming in pissed. I started by telling the guy that I had been in contact with the manufacturer's service department, and they said the repair should be about a $400 job. Of course that is in the States, and I expect it to be more here, but not 2 1/2 times as much. The guy claimed the part itself cost $415, although he would not produce an invoice from the manufacturer to substantiate that to me. The shipping was $160, and even though that's a lot, FedEx is the only way to reliably get things here. But then came the labor. They were trying to charge me two hours at $100/hr, and four hours at $60/hr. The going labor rate for any technician is about $65/hr. The repair to this unit involved taking the covers off and swapping a circuit board. Taking the cover off and on is not an easy task, but it shouldn't take six hours. The owner kept giving me excuses about how screwed up his business is because they try to handle too many brands and fix too many different electronics. He explained he had to charge me for the time it takes him to clear a spot on the workbench to work on a project, since his facility is woefully too small. He tried to explain why I have to pay for the time it takes his technicians to learn from a manual how to troubleshoot the unit, since they work on so many different things that they can't possibly know them all. After half an hour of his babbling I finally stopped him and just said "What are you going to take off this bill to make it reasonable?" He tried to keep babbling excuses and I stopped him again. He finally agreed to reduce the labor by $140. I had considered walking out and just leaving him with the unit, but in the end, I need it, and any replacement I could get would cost as much and probably be different in size and brand, causing lots of other issues to install. They did take about fifteen minutes to hook it up and prove top me that it worked. I'm surprised he didn't want to charge me for that too. All this just proves that yes, there are still pirates in the Caribbean. They just don't always wear eye patches.
After retrieving the inverter, we went on a quest to find appropriate fittings to connect the new shower fixture. We hit a small hardware store in Falmouth Harbor that was helpful, but didn't have the right things. We then headed for St. Johns, where I know at least two plumbing supply stores. We hit both of them with no luck, although I had an idea and got part of what I need. I got two short hoses that have the correct fitting on one end to go on the faucet fixture. But, they are 3/8" hose, and the hose I have to connect to is a 1/2". I decided that the barbed fittings I needed really weren't a household plumbing thing, and more of a marine thing. So, we headed back to Falmouth Harbor because we wanted to have lunch one more time at The Mad Mongoose. Speaking of The Mad Mongoose, when I flew from Antigua to San Juan, I sat next to a lady who told me that the owners of The Mad Mongoose had opened a second place at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri called The Mad Mongoose Too. We hear it is just like the original, and since the original closes in the summer and the owners go up there to run the new one, I believe it should be just as good.
After lunch we walked over to the small chandlery at the marina in Falmouth in search of the elusive plumbing connectors. The lady who runs this store comes across a little gruff, but she does know her stuff. I told her what I was looking for, and she didn't think I would find exactly what I needed anywhere. But, she came up with a three-piece solution that isn't elegant, but it should work.
We headed back to St. Johns to the big Epicurean grocery store to finish our day. We didn't get a whole lot, but there are always a few things at this store that we can't get at the one in Jolly Harbor. We got back to Jolly Harbor with an hour to spare on the car. We unloaded everything and Mike & Lynn went back to Seabbatical. I went to return the rental car. The office is in the main business center where everything else is in Jolly Harbor. As I got there, I realized I had not filled up the gas. So, I made a pass through the parking lot and went back to the fuel dock to fill it up. Ten minutes later, I was back at the rental office and parked in front. The little girl who runs the place, smiled as I walked in and said, "You forgot the gas didn't you?". Busted. She had seen my pass through.
Back at the boat, I finished the faucet install project with the new fittings. Once everything was hooked up, I turned on the pump to pressurize the system. I was in the shower watching the connections there, and Barb was in the galley watching the other ends of the connections. I was pleased to see no seepage at the fixture end, but Barb yelled to shut the pump off because at her end there was a pinhole sized stream spraying halfway across the main saloon. After shutting the pump off and opening a faucet to relive the pressure, I found that one of the twenty-year-old tee fittings where the new hose connects was cracked. I guess it didn't like all the pulling on it I had been doing during the project. I actually had another fitting just like it, so this didn't even require a trip to Budget Marine. Once the fitting was replaced, we seemed to have a successful installation.
GPS N 17-00.893 W 061-46.422 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10149.
Feb 2
Overnight we heard the water pump cycle several times. This means there is a leak in the pressurized side of the system. Of course I started looking at the place where I last screwed with it, and found that one of the new hose clamps installed yesterday wasn't tight enough. A quick twist on the clamp stopped the drip and we were good. My real project for today is reinstalling the inverter/charger. When the surveyor was here back in December, he had commented on the sloppy wiring in the inverter compartment. So, I took this opportunity to clean it up and install a couple of terminal strips. This will make any future removal much easier. Maybe since I have gone to this trouble, it will never have to be removed again!
This evening, instead of going to the bar for happy hour, we met Mike & Lynn at the house of friends we have made here. Liz & Graham are from Ireland. They rent a villa here for six months, and also have a sailboat here. We met them last year, but have gotten to know them better this year. We had drinks and snacks, then enjoyed dinner with them. The evening was completed with an apple tart covered in custard. It didn't seem like we had been there that long, but when we said our goodbyes, it was 23:00.
GPS N 17-00.893 W 061-46.422 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10149.
Feb 3
We are making plans to depart Antigua. Now that we have our inverter/charger working, we are free to cut the dock lines - so to speak. Our dinghy has been in the water for a month since last time we hoisted it. That means all sorts of things will be growing on the bottom and the outboard. We shouldn't need to go anywhere by water before our planned departure on Wednesday, so we moved the big boat forward in the slip so we could get the dinghy in behind it. We hoisted the outboard and mounted it on the rail. We then hoisted the dinghy to a level higher than the dock, and then pulled the big boat back in place so that the dinghy was hanging over the dock. We then lowered the dinghy onto the dock. I took all the stuff out of the dinghy and we then flipped it upside down on the dock. It had a similar ecosystem on the bottom like it did last year. I started scraping the stuff off with a putty knife and found that the big gray nodules were filled with water which squirted everywhere, including on me, as I scraped. Other than the mess, it really was easy to scrape off, and we had it looking good as new in about half an hour. The dinghy will remain on the dock until the morning we leave.
After lunch, I was sitting at the computer having trouble keeping my eyes open. I suggested to Barb that maybe I needed a nap. She replied that maybe I needed another project. That was all she said, but instead of going to take a nap, I started working on fixing my AIS installation. AIS is a system for identifying other ships. Most small recreational boats like ours simply have a receiver so we can tell the name and course of any big ships we encounter. But, last year I opted to get the high-dollar transducer version so not only can I tell the names of the big ships, but they can see me and my name and course. I installed the system last year, but the GPS cable it requires wasn't long enough. We went through an ordeal of finding fifteen feet of cable and the proper connectors to extend it. When I had it all done, the whole thing didn't work because it wasn't getting the GPS signal from the antenna. With all the other stuff we had going on last year, I never finished the project. One of the things I brought back from Phoenix was a set of connectors that I thought would work. So, I replaced the connectors at the cable extension and turned the unit on. Still nothing. I got my multi-meter out and started measuring voltage and resistance between various points in the cable. Without really knowing what I was doing, I found that the connector I had put on the end of the cable where it plugs in the AIS transducer itself was bad. I replaced that connector and was more diligent about doing it right, and voila! We had a display. I was receiving signals from about ten nearby boats. I called Mike and asked him to turn his unit on and see if he was seeing me, since I broadcast as well as receive. He did! I was quite full of myself for figuring the problem out, even if it was my sloppy work in the first place that was the problem.
Departure from Antigua soon. Stand by.
GPS N 17-00.893 W 061-46.422 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10149.