THE BEST LAID PLANS

I had planned to sail down to St Lucia from Marin in Martinique on Wednesday 24 th July. Went to lift the anchor but the windlass was dead.

IT IS A SOLDERED JOINT 3 DISSIMILAR METALS AT DECK LEVEL. I SLATHER IT WITH GOOP REALLY GOOD 3 M 4200 GOOP BUT AFTER A YEAR OR SO THE JOINTS TURN TO GREEN GOO AND STOP CONDUCTING.

i WILL TRY TO POT THE NEXT ONE IN EPOXY BEFORE I FIT IT.


ANYWAY Fixed that, topped off the tanks at the fuel dock and checked out at the same time. The French islands have this sorted with check in .out computers in docks and bars. Back at anchor and just thinking about lifting the dinghy when I was felled by a wild pain in my back.

Grrrrh A couple of hours later and it is mostly OK.

I will see how I feel in the morning.

THINGS THAT GO BANG IN THE AFTERNOON

Something went BANG close by rousing me out of my sleepy afternoon book.

A big ferry had broken loose and hit a boat near mine.

A French fire drill followed. The biggish local boat got itself tied alongside for a hip tow but managed to get a rope around it's prop. Someone on the ferry deployed a stern anchor but just upwind of an anchored boat.

By now we had a small squadron of dinghies full of arm waving shouty cruisers and locals. Random dinghy pushing resulted in the ferry drifting sown on the bowsprit of an adjacent boat.

This was followed by some sideways pushing random anchor deployments and lots more shouting. Finally someone official arrived issued instructions to tow the boat from the bow which worked.




Meanwhile I had prepared to drop my anchor and chain if it dragged down on me which looked pretty likely at one point. The chain was buoyed so I could retrieve it. My second anchor was as always ready to go with the rode flaked out on deck. Fortunately nothing was required and I could return to my adventures in time.

Going to treat myself to this shirt

THE TO DO LIST GETS A LITTLE SHORTER

The sink drain which is quite a complex affair as it takes the drains from the two kitchen sinks and the drain from the little wash hand basin in the small shower has been leaking. Rather reluctantly I took it apart being hopeful that nothing would break. I can remember having a major struggle some years back to find enough matching bits to do a total replacement some years back.This was in Grenada and they get most of their plumbing stuff from the USA and it is imperial. I am in Martinique and my chances of finding imperial plumbing fittings in the local bricolage is ZERO.

By lunchtime I felt I was getting somewhere.

The drains got fixed and no obvious leaks, more importantly the outlet is supported so if there is a failure it will not sink the boat.

New fan belt fitted, I watch the belt tension closely as it is a single belt system on a 100 amp alternator which is pushing it. If the belt is at all slack it slips if it slips it has to be replaced.

While I was doing this work I spotted 2 hose clips that needed replacing which I did.

Sealed the center board tube to deck fitting.

Sealed the leaking through deck fittings for mast shrouds.

Removed dismantled cleaned and crack tested my inner forestay deck fitting. Paying particular attention the eye fitting the blacksmith had worked on.

It maybe time for an afternoon snooze.

Sahara dust lots of it.

We are getting large amounts of Sahara dust.


Enough to drop the visibility and to give anybody with respiratory problems a hard time.


Also time to swab the decks me boy.

OUTBOARD AND BATTERY TROUBLES.

Ever since I got back I have had outboard problems. The frustrating thing is it runs well for a few minutes everytime I do ANYTHING to it then it starts coughing and spluttering and stopping. It has always got me back but it runs so badly it clearly has a problem.

New fuel. More new fuel. New fuel line. New fuel connectors. New fuel tank. New fuel filter. New plugs. The carb has been cleaned multiple times.

Well I have admitted defeat, I am waving the white flag. My big 18 hp outboard is relegated to the rail as I can not trust it to run reliably and I can not find the problem. I think I have tracked it down to the fuel pump but it won't come apart and I need new diaphragms and nobody stocks them down here. My next 5 anchorages are very open to the west and an outboard failure could lead to me being blown to Panama. In the last year 4 people have disappeared this way

So we have a new egg beater to see me down to Grenada.

Dizzy approves.

My battery bank has developed a bad cell and I run a series parallel set up with all 6 interconnected it pulls down the other 5. I can reconfigure the bank to run on 4 and did this but it looks like they are about done so it is break out another boat buck and buy 6 new ones.

The local dealer had 6 and they were fresh so I humped 372 lbs of new batteries out to the boat. Lifted them aboard. Pulled 372 lbs of old batteries out and humped in 372 lbs of new. Wired everything up and woke up next morning slightly sore but glad to hear my fridge running normally and not cycling through it's low battery routines.

BACK ON THE BOAT

After a long and very tiring overnight flight I am back on the boat.

Following the pattern of the last few months I am back to fixing boat problems. This time it is the dinghy engine. I have had failures of the fuel hose connections both ends and the tank pickup. I thought I had fixed all of them with a new tank and a bodge at the motor where I removed the complex push on metal connection and just connected the hoses together with clips and held them in place with zip ties.

I drop the dink in and check that the engine starts. NOPE Deader than a dodo. My engine is a Nissan [ Badge engineered Tohatsu ] 18 hp 2 stroke and generally starts first pull.

I remembered that the last high speed run before I left to go skiing had been punctuated by a couple of coughs which is often a sign of a fuel problem.So I pull the hose off the lift pump and sure enough what comes out is not petrol but water.

So I drain the tank into a container using a Baja filter which can separate the water from the petrol.

This was what was caught by the filter. Initially it was an emulsion but it settled out overnight with some interesting stuff on the interface between the two liquids.




Poured the good stuff back into the tank drained the carb and pumped the fuel line clear of water.

First pull start.



I needed the dink in working order because I was due to pick up Dizzy.

LIGHTNING

Super scary time. Riding the long chair up to the top of Snowbird when it all goes black and the lift cables start buzzing.

A minute later we get the first lightning strike.

I was glad when I got off the lift and was advised to shelter in the resturuant.