Mar 1
Since we got our mail yesterday, I can finish figuring out our taxes. I had mine done because everything I needed had been available online, but Barb's W-2 was not available online, so I couldn't even start hers. So, today I finished all the preparing. Magically, the amount we owe them is almost exactly what we had set aside for that purpose, so now I'll just wait until mid-April to send the money.
We placed the CO² bottle in our Soda Machine today. Normally, the CO² bottles have to be swapped with the manufacturer when empty, but we found a welding supply place in St. Maarten back in 2009 that would refill them. This is the first of the refilled ones we have used, so I was glad to see it worked.
For boat chores today, we tackled cleaning, organizing, and inventorying the forward head. We use the v-berth (front bedroom), and forward head (front bathroom) for storage. This makes the boat bow heavy, but it's our only option. The first step of this was to remove everything from the head and place it in the main saloon. We stacked things such that we still had a path to walk through, but barely. Then Barb gave the room a thorough wiping down. Compared to the rest of the boat, there was not that much mold and mildew in there. Once clean, we started replacing things. The first part we did was the large soft-side bag that we keep full of small parts. Back in November, when we first got to the boat, I needed something out of this bag and found the zipper was frozen shut. So, I had to tear the material to get in the bag. So, now we are moving everything to a new bag. As Barb packed the bag, I checked things off our inventory spreadsheet and adjusted quantities etc. Once the bag was done, the rest of the stuff was replaced in a nice orderly fashion. A few things were thrown away, leaving some space for something else in the v-berth perhaps to be stowed in the head.
After lunch, we went for a dinghy ride with Chuck & Micki from coram Deo. As we left the marina, we took pictures of the figurehead on a large boat at the docks. You can see the picture on the picture page, and read more about the history of figureheads here. Our tour started with a trip around Harbor Island. The whole Jolly Harbor area was man-made by dredging what used to be a large swamp and making the deep water areas for the marina, the mooring field, and the canals for the condos. The dredge material was used to make Harbor Island near the mooring field. There are grand plans to build houses and condos there, but in all these years, there are still only four houses, all which have been built since 2009. Anyway, we circumnavigated Harbor Island, which included ducking to barely get under the small bridge that give cars access to the island. From there we went outside the protected area of Jolly Harbor, through the anchorage and around the point that is the northwestern-most point of what is called the south finger. The south finger is where the Jolly Beach Resort, Castaway's restaurant, the beach, and lots of villas and condos are. The very end has a road built on it with street lights, but development has been slow. The first house to be built out here is under construction now and is quite unique. It is referred to as the house with no walls. It appears it will mostly be open-air with curtains for walls. You would have to be in a boat to see anything anyway, so I guess who needs walls? We got a couple pictures on the picture page. From here we went back through the anchorage and to the beach that is the head of the anchorage. It is a fair distance from the closest a boat can get to shore and anchor, and the beach, and it is quite shallow, even for a dinghy. We slowly made our way in to a small inlet into a mangrove creek that comes out here, and into the "pond" behind the beach. We beached the dinghy on the backside of the spit that is the beach you see from the anchorage. We walked around enjoying looking for shells and enjoying the four beers that Chuck had packed away in a cooler for the ride. We found an orange starfish in the shallow water near the edge. We had not seen these here before. We saw thousands of them in the Bahamas. We were probably out on our ride for over an hour, and it looked like a shower was coming, so we headed back to the marina.
We showered and went to happy hour, then joined Chuck & Micki for dinner at Melini's. I had the curried shrimp pasta which I had a few weeks ago, and it was again excellent. Curry and pasta aren't a combo I would normally expect, but it works. After dinner, we went back to coram Deo and played a couple games of Monopoly. This wasn't your normal Monopoly though. It was a Monopoly card game. I had never heard of this before, but after a little bit, we got the hang of it. Micki won the first round and Barb the second. It was 23:30 when we headed home.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 2
My big project today is to reinstall the wind generator. I have been putting it off because it involves climbing out on the end of the davits while carrying a fairly heavy unbalanced object in one hand. Since reorganizing the rest of the v-berth is rising to the top of the to-do list, and the wind generator was up there, this task has to be done first. So, I got everything out ready to go. To install the generator only requires setting it on top of it's pole mount. But, the wire from the generator has to be stuffed down the pole at the same time. I knew from experience that at the bottom of the pole, the wire would probably hang up. So, Barb was at the bottom with appropriate tools to fish the wire through. I got the generator in one hand and carefully climbed up the davits. The hard part was only having one hand free to hang on. I got out to the back of the davits and hugged the pole with the arm holding the generator. With my other hand I found the end of the wire and started feeding it down the pole. Of course when it got to where it hung up at the bottom, it was close enough to all the way that I was now holding the generator just shy of putting it on top of the pole. Barb only took fifteen seconds or so to fish the wire out so I could set the generator down on the pole. Next came the blades. The three blades bolt to a hub with three bolts each. The hub is supposed to unscrew from the shaft of the generator. However, when I took the thing down in 2009, the hub had frozen to the shaft. The hub is aluminum and the shaft is stainless steel, so the old dissimilar metal corrosion trick got it. So, now while standing on the davits, I had to re-bolt the blades to the hub. Barb handed me a blade and a bolt and I started. Again, it takes two hands to do this, one to hold the blade, and the other to start the bolt. That leaves no hands for hanging on. All while standing on an inch-and-a-half pipe. Once the first bolt was started the second two were easier because I didn't have to hold the blade. Then repeat the whole process two more times. I was glad to get down with the job complete, no parts fallen in the water, and no injury. I now hooked up the wires at the base of the pole, and replaced the protective box that covers the connections. The wind is rather brisk today, and I was surprised the blades only turned slowly. I was worried that perhaps there was some corrosion or something inside the generator hindering it's rotation. A large gust came and the blades did spin, but not as fast as they should. Then it occurred to me that the switch on the control box was probably in the OFF position. Duh! I went below, flipped the switch, and the blades started spinning merrily. I turned off the shore power battery charger so that I could watch the amperage monitor, and sure enough, we were making electricity.
Barb decided she was going to clean the dinghy some more, so she got her bucket and brush and went to work. Shortly after she started, the water pressure in the hose went away. I called the marina office on the radio and asked if they were aware of a problem. They weren't, but said they would check into it. Turns out there was a break in the main line where it comes from the street to the whole marina complex. So the docks, bathrooms, and buildings were all without water. They said it should be fixed within the hour, and sure enough, four hours later it was back on. Island time.
Late in the afternoon, we helped coram Deo move slips. In all but the t-heads at the end of the docks, you tie two lines from your boat to the dock, and two or three lines to two pilings out in the water. There are no finger piers alongside the boats. This means it requires the assistance of the dockmaster in his dinghy to come or go from a slip. This works fine as long as you come or go during business hours. Chuck & Micki want to leave for St. Kitts tomorrow at dawn, so this afternoon they are moving from where they have been on C dock to the t-head at the end of D dock, right near us. So we helped them release their dock lines as Sylvester the dockmaster undid their piling lines. Then we hustled around to our dock to take their lines as they came in. They tied up with the lines looped around the cleats instead of tied to them, that way in the morning they can release the lines from on deck and not need assistance.
By the time we got to happy hour, it was well past our norm. Happy hour is from 17:00 to 19:00, and we didn't get there until 18:30. Fred the bartender joked that he had been worried about us.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 3
We did some more inventory work today. There are compartments under each settee seat in the aft cabin where stuff is stored. Both of those got emptied out and inventoried. One of the things stored back there is a bag of spare light bulbs for all the little lights throughout the boat. In the course of counting them, Barb reminded me that the overhead light in the v-berth didn't work. I took the cover off it and found that it had corroded and was toast. I went over to Budget Marine and bought a new fixture, different of course, but it installed easy in a few minutes.
Chuck & Micki on coram Deo had slipped out about 07:00 this morning. We heard their engine start and I could see them leave from the bedroom window, but we had said our goodbyes last night, so we didn't get up. Later, around noon, Adrian and Sam on Blue Moon also left. They are just going around to Falmouth Harbor, so we'll probably see them again soon.
After happy hour, Barb made pizza for dinner and I watched the end of the Nationwide NASCAR race on bootleg internet TV.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 4
As we start most mornings, I turned on the SSB radio to check in with the Coconut Telegraph net. Gordon on Calmos 3, who is anchored just outside Jolly Harbor was today's net controller. Her went through the normal spiel asking for emergency traffic, then vessels underway, then first-time check ins with no responses, which isn't entirely unusual. Then he asked for general check-ins. There is usually a pile up of calls then, so wait until the first few have been taken care of. But today there was nothing. So, after a few seconds of nothing, I went ahead and checked in. Gordon acknowledged me and then called for check-ins again. Again, nothing. Wondering if for some reason he wasn't getting out, he asked me to call out. So I did, but again nothing. Neither of us have ever heard of nobody checking in, and we would have expected that if the other net controllers were not hearing Gordon, one of them might have called out and we would have heard them. But the airwaves were silent. So, what was probably the shortest net in history was over.
I was quite windy yesterday, and unlike most nights, the wind didn't entirely lay down overnight. It was less, but there was still a noticeable breeze all night, while usually it gets dead calm. As soon as the sun came up, the wind piped back up. What was odd today though was all morning the wind was very gusty. Normal islands winds will be what most would call gusty, but that means if it's blowing 15 knots, then occasionally there will be a gust to 18 knots. This morning, the wind would die entirely, then suddenly a blast over 20 knots would hit. We would hear the gusts coming because the rigging of the boats in the storage yard behind us would start howling before the blast got to us.
The day was pretty much wasted away. Late in the afternoon, I watched the NASCAR race from Phoenix. The feed was better than yesterday, but the timing was bad, happy hour fell in the middle of the race. So, I watched the first fifty laps or so, and then came back for the last fifty.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 5
We actually got after a few chores today. Barb started the day by taking the dirty clothes over to the laundry. There is only one choice of laundry here, and it is a full-service deal. They wash, dry, and fold, and charge by the pound. It's not cheap, but they do a good job.
Our main project today is to empty out the v-berth, clean it, and re-stow everything while updating the inventory. Amazingly, as we seem to do every time we go through this exercise, we found things we don't use and got rid of them. You wouldn't think we would have any "extra" stuff on the boat, but if it's been here for several years, and we haven't used it, then we don't need it. We didn't find any big surprises buried up there, like any dead critters or anything.
The screen for the hatch in the v-berth had been pulling away from the frame in a couple of places, so I took a few minutes to fix that. The screen wasn't torn, it had just come out from under the rubber seal that holds it in the frame, so it was an easy fix.
Amongst the stuff in the v-berth we found the old raw water pump that I had replaced on Thanksgiving Day 2008 while we were in the Tobago Cays. I suppose I thought maybe I would rebuild it one day, but I have a new one coming as part of my spare parts order, so I tossed this one. With it though was the old SpeedSeal cover that didn't fit the new pump. I had been in touch with SpeedSeal several months ago to see if they made a cover for the new pump, and they needed to know more about it. Since I wasn't on the boat then, I had never answered them. But now, I took the time to pull the cover off the new pump, get the dimensions they asked for, and send them a reply. Interestingly, the new pump design incorporates an O-ring to seal it instead of a paper gasket, which was part of the benefit of the SpeedSeal. The only real benefit of the SpeedSeal missing in the new pump is the large knurled bolts to replace the standard ones. We'll see what they come up with.
In the afternoon we made a grocery store run. In all the time we've been here, I haven't figured out if they have a specific day that they restock this store. I'm guessing the answer is no, because we haven't figured out a pattern. Somebody told me they restock on Wednesday, but today (Monday) it was better stocked than it was Saturday.
We went to happy hour and then had dinner aboard. After dinner, we decided to try and watch some real TV. In my quest to watch the NASCAR races, I have learned much about watching American TV from afar. There are two different challenges I have faced. For the NASCAR, and SPEED Network shows, I had to find a source that was streaming them. The networks themselves, nor NASCAR, stream them. So even if I was in the States, watching on the computer is not an option. However, there are websites which get the feed from some source (illegally) and stream it. So, the trick is to find these websites, and hope they don't get shut down mid race, which they sometimes do, but then you just find another. Now, watching regular network TV shows is a different problem. They are available from the network's website, or from services like HULU. But, for whatever reason, they are only available in the States. So, if I go to www.CBS.com and try to watch the last episode of The Good Wife, I get an error message back saying it is not available in my area. Every computer gets assigned an IP address when you connect to the Internet, and that IP address identifies where you are. But, there are services out there that for a reasonable fee will let you connect to them via what's called a Virtual Private Network. This is a secure way of connecting used by companies when an employee works from home. By connecting to this service using a VPN connection, they then make my IP look like I'm in Miami. Cool. It took about half an hour to get the account setup with the service, and then we watched the last two episodes of The Good Wife.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 6
We had a lazy morning. There was a significant rain shower mid-morning that kept us inside for a while.
After lunch we decided to take a walk on the beach. We walked to the beach by Castaway's and were surprised to see it wasn't crowded. Castaway's didn't even have their chair and umbrellas out, leaving only the independent vendors hawking chairs. I had checked the cruise ship schedule, and there are ships in today, but I guess they don't always book the beach excursions here. The first order of business was to take a picture. In 2009 when we were here, Barb took a neat picture looking out to sea from a little bridge that was over a ditch that connected the inner end of Jolly Harbor to the sea. This facilitated water circulation through the harbor and canal system of Jolly Harbor. Well, sometime between then an now, there was a large storm that brought huge waves to the west side of the island. These events, which we sailors refer to as a north swell are pretty rare, and cause havoc in the normally protected anchorages on the leeward side of any island. This storm filled in the ditch with sand and buried a good part of the stone jetties that formed it's sides. Apparently whoever would have to dig it out doesn't care about the effect of not having it there on the water quality in Jolly Harbor. Not that the harbor water is disgusting, but it would benefit from better circulation. (See side-by-side pictures of this on the picture page.)
As we walked down the beach near the Jolly Beach Resort, we found a guy laying on the beach with his laptop in front of him. Personally, I wouldn't want my laptop that close to the salt mist and the sand. But despite the potential damaging effects of the environment, the computer doesn't belong on the beach! On our walk we finally figured out what part of the complex is Jolly Beach Resort, and what buildings are Tranquility Bay timeshares. When our friends come in a few weeks, they will be staying at the timeshares.
We went to happy hour, but only for a couple, as it is Tuesday night and we have a 18:00 reservation for pizza night. We got to Al Porto about 18:15, but it wasn't a problem being late. They were surprisingly not packed, although it did fill up while we were there. Since it wasn't packed when we got there, we got to take a minute and say hi to Nicks, the bartender. Nicks had been one of the bartenders at WestPoint bar back in 2009 when Angie owned that. He obviously followed her to the new establishment. The pizza was good as usual.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 7
Not much got done today. I did spend over an hour contemplating a project though. The hose that goes from the Y-valve in the head, to the holding tank is clogged. This happened not long before we left in 2009. This means we have to pump directly overboard. That's why we use the marina's facilities while we are here. I was hoping that I would be able to access the hose sufficiently to replace it via access holes I have cut over the years for other reasons. The conclusion I came to is that while I can pretty much see where the hose goes, I don't see how I am possibly going to be able to get it out and the new one in. It did occur to me though that unlike the other head hose which I replaced a few years ago, this one runs downhill from the Y-valve to the tank. So, unless there is a low spot back where I can't actually see the hose, I don't understand why it would have calcified and clogged like the other one did. So, I thought maybe if it is just a short bit of it that is actually clogged, perhaps vinegar could dissolve it. So, I poured a couple cups of vinegar in the end from the Y-valve, and then put the hose back on the valve. We'll let that sit for a day or two and see what happens.
For dinner, Barb made a new recipe that she got from Micki on coram Deo. It was called a quesadilla casserole. There was a package of spices from McCormick to be added to meat, black beans, corn, cheese, and then layered with flour tortillas. She used ground turkey for the meat. It was very tasty garnished with sour cream and jalapenos.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 8
This morning, Barb was in the cockpit reading and I was below on the computer. I heard her say good morning to Sylvester the weekend dockmaster. He is a real nice guy, and we have joked with him in the past about how long we have been here. With a straight face he told Barb that he had our bill and that it was time for us to pay up and leave. We all got a good laugh out of it. Later when I saw him again and I was taking the lines from a boat he was docking, I told him he was going to miss us when we leave because he wouldn't have line handlers on the dock all the time.
I did two tiny projects today. One was to replace our Happy Shark. The old one had faded to no color at all. We replaced it with a "patriotic" red-white-blue one. I also fixed one piece of the rigging tape I had put on the bow pulpit a few days ago. The rigging tape gets put around the turnbuckles where the lifelines attach to the bow pulpit. When sailing the bottom edge of the sail rubs on them and in the past it has chaffed the sail. So, the tape prevents this. The tape is not sticky, but is what is called "self-amalgamating". As you wrap it around something, you stretch it out, and it then sticks to itself. I always having trouble getting the last list inch or so to stick though. Both those projects combined took about ten minutes, so I needed a break.
Happy hour called us, and then we had leftovers on the boat for dinner. The casserole made enough for three dinners. Barb is lucky that when a dish is good, I have no objection at all to having it two or three nights in a row.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 9
We have noticed that one of our big projects seems to actually have had the desired effect. When we first got here, I added insulation to the inside of the fridge boxes. We do now see the compressor cycling every few hours instead of running 24/7. The lids still don't seal worth a crap, but we keep a sheet of heavy plastic and a towel over the lids to help a little with that.
We are excited about our plans today. We are actually going out sailing. We met Jon Ohlsen from Allentown, PA, at the bar a couple weeks ago. He has a boat named Wicked Good that lives here in the Horizon Yachts charter fleet. He has been here for a month in a villa, and he now has use of his boat for the next three weeks. Another guy, Dave, who does deliveries for Horizon, needs a ride from Jolly Harbor to English Harbor, so we are going to sail him down there, have lunch, then sail back. We left the dock about 11:00. Once clear of the anchorage, we unfurled both sails and shut off the motor. Being in the lee of the island and pretty close to shore, the wind was fluky. It would die entirely for a minute, then blast us at about twenty knots, heeling us over almost putting the rail in the water. Just as MoonSail does, when overpowered by a gust, the boat would round up into the wind, straighten up, then fall off and sail nice again until the next gust. After an hour or so, we were down near Cades Reef, where you turn east to round the southern end of the island. We started the motor, furled the headsail, and sheeted in the main tight. Once Jon powered up to cruising speed, we smelled something like oil. Horizon had just done a repair of the oil fill cap/dipstick on the transmission, so Jon looked there first and found it was leaking. We experimented a bit and found that under 2000 rpm it seemed ok, but at cruise speed, about 3000 rpm, it was leaking. So, instead of proceeding to English Harbor, we turned around, turned the engine off and sailed back to Jolly Harbor. I was at the helm all the way back, actually steering instead of using the auto-pilot. I haven't done that in a while. Once we were back outside Jolly Harbor, we actually sailed through the anchorage on two tacks before starting the motor to come in the harbor. It wasn't that we had to, but it was fun. Motoring slowly was not causing a leak, so I drove in to the marina while Jon and Dave got the lines ready and the fenders out. Once near the docks, Jon took the helm, and my job was going to be to drop the bow and spring line loops over the piling as we backed past it. Unlike "real" marina customers who get help with the outer piling lines from the dockmaster in a dinghy, the charter boats are on their own. I had the lines ready and was confident I could loop them over, but I missed! Jon got the stern lines to guys on the dock, and then came back forward and used his bow thruster to move the bow over by the piling where I dropped the lines on. Even though the trip was shortened, and Dave now still needed to find a ride to English Harbor, we still had fun.
It was about 14:00 by now, and we were hungry, so we went to Peter's BBQ with Jon and had lunch. Dave had found a ride and was off as soon as we hit the dock. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon, and then went to happy hour.
We had the last of the quesadilla casserole for dinner. During the evening I had Skype call from our friend Brian. Brian has Another Road, another Catalina/Morgan 38, based in the BVI's. He is down there this week preparing Another Road to go back to the States where he can use it all the time instead of just a few weeks a year. For the first time since being back, we took showers onboard the boat. To clarify, it's not the first time we took showers. Just the first time on the boat. We had been using the marina facilities just so we didn't have to keep the boat shower cleaned up. But we figured we better use it at least once to be sure everything worked ok. To my great relief, it did. The actual shower hose and handle had been replaced not long before we left the boat, and it still works good, and the sump pump to drain the shower worked good.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.
Mar 10
We had another lazy mostly non-productive day. I did start to cleanup the nav station a bit. I have had the whole panel with all the instruments and radios opened up to install the new stereo and the AIS, and didn't want to close it up until that was done. But, we are waiting on a connector to complete the AIS installation. That connector is not behind the nav panel though, so maybe I can button it up. I started cleaning things up, and trying to arrange wires so it would all fit behind the panel. I accidentally noticed that the wires from the loud hailer to the outside speaker were not connected. So I reconnected them, which required use of a little mirror, and an odd contortionist position to accomplish. I tried to push the panel back in position, but it is going to require some more work to arrange the wiring such that everything will fit.
I helped Sylvester dock several boats today. There are a number of boats here for the Russian regatta we had heard about earlier. I'm not sure when it is, but we have seen many Russians around this week. I really should say we've heard the Russians around, since they look like anybody else. It's their talking that gives them away.
We noticed a couple of things that indicate we have been here too long. One is that we have given names to a couple of the cats that hang around the restaurants. There is the black cat family, which has at least four members, and the tabby family that has three members. We have named one of the black and white cats Tootsie, since she is 98% black, with white feet, but one black tootsie on one of her front feet. The other thing that shows we've been here too long is that I pretty much have the entire airplane arrival schedule committed to memory. The approach takes the planes just north of us, and they are easily low enough to identify the airline. I also use Flight Aware to see what's coming and when. You can watch an airport's activity as well as track individual flights on it. Today, for the first time, I noticed a Delta flight on the schedule. I didn't think Delta flew here. Turns out they bring in two planes on Saturdays only. One from Atlanta and one from JFK. Who knew?
We went to happy hour as usual. After a bit Jon showed up with his daughter, whom he had just picked up at the airport. New Jersey Dave, who has been here five weeks was also there as usual. Tonight is his last night here, so we bought him a drink and wished him well. For dinner, Barb made us pizza. Instead of the regular pepperoni pizza she makes at home, she tried something new. It was very similar to a pizza we used to get at a place called Oregano's in Phoenix. On the crust, you spread olive oil, then basil pesto. Add thinly sliced tomatoes, some browned Italian sausage, and top with shredded mozzarella. It was excellent. Al Porto is having a contest to come up with a new pizza. The prize is $500 ECD, and the pizza will be on their menu next season. So, I wrote down the recipe and sent it in.
GPS N 17-04.000 W 061-53.000 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 10113.