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Water’s Edge

I’m pretty sure we did some more work on the boat in the morning. In fact, I know we did. I just can’t remember quite what at this point.

Nevertheless, once we’d finished, we packed some food and drink and went for a walk. We headed south passing through the Bel Air Plantation. The road soon turned into a track as we climbed up the peninsular it is on. After a few wrong turns we found a path leading down to the next beach along.

From the top of the hill we could see the beach and in the distance, the beach called La Sagesse which we had visited at the end of our round island tour way back. The beach was deserted. We had it to ourselves. There were some footprints of someone who must have walked the beach before us but no sign of them. Best of all, there was no washed up trash. Presumably the shape of the surrounding coast prevented trash from washing in so here was a lovely pristine beach.

Not that we stayed there. We’re not really beach people but we do like walking them. At the other end of the beach we found the trail which led to La Sagesse.

La Sagesse wasn’t deserted but neither was it far from it. We walked the length of this beach and found a place on some rocks to eat the samosas and fruit we had bought and drink our drinks. Once we’d had our mini picnic we turned about and headed back the way we came.

As we passed through the Bel Air Plantation, we stopped at the ‘Water’s Edge’ restaurant to check out what they had going. We learned that that had a live band starting at 12.

Back on the boat we found it was still only 11am and was now quite hot. (I’ve remembered what we did in the morning. I fixed a flap under the hull, cleared the paint from the hull sieves that protect the inputs to the A/Cs, sanded and painted the depth transducer and tried out some calcium remover on one of the props. Helen cleaned the bimini underside and the whole cockpit)

We decided we would have a late lunch at the restaurant to get us out of the yard. Knowing that things seem to start an hour late we arrived at the restaurant at 1:30. Helen wanted to arrive around 2 but I didn’t want to miss anything. One member of the band was tuning up and he said that they didn’t plan to start until 2. They didn’t start until 2:30 so guess who gave who a few “told you sos.”

The food and setting were wonderful albeit expensive. Nevertheless it was worth it. We’ve had our taste of Paradise in between the sweat and grime of life in the yard.

Back on the boat it was back to work. This time we focused on the rubber rails that protect the transoms. We wanted to reseal them close to the water. This required pulling them off and cutting away all the previous sealant, putting on new sealant and pressing them back on. We practically used up all the sealant on the first rail so we need to buy some more. Hopefully the store in the yard has some otherwise we’ll have to go into town which will delay us a day.

Most of the rest of the work by the yard has been completed over the weekend. There’s a good chance we’ll splash today but it will have to be the end of the day if we’re going to allow enough time for the second rail to cure. Otherwise it will be one more night before we get out of here.

Ready for the fight

Saturday was mainly a shopping day. We needed some boat parts, some more food and weapons of war against the mosquitoes and ants who’s numbers were rising again. We left the boatyard shortly before 8am on a 15 minute walk up to the road to catch the bus into St George’s. On the bus, as it careered at high speeds through winding roads stuffed full of people, we felt very much back in the Caribbean.

Our first stop was Island Water World to see if they had a better selection of bolts than their outlet here in Grenada Marine. We need particular sized bolts to attach the cone shaped zincs on the end of our props. The last ones had hex key (allen key) heads which were all mushed up requiring me to cut of the zincs and remove them using grips. Not finding them meant we had to take another bus to Budget Marine in Prickly Bay.

The Budget Marine store had many sizes. I bought the ones I needed plus others a little longer and shorter just in case. We also met up with Jim who’s anchored there to collect our replacement salinity probes. Not sure if I’d mentioned this before but given that we’ve now suffered two failures, Spectra sent us two replacements, free of charge, just in case.

Next stop was ACE hardware store to pick up a bunch of stuff including the first elements of our arsenal against the invaders. This included an insect zapper that looks like a little tennis racket but generates a high voltage across a string of separated grids. I was keen to try this out.

Then it was back on the bus into the center of St Georges where we went to the other ACE store to pick up some Combat Ant Killer – the stuff that Jim believed the best.

Then it was lunch off the market square where we had roties and local juice. They had three juices available and we were allowed to try all three. The last, a favourite of the locals, tasted of aniseed and was quite sharp leaving a tingling on our tounges. We opted for the cherry flavoured juice.

Finally we picked up fruit, some mosquitoes sprays and a little more food and were back on the bus back to the boat. I was ready to go on the attack with the insects but we discovered the situation all changed. Ant corpses littered the boat with just a few stragglers wondering around. It looked like the doses from the previous day had really kicked in so it was not necessary to lay down any more.

The heat was too much to do anything until about 3:30. I then set about grinding off a lot of the calcification on the props and fitted the zincs. They needed some drilling out as the new bolts didn’t quite fit but soon I had it all sorted. I wasn’t able to completely decalcify the props but got some advice from a worker who was here doing the gelcoat work (finally). He advised me to get some acid from the store to paint on and dissolve the remaining calcium. I’ll do that.

Next was replacing the faulty salinity probe with one of the new ones. In principal this shouldn’t be hard but it does mean working in the space under the floors. All the cable tied had to be removed and the control box cover removed. This was quite difficult as one of the screws is in a very awkward place. Once the old probe is removed, the new one has to be screwed in, the wires laid, the cables bunches retied and everything closed up. In the confined space and in the heat I felt like I lost a pint of sweat doing this. Hopefully this will all work. If we were in the water I would not have finished up the work without testing. However, I’m taking a chance that all will be ok.

Beers were then necessary then a shower. While we were quaffing the beers, Helen scored the first kill with the bug zapper. When she was in the shower, I scored three more including one that left this world with the sound of an electrical clap. Ahhh – the sweat pleasure of vengeance.

After that it was dinner – vegetable samosas and vegetable soup. Helen’s a role to get us to lose some of the weight we acquired in the Uk and South Africa. We finished the evening watching couple of TV shows we’d downloaded. We managed to stay awake until 8pm last night which was an improvement on the day before.

Back in the tropics

Whew. We really had got used to the coolness of Spring in South Africa and Autumn (Fall) in Uk and now we’re back in Grenada melting away. Yesterday evening and night turned out to be the most humid they’ve had for a while and we were treated to some heavy overnight rain. And with the mossies we had to sleep with the hatches more or less closed. Joy.

That all being said we’ve been fairly busy today. The things we’ve done include :

  • Sanding the drive shafts and putting new zinc collars on
  • Installed the dodger (twice because we had to take it off to have a couple of the poppers fixed at the sail loft)
  • Untied the dinghy
  • Hoisted and furled the head sail
  • Checked the drive battery voltages and tested the electric motors.
  • Half mounted the lazy bag which holds the main sail when lowered.
  • Followed up on our parts which are currently en route to Grenada.  We should get these by end of next week
  • Chased (several times) the boat yard to complete the work on the boat.  (This work is to fix a crack towards the stern and patch the gelcoat where we scraped a buoy when the boat went adrift in Guadeloupe)
  • Cleaning and sorting inside of boat
  • Reorganised medical kits
  • Cleaned sides of boat

Jim visited late morning when we were slowing down due to the heat.  He brought along a little of his ant killer to deal with the hordes invading Dignity.  A few blobs certainly attracted many ants and soon there were corpses and an obvious drop in numbers.  However, it appears they have regrouped and numbers are rebuilding.

We had a pleasant lunch and beer with Jim at the beach bar here before parting ways.

Tomorrow we’ll head into the capital to pick up some of our own ant killer as well as the salinity probes for the water maker which Jim now has but uncharacteristically forgot to bring.  The boat work has now started and they promise to be ready in time for our splash on Monday by working through the weekend.  We’ll see.

For now we’ll just try to enjoy the evening stuck here with little breeze and mossies taking over from the ants.

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Last Day in Blighty

Our last day in Blighty was a long and pleasant one. We didn’t get up until after 9am but were out of the boat before 10. We again walked over the river to the station and headed off to Baker Street. I had located an astronomy store which sold specs for looking at the sun. As we’re hoping to catch the solar eclipse next year, these will be use additions to our inventory.

Next it was off to Oxford Circus to meet Helen’s old (meaning past) traveling friend, Gel, and her daughter Hayley for lunch. We had a pub lunch at the Slug & Lettuce off Regents Street and washed it down with wine and beer.

After Lunch Hayley had to go back to work but Gel stayed with us for an hour or two to carry on the catch up. We sat around admiring the drunks and avoiding (successfully in Gel’s and my case) the pigeon poo in Soho square.

Eventually we had to part ways and say our goodbyes. Helen and I took a long walk to the City passing a lot of our old haunts including the place where we both met at work. We met an old friend of mine, Mark, in Bishopsgate and soon we were back to old times which meant knocking back several beers. Again – it was great to catch up with old friends but eventually we had to again part ways.

Helen and I returned to the boat to pack our bags. Dick was due back shortly after 10pm from his trip to Brussels. He duly arrived on time and as we had not had much time together we went out for a meal (with wine).

We eventually crashed for a short sleep before waking at 5am to head back to Grenada. Dick dropped us off at Clapham Junction railway station and from there we took the train to Gatwick.

Bar some unexpected restrictions on hand luggage weigh the journey was uneventful. Jackie and Mike were there to collect us from the airport. We had made it through customs without a hitch which was fortunate as we had a landrover radiator and parts for their lawnmower, all of which could have triggered undue interest and import taxes.

Mike had to head off in a different direction so Jackie took us back to the boat via a supermarket for some provisions. Back on the boat we had mixed news. There was no evidence of any unexpected entry so the recent c/c issue remains a mystery. All the electrics were fine and the vast bank of batteries nicely topped up with the solar. The fridge came straight on. The boatyard only appears to have done the bottom paint and not some of the other work scheduled. We also discovered that ants have found their way in. It was too late to talk to the yard management about the work as they all close up at 4 it seems so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

For now it’s a bit of unpacking, showering and mainly rest. Tomorrow we get busy getting Dignity ready to go back in the water. Jim from Bees Knees will pop over and bring some of his ant killer. I’ll also seek his oppinion on the work the boatyard hasn’t addressed. We may just leave this until New Zealand. It’s far too hot and we want to get back in the water.

New Carnival Pic

We just received this nice pic from the Carnival Parade Jim took of Helen standing on her post between two Commencharo wings. Thought it was good enough to show.