Merry christmas to all

Why all the expensive dredging?

For the last month or so there has been a dredging operation in and around the fisherman's dock in Deshaies Guadeloupe. A big barge with a mobile crane. A big spoil barge and a little pushboat tug. All in the company of a much larger tug. They have been at it for about 6 weeks and must have cost a fortune. Nobody knew what it was all in aid of as the actual interior was not dredged just the area around the entrance.

Well today it was all made clear.

I suppose the T shirt sellers will be happy.

WASTING AWAY IN MARGARITAVILLE well Guadeloupe

Not been on the internet much but my domino skills are improving and I am the backgammon champignon.

Time to finally move South maybe to Martinique for Christmas.

Providing some volcano does not get in the way. One of the known warning signs on an impending eruption is a ' swarm ' of small earthquakes,

During the period Dec 6th - 4:28pm to Dec 7th - 9:50am, a burst of 54 earthquakes occurred north of St. Kitts.

I have been helping out with a boat stuck on the mud near the canal. WHile I was wading around I saw some fish action but as we get lots of mullet working the shallows I ignored it Turns out they were baby hammerhead sharks, lots of them. One of the locals managed to pick up two about this size

I think they were destined for the pot but someone reminded him quite forcefully that we were in a marine conservancy area and he returned them to the water.

Dizzy says HI!

And I am back on the gin, having run out of good Antiguan rum

It is about 5.45

The charter boats are still arriving. This despite being told VERY FIRMLY at the chart briefing that there was to be no movements by sail or motor after 4 pm.

HANGING OUT IN GUADELOUPE

I have been lotus eating in Guadeloupe. It is my favorite Caribbean island.

But a couple of people have asked why stay there in hurricane season. Well I was beating feet South when we got the first real scare of the season a while back.

It was a hurricane that could not make up it's mind. Normally as they spin up they curve to the North. Not this one, it wobbled and went South a bit, wobbled a bit more and went more to the South. As I was North of it's current track it did not seem a good idea to head into it's path.

I was in the Saintes and the closest good hurricane hole was the canal between the wings of the butterfly.

Tied to the mangroves you can survive most hurricanes.

The story of my inner forestay failure and repair

Short version the fitting between the threaded Norsemen and the overcenter lever failed and I got a similar fitting and adapted it to fit

Long version.

We were sailing up to Guadeloupe from the Saintes on a fairly boisterous day. Just off the Southern tip of the high island the wind speed increased which I was expecting because of the compression and the seas got a bit higher and definitely more confused. I was bot worried as I had been in similar conditions before and had had the rigging professionally inspected by a rigger 3 months ago. There was a big bang, the boat lurched and the staysail luff developed a large belly. We were a 100 yards from getting into the lee of Guadeloupe so I just kept going but let out the staysail sheet a bit. In the lee I dropped the sail and rolled some genoa.

We dropped the hook at Anse La Barque and had a look. The forestay terminates at the bottom in a male thread Norseman. With a female threaded eye which attached the forestay to the overcenter lever.

It was obvious that the head of the eye fitting had come off the stem. There was clear evidence of corrosion at the break with only a little ring of bright metal near the surface. So it looks like it has corroded from the inside out. My inspection also came up with three cracks in the head. All of this should have been spotted by me and certainly I feel the expensive 'expert' should have found them

Anyway I need a new one. Calipers and thread gauges establish that it is a 7/16th UNF thread and the eye diameter is 9/16ths.

A search on the internet comes up empty. I post some forum queries with pics and go to bed thinking that someone somewhere will know where I can get a new one.

On the internet no one has come up with a definitive answer but a couple of people suggest that it might be a swage end. We drive over tp Pointe a Pitre and visit the rigger and other machine shops. Now they talk metric here and I am somewhat sanguine about my chances of getting an oddbal Imperial fitting but it is a nice day for a drive and we will stop off and do the tourist rain forest things on the way back.

We come away with this fitting The hole in the stem is too large but it should swage down to the correct ID for tapping 7/16 UNF the eye is very close to 9/16th. None of the fittings that could have been tapped 7/16th had a large enough eye. He could not swage it down for me as his machine was broken and no one else had one.

So no worries Antigua is the next island and they have a good rigging shop there.

We sail up to Antigua and go visit the rigging shop. Now I have been cruising the Caribbean for 15 years now and always found the engineering shops to be very knowledgeable resourceful and willing to help out in any way possible to get you back sailing. I was surprised to find disinterested staff who did not see how to help me and told me to wait and see the boss. When I eventually got to speak with the boss he said that he had not seen an overcenter lever like mine for 25 years had nothing that would fit and he would not use his machine to swage down my new fitting.

No big deal I thought as I was due to fly out to Salt Lake City for my annual holiday off the boat to go skiing. Someone in Salt Lake City will sort me out. On arrival I got the Yellow pages out and went looking for an engineering shop with a metric swaging machine or at least an imperial one that might do the job. Nope nobody could swage that size.

It was time for some lateral thinking. I had grown up with blacksmiths shoeing my sisters horses and had recently seen how a blacksmith using just a hammer anvil and forge could turn a piece of flat bar into a gunbarrel [seen on youtube]

https://youtu.be/qTy3uQFsirk

so as my new eye had to be malleable perhaps a smith could reduce it down to the point I could get it tapped to the size I needed.

The first two I spoke to only did decorative scrolls but then I found a real blacksmith Matt Danielson at Wasatch Forge Initially he was somewhat reluctant as he said stainless was often brittle and would crack when forged. I said I thought this piece would be malleable as it had to flow when swaged He agreed to have a look at it and maybe give a go and we arranged a time. He looks like a smith and must be around 6' 6”. He decided it did not look brittle and when I said if it breaks or cracks so be it I would not hold him responsible in any way. So he got the forge up to forging heat and started.

The blacksmith's motto is “ Get it hot. Hit it hard “

I was expecting him to use a blacksmiths swaging block but he worked just on the anvil. Over and over he bought it up to a bright cherry red took it to the anvil and pounded on it. It took 40 minutes but when he was done the 3/8th mandrel would slide in and the exterior was round and showed almost kn evidence of hammer marks. It was black from the forge but he soon polished it up on a sander. He said that while he could hand tap it at the forge I should take it to a machine shop he used as they could machine tap it with a much smaller risk of breaking the tap and scrapping the piece.

The machine shop did a good job with a nice clean thread and I set it aside and went skiing.

Back on the boat I tried it on the thread and it ran on smoothly. It needed a little filing to fit the overcenter lever but we are back in business.

CUL DE SAC MARIN GUADELOUPE

I have been lotus eating in Marin.

It is just the best gunkholing in the Caribbean outside of Los Roques. There must be hundreds of possible anchorages here.

Great snorkeling in crystal clear water.

Pelicans on patrol everywhere I look.

Wind finally got strong enough for the expert kite surfers who were all out on foils.

The only downside is the weekend influx of motorboats that can come up the canal from Point a Pitre. However most go home at 5 pm.

But it was this lot kept me awake as they squabbled all night long.

So I moved next day.

KICK'EM JENNY IS RESTLESS

Along with all the other seismic activity there has been a swarm of tremors associated with the undersea volcano between Grenada and Carriacou. The University of the West Indies says an eruption is possible.

The last eruption was in 2017.

SERIOUS SHAKY PUDDING.

It even has a caldera.

SHAKY PUDDING AGAIN

Magnitude 6.5 this time and fairly close according to the Montserrat center.

Some structural damage reported from the quake alongside the wind and water damage from tropical storm Kirk

Mind you some damage is self inflicted, anybody who leaves a sail bent on a roller furler when a wind storm is forecast deserves to get it shredded. His insurance ma not pay as Kirk was a named storm.

KIRK IS A RIGHT YOYO

He was a tropical storm then briefly a hurricane then he totally decayed back to just being a tropical wave then suddenly cranked up to a storm again

I am still sitting in Deshaies and watching the remnants of Kirk who is getting the stuffing kicked out him by some strong shear winds.

But friends of mine to the South have been worried enough to put hurricane prep 5 into gear and have moved into the mangroves tieing lines ashore with stern anchors laid out .



But as Kirk is to the North it is sucking all the wind from Carriacou and it is totally windless in the mangroves. One comment from a prepper says " EVEN MY EYEBALLS ARE SWEATING".

TROPICAL STORMS AND HURRICANES EVERYWHERE I LOOK

After a very quiet start the Atlantic has gone crazy. Everytime I look another wave is threatening to get organised and start the circulation.

While I have been tempted to make a run south on a couple of occasions there has always been the Azores high pushing a ridge out and forcing the storms South.

So just hanging out in Guadeloupe and getting a little gentle hiking in.

ISAAC IS DECAYING FAST

It was a tropical storm when it blew past me and other than some unpleasant westerly swell which made life on board unpleasant until I organised a stern too mooring set up we were just fine.

The Deshaies dinghy dock survived with no obvious damage mainly because the local dive operator who uses the dock removed the wooden decking which gets smashed up when the westerly swell gets going. The pic below shows the dock in a damaged state after a previous swell smashed the deck in places.

One side effect of storms and hurricanes is spectacular sunsets.

LONG POST PART 1

I have finally got a working laptop. It is even speaking to my new camera a Canon SX 620 HS which is a pocket size point and shoot.

I bought a new laptop which came with Windows 10. I started to transfer all my files over from my old laptop using a remote hard drive.

I finished up locked out of both laptops and with all three of my external hard drives saying they were encrypted which meant I could not read them.

Despite spending considerable amounts of time money and skull sweat I was unable to get back in.

Even my last resort bootable thumb drive could not get me in. Not even using the hackers back door into the command prompt. If I had known how long it would take me to find a way to spoof my old laptop into letting me in I am not sure I would have kept going.

Microsoft help was of no use at all. Possibly my fault because I have stalwartly refused to register with the evil empire.

French 'experts' are of little use.

Youtube/Facebook experts are better but they failed da after day.

But I persevered and the old laptop is working.

GOD BLESS LINUX.

Dizzy has been a very clingy little cat since Y came back from skiing and I wonder if he somehow knew that I was ill. But maybe it was just that I was late with the cat food.

Speaking of food I am blaming my weight gain since I came back from skiing on the Bacon Cheeseburger with Roast potatoes served by the cafe on the dockside. It was just to convenient.

Sometimes I had to share with the locals though.

Long Post part two

Here are some boaty pics from Antigua most from the days of the Classics week and race week.

This was the Carriacou built wooden deck sloop Free.

She broke her wooden mast on practice day and I got the pic of her heading into the boatyard.

They worked all night.

Here she is after completing race one the next day with an aluminium mast.

No such overnight miracles were possible for the Ondeck boat though.

The sandbanks inside Falmouth harbor keep catching the unwary. A passing big RIB was able to push them off.

They were lucky to be in Antigua and not the Florida Keys. There they fine you for running aground in such areas. 1000 $ US upwards. Fines in excess of half a million have been levied.

This is Ashanti IV getting ready for the single handers race which she won with her usual ease. It is a David and Goliath job though and in this case Goliath wins. Ashanti IV is 115 ft LOA and the next biggest is 52 ft.

One thing that was sadly missing was the participation of those magnificent relics of a bygone era the J class yachts. I was there in St Barts when Hanuman finally triumphed over her rivals. Well so she should as every possible turbo tweak had been employed to make her lighter stiffer and faster. I also remember when she turned up to race for the first time and got trounced so badly in practice her billionaire owner withdrew he from the races.

Hanuman is for sale. I wonder who can afford the base running costs ? 10 million US a year just to keep her in the water ?

LONG POST PART 3

HURRICANES

I know I should not be this far North at this time of year but I just have not been up to sailing South. So with hurricane Isaac heading for the Antilles I am planning to sit it out in the Riviere Sens marina on the South end of Guadeloupe.

I would normally have put on my big girl pants and headed out for a 3 day 2 night sail south to safety. UNFORTUNATELY that would be heading into the possible strike zone.

Meanwhile there are two more hurricanes to the North and a third one forming in the Caribbean basin. It is busy after a long quiet spell.

Isaac, the one heading my way, is forecast to hit to the south and may be loosing strength when it gets here. It is just what the folks on Dominica can do without.

Hurricane Florence is the nasty one and is likely to be cat 4 and possibly even a cat 5 when it makes landfall in the East coast of the USA. It looks like it is going to be bad.

So Jan batten down the hatches and look after the puppy.

DESHAIES

OK Done with all shenanigans, motor is working normally again, weather has settled down [ pic below is what happened in the South] autopilot is over it's hissy fit and the anchor chain came up on demand. Good sail down to Deshaies at 7 knots and even got one of the free mooring buoys.

Shenanigans and fuckery indeed.

No divers available. So went down again and realised that the chain was making a figure 8 around two pieces of L shaped angle iron. Despite this being a very sheltered anchorage with minimal tides there is a distinct current which must reverse at times. So on a calm period we were waltzing around this bit of wreckage. So back up and laid a second anchor to take the tension off the chain and went in again with a telescopic boathook and a weight belt. 2 minutes work and we were free.

2 hours and we anchored in a new spot, second anchor retrieved dismantled and stored. The second anchor was my big aluminium Fortress and it was really reluctant to release from the bottom and I had to put it on the winch and even then it needed a nudge with the engine to break it out.

WAVES AND FOULED ANCHOR CHAIN.

The wave that has caused serious flooding in the islands has gone through and I was ready to leave.

The latest problem to overcome is my anchor chain which is caught up in some wreckage on the bottom. It is just beyond my comfortable free diving range and I got really tired quickly trying to free it.

Time to call a diver!

Sailing down to Guadeloupe tomorrow

Conditions look good and I was able to get in the water and clean my prop yesterday

It was unrecognizable, it looked like a bucket.

OK I AM BACK - - -JUST

On a borrowed lappie and someone else's account so I will be brief and no pics.

I have been broken I have had this Aussie flu which has just laid me out.

Both my laptops and my dual external hard drive back up systems are broken. Not sure why but it may be the move from Win 8 to Win 10 I HATE MICROSOFT

The boat is broken I think it is an electrical issue related to some crimped connections installed by the previous owner. I think I have a workaround but want to mke a proper repair before setting off again. I have 9 years pretty trouble free cruising up until the last few months when it has ust been one thing after another.

About the only thing working is a gizmo that gives me 30 mins Facebook a day. I have massive internet withdrawal symptoms.

I am still in Antigua and I must head South ASAP. To far North in hurricane season.

SHAKY PUDDING AT ANTIGUA CLASSICS

We have had 9 earthquakes in the last three days. I did not feel the first 8 but the last one was a doozy a 4.7 right under Antigua. The boat shook from side to side and there was a deep rumbling sound like a giant slow revving diesel engine. None of the volcanoes nearby are showing any signs of activity and that includes Montserrat which has been active since 1995.

Meanwhile the local varnish experts are laying the final coats in the run up to the Concours d’Elégance.

While others practice their sail handling.

and others dream of getting the perfect start.

SKIING 2018

Reflections on my three weeks skiing.

1 avoided the 'F' word.

2 the snow was excellent especially at Alta but Canyons/Park City was good too.

3 avoided catching a cold or the Aussie flu despite 7 flights full of germ laden people. 4 managed to fit into my 'skinny' salopettes [ everything is relative].

5 got upgraded by Alamo again.

6 lost my TSA status for some reason. Makes airport security a REAL pain again.

7 2018 signals the demise of the underwear/bead trees in the ski resorts.

8 expect to see widespread drought conditions in areas around SLC as the snowpack is at 50% or less in many areas and that is where they get their water supply.

9 I was REALLY tired when I got back and slept for 10 hours on the first two nights. Which I thought was strange as I was OK in the mountains at 9,000 ft plus day after day.

Gaye had to fly back to Oz to cope with a family emergency. Poor Dizzy was condemned to cat hell AKA the PAWS animal sanctuary which had one cat and 50+ dogs. He was a miserable cat when I picked him up and he has been welded to my side eversince.

Poor needy little cat.

GREAT CONDITIONS AT ALTA

2 ft of new snow over the weekend. 7 ft since I got here.

I have stuck to Snowbird Alta and Canyons and had great conditions at all three.

Even better examples of natures Christmas decorations.

The numbers of disabled skiers are amazing.