Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Category: Cruiser Connections

  • SSB Problems

    Karen and Matt from Where II came aboard last night. We had a great time getting to know each other and sharing lessons learned. As we didn’t finish all the nibbles we agreed for round 2 on their boat this evening.

    Today I’ve spent some time aboard Where II helping Matt investigate poor performance on his SSB – perhaps some of the head banging I’ve done aboard Dignity will come in use. We managed to prove it does actually work (voice and email) and figured out one anomaly which may or may not be an issue – the antenna ground was directly connected to the boat DC ground. I’ve heard conflicting stories on this so we’re trying to see if it’s any better without this connection.

    The overall shortwave environment is lousy right now and this morning on our own eqipment (not sure if it is location specific) was very crackly on the morning Coconut Telegraph (or nut net as it’s often referred to). So a poor connection seems to be about as good as it gets. We’ll try again a little later when reception is usually a bit better.

    Apart from this not a lot else done today. That’s quite ok. Looking forward to round 2 this evening.

  • Back in Bequia

    We arrived in back in Bequia this after a thrilling sail. Along the way we spotted a whale breaching several times. I grabbed the camera and took about 50 shots of which one just about shows the whale spouting – see left. It was not a big whale but it was more impressive than this picture would suggest.

    After rounding the southern tip of Bequia I was able to take some better shots of Moonhole.

    When we pulled in the four lines we had one fish on the end of one of them. No surprises in this case as this was the second of the three small fish we caught earlier which I’d thawed and put on the hook before we set off.

    Having arrived we’ve been ashore to provision. One of the reasons for timing our visit to Bequia this weekend is we learned Where II, another Lagoon 420, is here until Monday. We saw them once before in Rodney Bay, St Lucia, but by the time we dinghied over to where we’d seen them they had left. To avoid another near miss we’ve already invited them around for ‘cocktails’ this evening. Looking forward to sharing thoughts and plans.

    INSERT_MAP

  • Mixed Happenings in the Tobago Cays

    Yesterday settled down after the mornings travails. The weather, continuing to be quite variable, kept us aboard most of the afternoon. By 3:30 things had cleared up so we took the old camera with it’s underwater housing and snorkeled over to the turtle sanctuary. We weren’t let down as we saw many turtles seemingly aware of the difference between one side of a line of buoys and the other. I presume it is the lack of anchored boats that keeps them in their little area but at least we know where to find them.

    The first turtle we spotted looked like many years ago a shark had taken a bite out of it. We managed to take pictures of this chap along with many others. Can’t upload them yet. That will have to wait. Under Dignity a large shoal of fish had congregated. When we returned, completely forgetting the no fishing rule, I hand lined some hooks with bacon fat on them thinking I had nothing better to do. Within minutes I had three small fish aboard. I then realized why these fish weren’t so shy. I double checked the pamphlet to verify that even hand lining was not allowed and reluctantly put everything away. I put the three small fish away too. Into the freezer. On our next trip I’m going to fit one of them out as bait for something bigger. I feel my luck turning in this aspect.

    We slept very well last night with no bilge alarm to wake us. Waking this morning I discovered Jim, researching from afar, had identified our seal from a picture I sent yesterday. Not only that, he’d discovered the correct maintenance procedure. Apparently we’re supposed to inject a cc of special grease after every 200 hours of use. Well – we’re long overdue this one and this is certainly the reason we’re having the leaky seal.

    Knowing I’d put in a lot less than 1 cc yesterday I decided to try and do a proper job. I popped off the cable tie and it immediately started squirting water. I then spent the next two and a half hours trying various ways to squeeze grease into the seal getting a lot of it over me in the process. Helen was in support on this operation as to help move the grease around I had her engaging the motor in forward and reverse. The task seemed futile. Whenever I thought I was making ground I would clean up a little and the water would start squirting out again. I then decided to use the wound irrigation syringe we have in the medical kit. This allowed me to get grease squirted inside the seal. I found the most effective solution was to squirt the grease into the seal while the shaft was turning. As it stands (or sits) right now, the leak has stopped. I’m not sure if it has stopped for good as I dared not do any more shaft rotations. I am leaving it to stand for a day to let the grease settle. Tomorrow we’re heading for Canouan. We’ll learn then how good the fix is. It is possible that having dried up, the seal is damaged. Just to be safe, I also injected grease into the starboard shaft seal.

    We’ve had another excellent snorkel today. Excellent except for the bloody bird that got into the cabin and shat everywhere while we weren’t looking. For now, it’s back to relaxing and reading. We may go ashore some time if we can be bothered.

    It is quite different being here a second time. The first time here it was magical. Second time it’s still pretty nice but the surprise element has gone. If we go ashore it’s to tread in our previous footsteps. The only advantage this time would be to take our better camera. The weather, being so rainy/cloudy/sunny is not as photogenic as last time so the incentive is not there.

    Canouan has it’s attractions. It has a peak to climb and an anchorage on the west side where we can dive from the boat. If we can at least contain the port shaft leak we’ll continue north after a couple of days visiting Bequia again and maybe St Vincent mainland.

  • This is the life

    No seriously. This is the life :

    1) Yesterday when leaving the land at Union we forgot to raise the dinghy stern anchor. No obvious protest as the anchor came up of the ground. Only realised as dinghy was running slowly. The anchor had been spinning through the water unwinding the three strand rope attaching it to the dinghy. As the three strands unwound, the individual strands coiled around themselves further. Result: the rope became a mess of clumped up strands. Took me about an hour of rope stretching, coiling, uncoiling, massaging to fix.

    2) Last nights sleep was lousy resulting from being woken approx once an hour by bilge alarm. Checked things out at first light only to find port shaft seal leaking. Gentle prodding turned small drips into steady trickle. Leak must have been building for some time as it has corroded parts of my ground plane installed last November. Remedial action so far has been to slightly compress seal with cable tie and to work grease between seal and shaft while shaft was rotating. I’ve also cleaned and raised corroded ground plane for SSB to minimise further damage albeit at probable cost of effectiveness. Drip is now occasional and under observation. Hopefully drip can be triaged until August when we plan to haul Dignity for bottom painting, etc. Unfortunately this is right under our berth. We may have to move cabins to ensure ready access to shaft. Big thanks to Jim down in St Georges with whom I’ve bounced around ideas.

    3) The birds round here seem to be ‘trained’ to expect food on and in boats. Where birds go, so they shit. We’ve found two splodges already.

    So far we have done none of the things we wanted to today. I feel tired and grotty.

    *This* is the life.

  • 1,000 Steps

    The battery work went more or less to plan. At 8am, we dinghied into Island Water World to collect our new battery. We were a bit early so it wasn’t ready. We picked up some cleaning supplies and took our dud battery and the other good one that had been charged up ashore back to Dignity. Focusing on the four batteries which each had a low acidity reading in one cell each we first drained the problem cell down to the plates, topped this cell up from those surrounding which had strong acid then refilled the surround cells using acid from a good cell in the dud battery. A little more convoluted than the original plan but had the greatest effect. By the end of the morning we were back in IWW where we collected the new battery, took it back to the boat and installed it. Dignity was now ready to go.

    After lunch we went for a walk around town hoping to catch the museum. We left the dinghy at Grenada Yacht Club, swapped some books then headed round to the fort area. Shortly after leaving the yacht club we passed a sports field where the local police were hosting events. In the heat we couldn’t believe how many were standing around in full track suits.

    We are anchored in a place called “The Lagoon” where on one side you have the rapidly expanding Port Louis and on the other is the Grenada Yacht Club. The land sticks out to the north where you have the Tropical freight terminal. On the other side of this you have the Caranage. This is a squarish little bay surrounded by buildings, mostly commercial. The waterside has many boats docked, some fishing, some party and some commercial. The water is a bit yucky but overall the place has a bit of an atmosphere.

    As we walked around the Caranage we came upon a couple of local fisherman who’d caught a boat load of jacks and were selling them in plastic bags to folks ashore. When we reached the museum we found it was not open. Unfortunately there wasn’t even a sign to say when they do open. Another time.

    We walked through the tunnel that takes us to the ‘city’ area of St Georges where they have the market, banks and the new mall/cruise boat terminal. We bought some fruit at the market, looked around the mall then headed back to Dignity picking up some rum on the way. Some of this rum (the bottle of 150% proof for approx US$4) is destined for knocking out fish we catch.

    In the evening we attended the 620th Grenada Hash which had the ominous title “1,000 Steps”. The start/end point was Port Louis Marina so we didn’t have far to travel at all. Port Louis is a new marina and very elegant. I would guess around 120 people attended this hash. Among them were some cruisers we knew: Jim from Bees Knees and Marianne and Theo from Double Dutch who we’d met on the recent turtle watch.

    The hash began by taking us on a narrow path around the nearby prominentary. Soon we were scrambling up the side of the hill. I kept sliding out of my flip flops so I ended up climbing up the hill in bare feet.

    From the top of the prominentary we were treated to a great view of the Lagoon where we were anchored. We then descended back down to Port Louis Marina where a water taxi awaited to take us over to the other side of the Caranage, close to the museum where we could continue our walk.

         

    The walk from here took us all around St George’s. If there were steps in town, we climbed them. The relief that came with descent was tinged by the likely prospect we’d not seen our last climb. At one point we had a ‘beer stop’ which is unusual for hashes as the beer is usually reserved for the end of the hash. In this case the beer was in fact free and served by some interesting local characters, one of whom insisted on posing for the camera.

    As an aside, you may notice that in the pics for the hash many are wearing ties. This was a mandatory dress requirement owing to the fact we were walking around the city. Obviously the hashers have an eye for their graces.

    Given that at any time we knew exactly where the end of the hash was and how to get there, it was tempting to take a short cut to the finish. Unless we accidentally skipped some side path we avoided this temptation. Nevertheless, although there were many in the pack behind us, we were one of the last to arrive at the finish so we reckon one or two others succumbed to this temptation. I can’t blame them as this one was hard work. Back at Fort Louis Marina we had the customary beers to wash away the fatiguq of hard walking/climbing. Here we bumped into Jim from Heatwave who had wanted to go on the hash but had been delayed owing to flight delays with his family (Judy & Charlotte) who had left for Bermuda earlier in the day.

    After the hash we decided to eat out with Jim from Bees Knees at a local place called the Horny Baboon. We had chicken wings, burgers and fries. We deserved it.

    Quick note on plans for today. Having done our work on the boat and as tomorrow looks more and more like the day to head north we’re going to pop outside the lagoon to anchor Dignity in cleaner water and have a restful day.

    I’ll leave you with some prophetic words on a sign we encountered on the hash yesterday having climbed yet another set of steps.

    Enjoy the rest of the pics.